Downtime on a Ship

This post comes in response to a request that I received from "miss bliss" and I will happily comply because it is a major issues and topic for any musician or entertainer working onboard a cruise ship.  I was asked to write about what people do with their downtime while working onboard a ship.  How downtime is handled can mean all the difference between a happy contract and a miserable one and also moving forward with professional goals or staying stagnant and stuck in the same cycles.

For almost all musicians and entertainers there is a lot of downtime during a contract.  Even on a busy playing day there is still a lot of time to fill.  Say that on the worst day a musician is scheduled to perform six hours (which for most positions rarely happens), that still leaves 18 hours left to fill.  Consider that on a ship musicians live where they work, there is no commute, there is no cooking as the meals are provided in the mess.  A lot of things on land that take up a person's time away from work aren't really considerations on a ship.  Port days are probably the easiest because there is always the option to go into town for a while.  But there are also sea days, where the ship will not dock while in transition from one port to the next.  Sounds easy, but put a few sea days together and most everyone on the ship starts to go stir crazy.  My personal record was 10 sea days in a row because we were going from the Middle East to Europe.  Seven sea days were already scheduled just for transit time including a day through the Suez Canal (which is still a sea day because the ship is moving and nobody can exit the ship in the Suez Canal), but then the uprisings in Egypt happened and they canceled three ports in Egypt without replacing them with another port, which meant we went 10 days without touching land.  That will test the patience and mental stability of even the most experienced seafarer.

Regular life onboard a ship is not exactly like a free weekend at home on land.  On the ship you only have access to the tv channels that they are able to get, which might be some cable channels but in other parts of the world might only include older movies and a news channel if you are lucky.  And don't think about being connected online 24 hours a day.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, the crew is charged by the minute for internet access.  The speed reminds me of AOL from about 20 years ago.  Most cruise ships use a satellite connection, which means the signal goes from the ship to a satellite in space, then beamed down to a receiving station on land, then sent over to a network, and then all goes back the way it came but in reverse.  You can see why everything from weather to positioning around the globe can make a major impact on the speed and even overall availability of access.  While most people are accustomed to being connected online 24 hours a day on land, it just isn't possible while on the ship.  You can see how much of a premium gets put on a strong wifi connection when the ship is in port.  Any place that has strong wifi will have a group of crew members Skyping, checking email, and updating their Facebook statuses.

Most musicians I know seem to either enjoy ships or hate them (or at least find them a necessary evil at a certain point in their lives) depending on what they get out of the experience.  This all boils down to planning and sticking to the plan.  I've often been asked by younger musicians  about whether they should stick with ships or give up ships and try full time on land.  My advice is always the same: if you are continuing to get something out of working on the ship, then do it while you can.  But if you no longer enjoy it and no longer find it satisfying, then it's time to find something new.  It's my advice for ships, but also my advice for any career, whether on land or at sea.  If you are no longer enjoying what it is you do for a living, then find something else.  Life is too short to spend 30 years or more doing something you hate doing every day.

Finding personal and/or professional satisfaction is key and can be different for each person.  I have worked with a lot of musicians fresh out of college looking to gain playing experience, to have a steady gig, and to have time to practice their instruments.  A cruise ship definitely satisfies those criteria.  Some musicians never traveled much, maybe even went to college just down the road from where they grew up, and want to see the world.  Working on a cruise ship that is in a different city every day is going to be a good fit for them.

But a word of caution in that cruise ships are not for everyone and they aren't usually the right fit for everyone for an entire 30 year career (although I do know some who are perfectly happy after decades in the job).  Cruise ships are full of repetition, from playing the exact same production shows every week for 6 months at a time, to playing the same or similar charts every week at jazz and big band sets, to playing the same rotation of guest entertainers every couple of months.  What might have appeared fulfilling, fun, entertaining, or even challenging at first can become part of the grind.  Same is true for the ports.  My first two contracts were on a ship in the Caribbean and we repeated itineraries every other week (one week was Eastern Caribbean, the next Western Caribbean, then back and forth every week of the year).  At first it was all new and it was nice for someone used to cold and snowy winters to be relaxing on a beach in 80 degree temperatures on Christmas Day.  But a year into it, the same 6 ports started to get old.  While at first I never missed an opportunity to go off the ship, at the end of one year I found myself staying onboard more and more often.  When I went to my second ship (3rd contract), the ship was based out of Dubai and the Middle East for 4 months of the year and doing the same itinerary week after week for those 4 months.  The first year we did 3 days a week in Dubai, then one day each in Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Fujairah, and Bahrain.  The second and third years changed by adding a sea day and eliminating the stop in Bahrain due to the political uprisings that started between our first and second years there.   By the end of my 3rd contract, those cities that seemed to exotic and interesting started to feel mundane.

But I have digressed, so back to the downtime aspect of ship life.  It is really important to have goals while onboard for a contract.  The musicians who are the happiest have something specific they want to achieve during their contract.  It might be practicing a certain number of hours on their instrument, or go through certain books, or improve in specific areas.  It might be more of a side project, something like writing or arranging.  Or it might be to go sightseeing and see new parts of the world.

If you enjoy sightseeing or history, try and do research before you start your contract.  Read up before you visit and it will make your time in a particular port even that much more rewarding.  I would research all of the new places online and save the info on my laptop, then before we would arrive to the port I would read through so I would know what to expect.  In the end it worked for me.  While I was out in the city taking mass transportation and seeing all there was to see, others stayed near the ship in a Starbucks (I still enjoy my Starbucks, I'm just saying) or an Irish bar (every city in the world seems to have its Irish bars).  Imagine what the crew members have to look back at years in the future: "yeah, I went all over the world and saw the inside of a Starbucks in 60 different countries."  I researched admission prices, opening/closing times of places of interest, as well as transportation schedules, routes, and prices so I could use my time as efficiently as possible.  I love the TripAdvisor app, and you can now download city guides for a lot of the major cities and use them offline while you walk around without having to be connected to the internet.  There is another app called Maps.me where maps can be downloaded with turn-by-turn directions and then used offline.  It can be a lifesaver if you get lost on the way back to the ship!

The people who are the most miserable are the ones that come onboard with no plan whatsoever and get bored in their first week.  Or they came with a plan but it went out the window because they either weren't focused or were just plain lazy.  Downtime can either be a blessing or a curse depending on how its used.

One major downfall I have seen time and time again is spending every night in the crew bar.  Cruise ships have a bar (sometimes more than one) specifically for the crew to use at night once they are finished with their work.  Alcohol is cheap and flows easily, which is attractive to many musicians.  One word of caution though, all cruise ships have limits on alcohol consumption, some more strict than others.  Unfortunately as a Musical Director, I have seen several musicians be fired because of drinking too much.  It is never a fun moment to have to appear with the musician in a Captain's hearing where they are fired and sent home at their own expense.  The crew bar can be a cycle, where some crew members go every night until it closes at 2am, then they sleep until Noon or later, wake up for rehearsal, eat dinner, do the shows, and then repeat the process.  One of the saddest cases I saw was an older musician who hated his job.  He spent $500 a week (which was about the average salary for the orchestra members at that time) in the bar and was eventually not re-hired because his drinking led to performance issues on the bandstand. Imagine spending every dollar you earn and then eventually lose you job over it.  I'm not saying that crew should never go to socialize, and isolating yourself in your cabin alone every night is worse, but everything in moderation.

My advice to those about to do a contract, whether it is their first or 50th, is to set concrete goals and stick to them.  Use check points throughout the contract to make sure you are staying on task and staying productive and of course modify if necessary.  If you are planning on arranging 10 charts during a six month contract, then set smaller goals, such as one the first month then two the next month and so on.  In the fourth month, if you haven't hit at least 7 charts, then you haven't been sticking to your routine.   Maybe you got sidetracked by something else productive, which could be OK, but maybe it's a sign that you have been focusing on less productive ways of spending your time.

A sad sequence of events I have seen all too often are with musicians who no longer want to work on ships but find themselves having to.  Ships are great if it is where you want to be.  But it can be a sad, lonely, and sometimes dark place if you feel that it is your only option.  I have seen musicians spend most of their paycheck either in port or in the bar due to boredom.  Then they go home with just enough cash to keep them going during their 6-8 week vacation, then find themselves without any other option financially so they come back to the ship and repeat the process over and over.  My suggestion: not only set goals for using your time, but set goals for saving money.  Make sure to come home with money in the bank.

As far as spending time productively, I mentioned arranging as an example because there are a lot of people that use it to productively fill time and also to make some extra cash during the contract.  Singers, guest entertainers, and sometimes even the ship's entertainment department are sometimes in need of new charts or updating older charts.  The ship's production cast is made up of singers, some of which are required to have their own charts.  As they perform more often, they might decide to pay to expand their personal collection of charts arranged for them, so they oftentimes look for somebody onboard to arrange for them.  In one of my latest contracts, the hotel director and cruise director wanted the orchestra to play some very recent pop music (i.e. "Happy" by Pharrell Williams and "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift).  Because the orchestra usually uses charts and not whole songs by ear, they paid orchestra musicians to do the arrangements.  Not a bad way to make some spending money.  Plus the skills that a musicians continues to develop in arranging can also pay off on land after the contract is finished.

All in all, ships can be a great experience.  I have been able to visit over 60 countries.  I have been able to play with some great musicians from all parts of the world, who have all taught me as much or more than I could in a classroom.  And from playing every night, I have been able to greatly expand my repertoire.  This past contract I wrote a music textbook/workbook because my wife and I will be opening up a music school.  And speaking of my wife, I met her through ships which would have to be the best result of them all.  Had it not been for ships I am sure our paths would have never crossed.

Advice to Future Musicians and Music Majors

Now that I am on vacation, I was asked to speak to a group of high school students about life as a professional musician and also what it took be to a music major in college.  It made me reflect back on my own experience and also the last several years of being a musical director and working with musicians from all over the world.  Here ten pieces of advice for anyone thinking about majoring in music or pursuing music as a career:

• Learn to read music as fluently as possible.  Music is a language and it is impossible to communicate professionally if you are not fluent in that language.   I know professional musicians who are able to earn a living and they don't read, but they admit they have been limited because of that fact.  In certain situations, like becoming a music major or certain professional settings such as an orchestra, learning to read is simply not an option, it is a fundamental requirement.  The most successful musicians I have worked with are great readers.  Having good ears is important as well, but being able to read sheet music gives common ground to all the musicians in the room.  I have worked with musicians who could not speak English and I could not speak their native language and we got by without a problem through the language of music.
• Play as much as you can and gain experience in as many genres as possible.  Audition for bands, find other musicians and play together.  Look for community groups (theater, orchestra, etc.) because those will help as well in the future.  When I was studying classical percussion, I was taught to be very particular about the sound I was creating; that drive continues to help me whenever I play drumset because I am more aware of the sound I am producing around the set.  When I was in high school I joined a reading band (meaning a band that rehearses but doesn't gig) that met once a week in the basement of an orthodontist's house.  For most of the time I was the youngest person there and one of the few that was pursuing music as a profession.  I didn't make any money from it since we didn't gig, but I did gain a lot of experience.  We read through 10-15 different charts each week and there are still times, 20 years later, that I am familiar with a song because of that band.
• Actively listen to as much music as possible. I hate when people ask me what is my favorite kind of music or who is my favorite artist because I don't really have an answer.  They assume that because I am a musician that it is easy to name one, but I think it is because I am a musician that it becomes impossible to chose one.  When I was in 8th grade, my band director gave me recordings of great drummers and that completely changed the way I looked at a drumset.  The first recording she gave me was Dave Weckl's solo album, "Masterplan," and I literally wore out the cassette tape from playing it so much.  That one little effort from my band director pushed me to find more good music.  I went from being a passive listener to being an active listener trying to break down the playing styles of world-class drummers.  Don't just throw on music in the background; instead, listen and analyze what it is you are hearing.  Listening to music kind of fills up this musical reserve that we all have and then we draw from it every time we play.  Learning to transcribe is a valuable skill.  I don't mean playing it back note for note, but I am a better funk drummer because I listened to David Garibaldi and Tower of Power and I am a better rock drummer because I listened to John Bonham and Led Zeppelin and so on.
• Learn how to practice.  Ok, this sound obvious, but it isn't always a skill that advanced younger musicians develop.  The problem lies in the fact that natural talent can only take a musician so far; eventually they will hit a wall.  Now when they hit that wall is different for each individual, some in high school, some in college, and some out in the working world.  But it will happen and if the musician hasn't learned how to practice at an earlier age then it will spell disaster.  Even if the music you are currently playing is easy for you, continue to develop the skills of how to practice because at some point they will be needed.
• Find information.  We live in a world inundated with information.  It's both a blessing and curse.   I wish I had access to so much information when I first started learning to play drums.  Must be nice to be able to pull up any drummer through a YouTube video.  But all of that information is nothing if we don't know how to use it.  I can't read a medical textbook and call myself a doctor just like I can't read a drum method book and call myself a professional drummer.  Find a private teacher, somebody who can guide you through books.  Plus, unless you are recording every single practice session, you need somebody to listen to and evaluate your progress.  Seek out people who are experts at what they do and have more experience than you.  I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to watch a lot of amazing drummers perform at shows, clinics, and conventions.  9 times out of 10, those famous musicians that younger musicians idolize are actually really nice people who remember what it was like to be starting out.  Chances are they will take a moment to answer questions.  Find professionally gigging musicians in your hometown and find out how they do what they do.
• Don't be afraid to try something new.  I remember being absolutely terrified of Latin styles when I was younger.  The independence required made me not even want to try.  It just seemed like something I wasn't meant to do!  Same goes when I enrolled in a basic jazz improvisation class and I had to play piano, an instrument I never had played before.  But I learned so much in both of those experiences and I am so glad I didn't let my fear stop me.  When I was in high school, I broke my foot which meant I couldn't play drumset, even though I was enrolled in my school's jazz band.  I took the opportunity to learn more about hand drums and starting playing congas when it fit.  Again, that drive to create a good tone made me think more critically about the sound I created on the set with sticks.
• Push Yourself.  You never know your true potential until you push yourself to your limits.  This is true about music and life in general.  How far can you run?  You never know until you run until you can't run any more.  I remember growing up in Cincinnati and thinking I would attend a local college because it was close to home and it was familiar.  But luckily my band director encouraged me to visit other programs and it turned out that I found a great music school at the University of North Texas.  The music school and percussion program greatly shaped me to what I am as a musician and I am so thankful that I made the decision to go there.  The program is demanding and it was never easy.  There are so many excellent musicians and it takes constant practice for lessons and rehearsals, but it all made me a better musician and a better person.
• Set goals and know what it is you are working towards.  This can always change as you are growing and developing as a musician, but continue to set goals and go after them.  Imagine just getting into your car and driving without any particular destination in mind.  Doesn't sound very efficient, right?  Same thing for wanting a particular career path but not setting goals on how to get there.  Goals don't have to be these lofty things that sound great but are next to impossible to reach.  You can have those as well, but make sure you have goals that you can reach; they can even be on the way to those bigger goals.  Going back to the driving metaphor, if you are taking a cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles, those aren't the only points on the map.  Instead, there are place in between, the points along the drive to make sure you are going to end up exactly where you want in the end.
• Learn when to take a break.  It is easy to get burnt out in music or in any career really.  Set aside time for other things.  Take up a hobby, and it is better if that hobby is something completely unrelated.  If you are a performance major and your hobbies include arranging music, listening to music, and attending music concerts, that's not really ever taking a break from music.  Instead, learn how to paint or write, watch a movie, attend a sporting event, or spend time with friends discussing things that aren't music.  Make friends that are outside of your professional or college major.  For me, my break is in getting out and visiting places, especially with my wife.  I like to take photos.  I also enjoy keeping up with my favorite sports teams and watching in person when I can.  Knowing when to get away is important.  There are times when spending more time practicing or more time writing starts to become counterproductive and a waste of your time and energy.  Instead, know when to walk away for a bit and take a breather.  That way when you go back to it, you come back refreshed and maybe with a different perspective.
• Always remember that music is a business.  Yes, it can be a fun and rewarding business, but it is still a business.  Return phone calls, emails, and texts and be professional.  Do not be late and have a good attitude while you are there.  The music world is a small one and word travels fast, both good and bad, so just because you think you will never play with a particular musician again, you never know who that person knows.  And just as with any other kind of job, there are probably little parts that you may not enjoy (paperwork, driving, setting up and tearing down equipment), but don't blow them off just because you don't enjoy it because it will come back to bite you later.  Whenever a bandleader is hiring, they will chose people they enjoy playing with, which may or may not be the most talented people.  Music is about interaction and collaboration on stage, in the studio, or wherever the music is happening, so don't make it a miserable experience for the other musicians.

This list is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but just as a bit of advice.  Feel free to comment at the bottom and add your own pieces of advice!