Little BIGSOUND director wows crowd

Little BIGSOUND director wows crowd

Last Saturday the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley played host to the 2ndannual Little BIGSOUND forum, which has managed to compound even further on the success of last years inaugural event. Director of the event Gonzalo Rodino spoke to me about what he hoped young people would get from the one day forum.

Attendees of Little BIGSOUND 2012 collecting welcome packs

Attendees of Little BIGSOUND 2012 collecting welcome packs

Last Saturday the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley played host to the 2nd annual Little BIGSOUND forum, which has managed to compound even further on the success of last year’s inaugural event.

Run by Youth Music Industries (YMI) in collaboration with QMusic and the main BIGSOUND conference, Little BIGSOUND is a one-day forum focusing on the music industry and targeted at 14-25 year olds who are interested in careers related to music.

Little BIGSOUND prides itself on being run by young people for young people and the Director of this year’s event was eighteen-year-old, grade 12 student Gonzalo Rodino.

Rodino and the team from YMI with some mentoring from QMusic managed the enormous feat of planning, coordinating and recruiting the talent for the day to deliver on Little BIGSOUND’s aim of giving aspiring young muso’s an insider insight into how the music industry works, and how to get their foot in the door.

The program was broken up into panels of experts speaking about their various areas of expertise and anything and everything to do with the business of music was discussed including music management, songwriting, marketing, copyright laws and how to get noticed as an emerging artist.

Speakers who appeared on the various panels included Triple J Announcer Maggie Collins, APRA representative Chris O’Neill, Sam Cromack of Brisbane band Ball Park Music and Scott Fitzsimon editor of themusic.com.au along with plenty of others.

Speaking to Rodino before the event, he hoped that the two main things people would take away from the day were the knowledge that you don’t have to want to play music to have a job in the music industry, as there are so many opportunities out there.

“The other thing is business cards!” he said.

“There will be over thirty music industry professionals packed into a building for one day, so there are definitely a lot of opportunities to network.”

One of the day’s speakers, Dominic Miller of music management company Bluebeard Music has been involved in the Brisbane Music Scene for the entirety of his adult life in various capacities.

Miller said the event was a great opportunity for newcomers to get tips and tricks of the trade from people who had a wealth of experience in what can be a fickle industry.

He said that the music industry has changed a lot in the last 10 years and its important to keep learning to stay competitive.

“Now you have to know about being a booking agent, publicist, tour manager, you’ve got to learn production skills and how to mix, everything.”

“If you can’t do something you have to teach yourself because there aren’t all these big labels out there throwing money into music anymore to cover all of that,” Miller said.

Gonzalo Rodino said getting speakers like Dominic Miller and the other big names to come to the event was pretty easy.

“Everyone from the industry realises how important this event, therefore they are super keen to help out,” he said.

To end the day some of Brisbane’s successful young musicians, Hey Geronimo, Gung Ho and Alexander Gow from Oh Mercy performed live for the crowd, who undoubtedly left with invaluable insights into how they can get ahead with their passion for music.

Little BIGSOUND is set to be a permanent part of the BIGSOUND schedule in the future.

“Even if I don’t get invited back to speak next year I’ll definitely still go along,” Miller said.

COMMENTS