Convincing Mom and Dad to let you go move to LA to be a professional musician probably won’t fly with most parents, but believe it or not it is possible to learn another skill to help you get a step closer towards your ultimate career goals; albeit a step from a different direction. You may even find another skill you enjoy along the way.

While my parents would have supported me had I told them I wanted to be a professional musician and not go to college, they surely wouldn’t be paying my rent while I play open mic nights at the Double Door inbetween shifts at my $7.15 an hour barista job.

Here’s five careers you may enjoy just as much as music that can also help you achieve your ultimate goal of being a professional musician.

5. Writer

This may be the most obvious item on this list because obviously, good song writing elicits better music–but hey you could always just have Diane Warren write your music like Aerosmith did.

4. Teacher

While there may not be a possibility to network directly in your industry like some of the other jobs on this list, as a teacher you get weekends and summers to go play shows and go on tour. It seems to have worked for Art Garfunkel, Gene Simmons, and Sting.

3. Social Media Specialist

No, I don’t mean a twitter PR zombie that you find producing assloads of worthless shit that no one cares about–that’s not a Social Media Specialist. I’m talking about a specialist who not only has a good network of friends and knows how to launch an event, but can also write press releases and get your announcements syndicated through Google news and in all the local publications in the area.

Now that everyone’s on the Twitter bandwagon, you can find literally hundreds of other musicians, and music journalists that are within reach of 140 character message or less.

2. Sound Designer

Maybe a no brainer, but a talented sound designer can not only help get your music recorded in a high quality manner, but they can also be a good resource for networking with other bands and people in the industry. Chances are good if they have the proper access, you can save yourself a few thousand dollars experimenting with studio equipment, or renting studio time to lay down your fat beats.

Trent Reznor started out working as a janitor and assistant sound engineer in his earlier career and he recorded demos during unused studio time leading to him getting signed to his first record deal. Not too bad for a college dropout. His most recent endeavor with Janes Addiction just launched this past week: Nin|ja2009 and has CD quality audio available for free!

1. Web Designer/Developer

While you may disagree with a good portion of my list, I’m almost positive this is one of the jobs you can agree with. With music going digital and major record labels pouring all of their dollars into lawyers pockets instead of towards making quality music, now is an even better time to become your own producer and distributor of content and music.

If you have the tools to build your own site, and design your own graphics, you’ve saved yourself a ton of time and money trying to find someone else to help you with the details. Any decent web developer/designer can make a custom Myspace page, create your own merch store at a place like Big Cartel, implement a blog into your site, and get your music online and distributed to the masses. More importantly, a resourceful designer/developer can also build an entire unified online presence for your band that extends to the print world as well if need be.

Honorable mentions: Morning Radio Jockey, Copyright Lawyer, Graphic Designer, actor, (It’s doing wonders for Joaquin!)

Have another job I missed? Share it in the comments!

We’re proud to announce a new designer has been added to the family, Assault, Fernando Rodriguez. Fernando, formerly of Ecko, is currently in the preliminary stages of launching his own design agency called EyeKandy. He currently resides in New York, but will be moving back to Puerto Rico to dedicate his time to developing his new company EyeKandy.

The shirt he has designed for Assault comes in black and white and is called Fatal Justice. It features the classic underlying political message that Assault has become known for, as well as some of our favorite design motifs–skulls!!!

Fernando had the idea from his experience living under the Puerto Rican government. There’s alot of corruption, like in most governments, but especially in the Latin American governments. His other inspiration for the design comes from the current situation in Darfur. Some common themes in this design as well as in many other Assault designs are about how greed for power leads to killing and mass poverty among the working class.

The design’s major theme being about how there really is no more equal justice for the rich and the poor. Justice has just become a beautiful icon, and is no longer what it used to be. Fernando hand draws all of his designs, and then inks them and scans them into Illustrator. He uses live trace and later brings them into Photoshop to clean them up. The color palette is neutral based to further emphasize the grunge look to go along with his original idea for the concept.

Fernando is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. If you’d like Fernando to do some apparel design work for you, or… if you’d like to contact him because you are a pretty lady who likes artists, you can go to his personal website and email him–especially if you live in Puerto Rico, or NYC.

Relavant Links

• EyeKandy
• Fernando’s Personal Website
• Buy the Fatal Justice T-Shirt in Black
• Buy the Fatal Justice T-Shirt in White