Rising Stars: Meet luxury wedding guitarist, Moses Lin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Moses Lin.

Hi Moses, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My music career started in 2016 when I started posting YouTube videos of my instrumental guitar covers. Almost a year later, I received a call from Disneyland’s talent booking department. They had found my YouTube channel and wanted me to perform at Downtown Disney.

For a while after that, I performed at Disney and slowly picked up other residencies performing at places like Pelican Hill Resort. In 2017, I was asked to do my first wedding, and I absolutely fell in love with the wedding industry. I left my residencies and pivoted completely into weddings and private events.

Since then, I’ve established myself as one of the most highly sought-after wedding musicians in California, performing for Hollywood celebrities, Grammy-winning artists, Fortune 50 CEOs, Reality TV stars, politicians, and more.

This year, I’ll be performing at weddings all over the country, releasing my fourth album, Acoustic Vibes, on Spotify, and I’m currently working with a Netflix reality TV series for a featured performance.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My life has never been a smooth road, but it’s been an exciting and wild ride and I’ve loved every second of it. I joined the Marines after high school, dropped out of college, and started my business while on food stamps. I never had a backup plan, so I had no choice but to succeed.

In the beginning, it was really hard to get performance opportunities, but I would make lists of every restaurant, hotel, or venue within 50 miles that had live music and I would call and email dozens of them every day. I also had to learn so many different skills as a solo entrepreneur like HTML and CSS coding to build my WordPress website, search engine optimization and marketing, and multi-camera video editing and color grading for all my videos.

I think one of my biggest struggles was just believing in myself and my music. I knew I was talented, but there was just no market for instrumental fingerstyle guitar. People wanted singer-songwriters or bands for restaurants and hotels, and they wanted string quartets and harpists for weddings.

I was repeatedly turned down because no one wanted my style of music, but over time, I took an unmarketable skill, created a market for it, and then used it to dominate the live music industry for weddings and events. I love taking risks, setting impossible goals, and grinding my way to success against all odds.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am an instrumental fingerstyle guitarist, so I take popular songs and create instrumental versions of them where I’m playing the song’s melody, chords, bassline, and percussion at the same time. There are no backing tracks, looping, or pre-recorded music, it’s all being performed live simultaneously. What sets me apart is that every song I perform is an original instrumental version that takes me about 40 hours to create.

For a typical performance, my song list is the result of over 1,500 hours of work. I can confidently say that the complexity and skill level of my music is absolutely unmatched in the SoCal wedding industry. In addition to that, I create engaging and memorable live performances by using a wireless system so I can walk around and serenade wedding guests up close.

During the wedding ceremony, my music creates such an intimate vibe that sometimes I even see guests crying before the wedding starts. At cocktail hour, I’m hyping up the guests, cracking jokes, chatting them up, forming mini dance parties, and getting everyone to sing along, all while effortlessly performing the most complicated arrangements they’ve ever heard.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The wedding industry is constantly changing due to the demographic and culture of the generation that’s getting married.

Currently, with late millennials and Gen-Z, I’m seeing a shift towards hyper-individualistic values when it comes to wedding planning. Your friends will attend 7 weddings this year, how will yours stand out? Will your wedding get posted on their Instagram stories? Is a moment from your wedding going to go viral on Tik-Tok?

Your wedding day is an expression of your personality and values, so couples are looking for very unique vendors to create personalized wedding experiences. Because of this, the demand for live music and entertainment is skyrocketing.

I believe that in the next decade, we’ll see a huge increase in the diversity of wedding vendor categories, specifically specialty vendors like cocktail hour sushi bars, live ceremony painting, and of course, exceptional live musicians.

I’ve always been passionate about mentoring musicians. So I’m so excited to welcome all the new musicians that will be joining the wedding industry and raising the standard of live music in SoCal together.

Local Pricing:

• Wedding Ceremony – $4,500
• Wedding Ceremony and Cocktail Hour – $6,000

Contact Info:

• Email: moses@moseslinmusic.com
• Website: www.moseslinmusic.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/moseslinmusic
• Facebook: facebook.com/moseslinmusic
• Youtube: youtube.com/moseslinmusic
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1wAGk8FHz0kPHHuUfSc3MS

Image Credits
Playful Soul Photography, Stephanie Weber Photography, Steph Media Co., Unique Lapin, and Christine Bradshaw Photography