We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kate Hummel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kate, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I would say yes, I am definitely happier to be a business owner versus working for someone else. Once every blue moon I’ll face a challenge and fleetingly think “if only I could just let a boss handle this…” but then I remember that a) I am capable of tackling any challenge if I allow myself a moment to think, and to break it into steps to ensure completion, and b) if I had a boss, I’d be giving up so many of the wonderful aspects of being a business owner.

I don’t think a particular singular story comes to mind, but I do have a few different examples of challenges my business has faced and gotten through.

So, luckily this doesn’t happen very often, but we have had 2-3 instances of a musician being too ill to perform (due to food poisoning, flu, covid, etc.) on the day of the wedding, which is quite remarkable, considering that Melodious Strings has been in business for almost 10 years.

As time is of the essence, a sick musician on the day of can be a very stressful challenge to solve. For one of these events, I was not able to source a substitute musician since it was such short notice, and so I took a deep breath, got on the phone and informed the client and the wedding planner, and offered them a string trio versus a string quartet.

Fortunately for us, they were very understanding and the couple was okay with moving forward with the string trio instead of the quartet. Since my husband and I had to leave for the wedding performance very shortly, I ended up re-printing our sheet music (but for string trio versus quartet) and assembling our sheet music binders at the venue, in the back of our car, in a very expedited fashion. Another wedding performance that had a sick musician involved me calling a referral of a referral of a referral until I finally found a qualified violist who could throw on some concert black and show at the venue in time.

The conclusion I came from these is yes, these were very stressful situations. However, I think the key here is first taking a breath and allowing yourself to not to have a solution immediately. Let yourself just accept the situation first. And only after that, be flexible-minded and put any potential ideas out there, no matter how silly they may seem, until one works. Solutions can often only be had if you put everything on the table and take a look at all of the options.

Knowing that problem-solving is a skill unto itself that can constantly be improved, as well as a particular mindset, gives me the courage to face these sorts of challenges. And while they are still challenging, they don’t scare me quite as much as they used to, since I know I have a process of solving them. I even have a sign in my private music teaching room at my studio that I point out to my students periodically; it says “Everything is Figureoutable”.

Kate, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started Melodious Strings right as I was graduating college at James Madison University. Since my husband and I are violinists, we wanted opportunities to perform for events after our academic career was completed. And to be able to perform with our colleagues who are also our friends, was another fantastic bonus to boot.

These days, it’s very commonplace for wedding string quartets to perform mainly pop, rock, and other contemporary covers. However, when we first started, that was relatively quite rare still. Wedding quartets typically provided and were used to providing mainly traditional and classical repertoire. Since I was (and still am) a huge fan of the Vitamin String Quartet (they are known for their fantastic contemporary string quartet covers) I thought we would try a different angle with our ensemble and advertise ourselves as a contemporary string quartet willing to perform pop, rock, and soundtrack songs for special events.

Another thing that sets us apart is our willingness to learn new songs, no matter how unexpected the song choice. As long as it can work on a string quartet, we’re willing to arrange it and learn it. Since my music degree is in Music Theory and Composition, I took my arranging skills to the test and have been arranging songs for clients since 2017. I often have to arrange by ear from a recording if no piano scores are available to work from. Not every ensemble has this offering, so this gave us a good angle to reach more clientele.

I am proud of Melodious Strings, for so many aspects, honestly. Many of the musicians that I connected in ensembles from networking are now best friends with each other. Melodious Strings has a network of over 20 musicians that we regularly work with. We have over 800 songs in our repertoire, and many of those are custom music arrangements I created for clients.

Melodious Strings also provides an income for many talented and deserving string musicians, and I am so happy to be able to provide work for them. I am happy with the clientele that we have attracted, and we have a wonderful network with venues and event planners that regularly recommend us to future clients.

Our brand? It’s difficult to see that from the inside, but if I had to describe it, I would describe Melodious Strings as a group of musicians that provide a professional but fun, entertaining, and contemporary musical experience for clients. My musicians and I have all been doing this for a long time, so while we certainly know how to get into the groove of Bruno Mars or Taylor Swift, we are also unwaveringly professional at the same time.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

In the beginning, I knew right away that we wanted to offer pop, rock, vintage, and soundtrack covers for our clients. However, we didn’t have much in our repertoire yet at all, as we were all fresh out of college or in the process of graduating. I took a very daring risk-for the first 3-4 years, I allowed clients to select however many new songs they desired, free of cost, in order for us to build our repertoire library quickly.

This certainly worked in the end, leading us to have a very sizeable repertoire library. But what a tiring and stressful time it was, haha! I often had to complete anywhere from 5-30 song arrangements per week during the busy wedding season, and there were some nights I did not end up sleeping before the wedding performance, since I had to ensure that all the song requests were completed.

After a few years, I reduced it to three free song arrangements per event, and this past year I reduced it to one free song request, since we now have over 800 songs in our collection.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think cultivating good work relationships, kind and consistent communication, and the desire to resolve disagreements is so important for our line of work. Our world of string musicians is indeed a small one, as is the circle of venues and wedding/event planners and coordinators.

It pays (literally and figuratively) to be kind, consistent, flexible, and understanding. We have very good connections with venues and planners because of these traits, and so they recommend us again and again, which helps us to build our reputation and clientele. Planners and other event vendors tag us on their social media, and future couples and clients see our work on their social media platform, and because we have respected vendors vouching for us, we have creditability and a wider circle.

In short, be kind, flexible, and understanding with everyone-the event and wedding business is challenging for everyone involved, and the more supportive you can be, the better these special events turn out for the client, and the better the experience for the vendors as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: melodiousstrings@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melodiousstringsquartet/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melodiousstringsensembles/

Image Credits

Danielle J Norton Photography
TLIC Photography
Hannah Baldwin Photography
Ruet Photography
Leah Redding Photography