Thailand: Live Music Scene or Jazz Scene???

zap98

Member
Looking to move out to Thailand; looking for work as music teacher or performer.

I play jazz guitar and all-round drummer. So also looking for any leads in advance; classifieds, chats, listings, etc.

Any good

The cheapest budget rental accomodation? I'm talking a fan, and a basic bathroom, I don't mind about flaky paint on walls and bad color schemes.

Any music instrument stores in Thailand?

Anyone out there now? or have been there can say anything about the scene in Thailand?

Cheers.
 
I live in Bangkok.

On the education side, the only opportunity you will have to make a livable wage is if you can get a job as a music teacher at one of the international schools or perhaps top private schools where English is the primary language of instruction. In either case, you would likely need credentials like a degree in some sort of education, probably music education.

If you are here for a long period of time, you may be able to build up a network of clients for guitar lessons through the internet and social networking, however, for drums, forget it. Most people live in flats/apartments/condos... not ideal places to house drum sets. In addition, it's unlikely you will make any real money doing this unless you are able to stay for at least a year.

On the performance side, there are no opportunities I am aware for foreigners to earn substantial income. The few "resident" foreign groups I have seen are definitely in it for the fun and not the money and play exclusively in expat bars/restaurants. The live music venues (bars, clubs, etc) frequented by Thai people with "house" bands are very highly connected / networked and if you're not Thai you probably won't ever be on stage.

In terms of accommodations, once you are here, it will be fairly simple to find a basic apartment for say 5,000 baht a month ($170 USD) with the amenities you mentioned. However, since these low-end apartments are typically only marketed to Thai people, you probably won't be able to find listings online, so you will need to plan to spend a week in a hotel while wondering around during the day looking for a place.

As for music stores, there are plenty of them here. The downside is that distribution is very fragmented. Unlike the US and probably much of Western Europe where it is easy to find multiple brands of drums / cymbals / etc in one store, here you have to go to separate stores. So if you want to check out Pearl stuff, you go to one store, Yamaha to another, and so on. This is a result of an anachronistic setup where the country's importer/distributor is also the retailer. Monopoly power is the order of the day here. Also, they are reasonably expensive, both because of the monopoly issue and because everything is imported, save for a lot of hand percussion (LP, Toca, etc) which is manufactured here.

Ultimately, unless you are familiar with Thailand through multiple visits, whether for work or holiday over the last few years, I strongly recommend not coming unless you have a significant amount of money saved up in the bank that you can draw on both for living expenses and in case of an emergency. In addition, you need to have a solid exit strategy to return to your home country in case things don't go the way you hope... or the political situation gets out of hand.

Thailand is great for a short holiday, but it is not a place you can come and simply set up shop in a short period.

A much better venue for your questions would be www.thaivisa.com -- a wealth of knowledge there.
 
Excellent post by Andy. I live and play music (part time only) in Bangkok too. There are increasingly limited playing opportunities here for foreigners for all kinds of reasons. The guitarist in my band earns a reasonable part time living teaching private lessons after being here for over a year. To teach full time would mean getting an international school or university music program job which would require the right qualifications.
 
Hmmm, when I was working in Hong Kong in the early 90's, Bangkok and Singapore were the two other big places people were getting hotel work, but maybe that's changed. More recently, some of my Seattle friends have also been doing things in Shanghai as well. You might be better off finding an agent with connections in the region rather than just going there and trying to scare up work.
 
I live in Bangkok.

On the education side, the only opportunity you will have to make a livable wage is if you can get a job as a music teacher at one of the international schools or perhaps top private schools where English is the primary language of instruction. In either case, you would likely need credentials like a degree in some sort of education, probably music education.

If you are here for a long period of time, you may be able to build up a network of clients for guitar lessons through the internet and social networking, however, for drums, forget it. Most people live in flats/apartments/condos... not ideal places to house drum sets. In addition, it's unlikely you will make any real money doing this unless you are able to stay for at least a year.

On the performance side, there are no opportunities I am aware for foreigners to earn substantial income. The few "resident" foreign groups I have seen are definitely in it for the fun and not the money and play exclusively in expat bars/restaurants. The live music venues (bars, clubs, etc) frequented by Thai people with "house" bands are very highly connected / networked and if you're not Thai you probably won't ever be on stage.

In terms of accommodations, once you are here, it will be fairly simple to find a basic apartment for say 5,000 baht a month ($170 USD) with the amenities you mentioned. However, since these low-end apartments are typically only marketed to Thai people, you probably won't be able to find listings online, so you will need to plan to spend a week in a hotel while wondering around during the day looking for a place.

As for music stores, there are plenty of them here. The downside is that distribution is very fragmented. Unlike the US and probably much of Western Europe where it is easy to find multiple brands of drums / cymbals / etc in one store, here you have to go to separate stores. So if you want to check out Pearl stuff, you go to one store, Yamaha to another, and so on. This is a result of an anachronistic setup where the country's importer/distributor is also the retailer. Monopoly power is the order of the day here. Also, they are reasonably expensive, both because of the monopoly issue and because everything is imported, save for a lot of hand percussion (LP, Toca, etc) which is manufactured here.

Ultimately, unless you are familiar with Thailand through multiple visits, whether for work or holiday over the last few years, I strongly recommend not coming unless you have a significant amount of money saved up in the bank that you can draw on both for living expenses and in case of an emergency. In addition, you need to have a solid exit strategy to return to your home country in case things don't go the way you hope... or the political situation gets out of hand.

Thailand is great for a short holiday, but it is not a place you can come and simply set up shop in a short period.

A much better venue for your questions would be www.thaivisa.com -- a wealth of knowledge there.

Thanks for this post, it was very informative.

Cheers
 
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