Welcome To the Blog of World Touring Keyboard Player, Educator, and Music Career Mentor Steve Nixon.  
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The Musician's Life

How To Develop and Use a Presskit  

       So you’re finally getting good at your instrument and you have the equipment and the music to follow. Maybe you have gigs and places to play at. What do you do to get to the next step? How do you now use all of the time that you have put into your art and start climbing up the music industry ladder? What is one of the easiest things you can do to start getting better music business connections today? Enter the 21st century press kit....

What is a Press Kit and Why You Should Have One.


You’ve…Read more

Creating the Perfect Practice Space 

What does your practice space look like?  I'm referring to the space, room, or area that you sit down and practice your instrument. Is it messy or is it clean? Does it have art hanging on the walls and various other furnishments that inspire? Is it bland and detrimental for you to succeed in efficient practicing?

For a practice space to work for you, to allow you to be the most efficient musician when it comes to practicing, it has to be clean and void of all distraction such as clutter and garbage. One…Read more

Being On Time In the Music Business 


I’m going to share a sad truth right now. A truth that you will be able to use to your advantage. Most musicians disregard punctuality. I can’t tell you how many musicians I’ve encountered that are repeatedly late to things. Late to rehearsals, late to pick up times, late to meetings, late to gigs, etc. The list goes on and on. If you had a day job you sure as hell wouldn’t come late to that because you’d be afraid of getting fired. Well, I have news for you. It’s a quick way to get fired or never…Read more

Owning the Right Gear 

If you’re like me you’ve spent an absolute absurd amount of time working on your music and getting your playing together. Good instruments are essential to help transfer the sound and depth you've worked so hard to acquire.  It's only fair to your audience. I don’t care how great of a player you are it will diminish your sound and your message playing on below average gear. Why would you ever want to do that? I try to get the absolute best gear I can afford.

For example, keyboards that have poor…Read more

Essential Musical Skills: Sightreading 

Although you can get by in this business without reading music it becomes a crutch, is impractical, and limits your gig options greatly. Most people have to be even more developed in another area of their musicianship to make up for a lack of reading skill. It’s similar to your 5 senses. If one of them is weaker or non existent then you’d have to be even stronger in your other 4 senses to survive.

For those of you who don’t read music please keep this in mind. Learning to read music is very easy.…Read more

Chicago Blues Piano Instructional DVD  

I'm excited to announce that we've completed the final round of filming for my upcoming Chicago Blues Piano Instructional DVD.  Shooting the footage was a blast but I couldn't believe the amount of time and work required!  It was all worth it though.
       We'll be starting the editing and post production phases of the DVD in the upcoming week.  I'm just thrilled with the way it's turning out so far.  Stay tuned for further updates.

Essential Musical Skills: Arranging 

Ability to arrange

Back when I was at Berklee there was a girl there who seemed to get all of the top gigs around. I’ll call her Jane for privacy reasons. I kept on hearing about Jane and seeing her everywhere. When I finally got a chance to see her play I didn’t understand the fuss about her. Jane seemed ok but nothing about her blew me away. Finally, one day I approached one of the artists she played with and asked them point blank why they chose Jane to play keyboards as opposed to the hundreds of…Read more