Freelancing | Sound and Music 2/5/13 2:56 PM

Freelancing
Freelancing is a way of applying your skills to many areas without being tied to a full-time job.
Freelancing involves a lot of time management and juggling different kinds of work and fees. It
requires managing your fees and budgets while you need to continually search for more work,
and leave enough time for your own personal practice. Freelancing is highly unstable, but allows
you the freedom to fit different kinds of work around your practice.

It’s pretty hard being freelance. You have to do everything. If I write an email, I’m
my own agent, I’m my own artist, I’m my own technician, I’m my own taxman –
I’m my own everything. Ninety five per cent of what I do is not creative work, it's
research and all the components of trying to battle the general day-to-day office
and home balance that I choose to mix because I work at home.

- Janek Schaefer, Artist

My career really started taking off in the final years of my PhD studies. I gave up
my temporary corporate job and never looked back… (apart from at the salary). It
was fantastic to have the time to write and really concentrate on achieving my goal
of being a freelance composer. I help my finances by lecturing at various Universi-
ties and I really enjoy doing many different creative workshops. I find that the
workshops I present keep me socialised and help me distill things into a certain
simplicity. I learn a lot about my own creative work by sharing ideas and gain a lot
from the exchange and discussion with the many different groups I work with.

- Pippa Murphy, Composer and Workshop Leader

I started out as a trombone player. I studied for four years at the Royal Academy of
Music (London) and then spent just under ten years as a freelancer working for
orchestras, theatres, early music ensembles and so on. I also taught at various lev-
els – schools, universities and privately. During this time I was also developing my
conducting career and formed an ensemble (sound collective) in 2003. In 2006 I
was chosen to be Mackerras Fellow in Conducting at Trinity College of Music for a
two year period and at that point I stopped playing to concentrate exclusively on
conducting.

- Tom Hammond, Sound Collective

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