Isn’t it wonderful when you can mix your career with a hobby that you love? It allows you to feel fulfilled and satisfied providing you with a richer life experience. If you have a career in music and you’ve got a love for travel, the good news is that there are ways to blend the two. It can be done in a pretty seamless fashion, ensuring that the line between your hobbies and passion and your work isn’t stark.

Here are some great ways you can mix travel with a music career.

Plan To Go On Tour

One of the most obvious ways to combine the two loves in your life is to go on tour. Being a musician going on tour gives you a way to get the word out about a new album or new music, connect with a live audience, and build your skills and stage presence. Touring can be quite grueling of course, but there are plenty of pros.

When planning the tour, rather than look at the cities you “should” visit, why not pick ones that are of interest to you as a traveler? Maybe there are cities you’ve never visited, cities whose music scene is rich and vibrant, or ones that you’ve been to before and you want to spend more time in.

Be sure to also give yourself ample time between venue dates so that you can play the role of tourist and spend some time exploring. This can be what you do in your downtime to relax.

Some of the US cities you may want to add to your tour line-up include:

• Nashville, TN
• Seattle, WA
• New York City, NY
• Los Angeles, CA
• New Orleans, LA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Chicago, IL
• Miami, FL

Each of the cities listed has its own musical identity, so some may be better suited to you and your music style than others.

Use Travel To Inspire New Music

If you write your music, there’s a good chance you are continuously looking for inspiration and experiences to draw upon. Being at home in the same place all the time can have the opposite effect on a person, and sometimes it helps to get out and explore the world. Think of your traveling as research for your craft, making it possible for you to potentially write some of the best music of your career.

Inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes, so what may be inspiring to one person isn’t for the next. Ask yourself if you respond better to quiet solitude, nature, being surrounded by beauty, or maybe it’s the hustle, bustle, and non-stop action of city life that inspires you.

Find A Recording Studio To Use In Each Stop

While playing music in front of a live audience will certainly keep you in peak form, it’s also a good idea to spend a little time in a professional studio space at each stop. This allows you to record new music, perfect your sound, work on a new mix, edit, and so forth. You want to be able to keep pushing your boundaries as far as your skills and experience go.

PIRATE offers a professional music studio experience that you can rent. It has studio space in Los Angeles, New York City, and soon to come to Texas and Chicago, as well as studios in London and Germany. The studios are available 24/7 and feature professional-quality equipment to ensure you get fabulous results.

This is a great opportunity to let the inspiration that you’re finding in each stop flow through you and transform into music.

Take Music Lessons And Classes While Traveling

Did you know that taking music lessons and classes in each of the destinations you visit can provide you with a richer sound? Even if you take lessons outside your genre, chances are you will learn tips or skills that can translate and help you to be better. You never want to think you know everything out there, especially when there are so many genres to explore.

The classes you want to enroll in may even inspire where you travel. For example, maybe you want to travel to London to get the true rock and roll history of the 1960s, perhaps a trip to Italy so you can immerse yourself into vocal classical music, or even a trip to Asia to explore its ties to folk and pop music.

Wherever you end up, be sure to pick a class that is authentic to that region, so you get the best experience possible.

The Job Always Comes First

Even though it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of your travels, it’s important to remember you’ve got a job to do. Putting your career on the back burner means you take a very serious risk of losing relevance and your audience. This is why you want to make sure the job comes first, even if you’re traveling around the world.

How do you put your job first? You can set aside time for practicing and jamming daily, perform whenever possible, learn new skills and continually push yourself to the next level of success. Many find it helpful to use a schedule so that they can plan their time wisely. This doesn’t mean you can’t have time for adventures and tourist activities, it just means work comes first.

Collaborate With Local Musicians

The final tip is to collaborate with local musicians whenever possible. Whether you get together for a jam session or you perform together on stage, this is a great way to learn about the local music scene and enhance your sound. Jamming with locals can also help to broaden your audience base, getting your music out there on a bigger scale.

You’ve probably heard that business and pleasure don’t mix, but that’s not always the case. In terms of how you can mix a love of travel with your career in music, many tips can make it quite seamless and benefit you as an artist in the end. So, there’s no need to give up one love for the other. And don’t miss any opportunities to learn and practice new languages while visiting new places as that will help you a lot to learn about the music of that particular place.