Meet Simon Needle | Music Educator, Multi-instrumentalist & Vocal Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Simon Needle and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Simon, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I knew from a young age that I wanted to do music as a career, but what I didn’t know was that, because of this decision, I would never have a 9-5 from that day on. There just wasn’t as much thinking and evaluation as my folks probably would’ve hoped for me, but I saw that people made money in music (it can be done!) and I certainly saw the value in creating music.

My business started after I gave my first music lesson in high school, just don’t confirm that with the IRS! And it kept going until it was paying for my dinners and by the time I moved out to Kennesaw, it was paying my rent.

The thought was simple: if you refuse to do anything but music to make a living, you’re going to work that out or you’re going to have to give it all up. And I wasn’t going to and haven’t given up yet!

I was extremely privileged with the safety net I had with my family and the training I’d received with private lessons and excellent practical instruction at Kennesaw State, but starting a capital “B” Business was when it all became really real.

Registering my business (and yes, tracking my income) was a huge paradigm shift for me. Amid worries that it would “detract from the music” or “corporatize my services,” what it really did was help me see the value in my work. It helped me understand that having your services as a “product” does not belittle the heart of the service, but expands its availability and sustainability to the creative people I collaborate with.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
There are so many bad music teachers in this world and its really not their fault. With declines in and devaluation of music education and breakdowns in artistic tolerance and even human tolerance on a global scale, how can a lover of music find their own..

Music lessons are built on a student and a teachers attraction to music.

For many teachers, music had to become commodified- and fast! They left school and either they’re engulfed by a teaching system, which, under the guise of affordable healthcare and stability, squeezes them to their absolute limits or they’re a performer who leaves school and upon auditioning for the symphony realizes their paycheck is going to keep them in poverty for the foreseeable future.

We aren’t taught to have a brand. We aren’t taught that we are the brand and that our knowledge is the product. It feels sterile and disingenuous to the purist, the lover and the artiste to be using Google Adsense or researching point of sale systems, but that’s where they’re shooting themselves in the foot.

The teacher, the producer, the performer that harness technology and business is the person who has time for their client. They’re the person in the room doing it! The person who sees a win-win deal as the best possible outcome is the person who gets the call back time and time again. They’re artists and they will be prolific and productive.

I want an absolutely comprehensive business funnel so that when I am face to face in a room (or Zoom to Zoom!), the only thing we have to work out is our goal and intention for this lesson. I want the time I spend with others to be 100% about the music. That’s what my goal is and, as I’ve come to realize, how it always has been.

There is empathy and respect in the service I provide to a client, in that, once you have me, I’m yours. We can go any number of directions in a music lesson, we can tackle your vocals any which way you want and you will have not a single concern after that downbeat when I play your event.

The work I do is serious, but it is also inspiring and fulfilling. Music makes you sharper, more tolerant and it brings us meaning and order when we might feel lost at sea. If your teacher is well-fed and present in their time with you, you two will tap into that universal understanding of music and at least until the end of the lesson, the music will give you whatever you ask of it.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
As a current Ansley-ite (Ansleyian.. did we ever settle on this?), I would say that Midtown Atlanta absolutely sparkles on a Friday evening.

My favorite place to start the night may be the Nook on Piedmont, which has fishbowls and other mega-sized libations that are a great way to kick things into gear with friends. From there you’ve got the wonderful city views from the lawn at Piedmont Park or as the lights go down the Atlanta Botanical Garden is an absolute treat,

The High Museum of Art is a gift to this city and has reasonable tickets and Politan Row at Colony Square is the trendiest new spot to grab a drink, movie or watch live music on the lawn. A totally different kind of art can be found in the various holes in the wall down on Amsterdam Walk, like Red Light Café and Loca Luna.

Honorable mentions go to the incredible vibes (and sandwiches) at Elliot Street Pub and the Atlanta Beltline which has a contagious energy that, while a bit pricey, will show you an excellent night no matter which direction you pick! Music is back in this city, make sure you find it!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d definitely like to dedicate my success thus far to my parents and my extended family. It takes a special kind of father to accept the fact that his kid wants to make noise as a full time job. And, to that end, what mother doesn’t imagine their child playing on some dirty street corner, when her son says he wants to spend 4 and a half years of college learning the Great American Songbook like some scrappy kid singing for dimes in Hoboken in the 1930s.

They must’ve had their wires a bit crossed like me to be so supportive through it all. They are my absolute greatest supporters and often they are my closest business confidants.

My father was the first entrepreneur I knew and he showed me just how fluid business could really be. You carved your practices and policies with your imagination and the only rules are keep good books! Sometimes he was this great example of the places business could take you, with his trips to Cannes or Santiago and other times he showed me how business will constantly try to push your life into the margins. That’s how I learned to fight back!

My mother gave me the heart and the temperament for this. She was an open-minded and energetic source of sonic inspiration, whether it be us tuning into Clark Atlanta’s WCLK on rides to elementary school or getting me to my violin lessons, which I found completely abhorrent at the time. It was all good for my spirit.

“Thanks a million” falls orders of magnitude too short. And thank you to every one who went, “Yea, I guess could see it!” when I told them I was going to do music for a living. You don’t know what it meant.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simon.needle/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/needlepoint-music/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SimonSaid6

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnsleyMusicStudio/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBUc_8TfXutAQ37gyTznK_Q

Other: Schedule a music lesson with me: https://rangr.org/rangrs/z6eAP0ZkeAPJ8kejNPpHLi5263i1

Image Credits
Matthew Fain, Susy Reyes, Hagan Mattingly