For most of my musical career... I've been lucky enough to have enough performing work through established orchestras and ensembles as a freelancer. Thus, I've not really had to make much of an effort into establishing a digital and online presence. Part of that problem always existed with the rights of recordings and all of that sort of thing that starts to become a minefield with professional musicians.
Anyway, seeing as the coronavirus lockdowns has pretty much taken a sledgehammer to our careers... I find myself with quite a bit of time to tidy up, update and fix up so much of the digital music infrastructure that I had let lapse. Most of the time, I had started accounts and then not really done much with them... as it was additional work to maintain, and it wasn't really the focus of my day to day music life.
So, in preparation for the "new normal" (... and yes, I will KILL anyone who says the words... "we are in this together"!), I'm starting to brush up the digital musical offerings and presence. Also starting to investigate potential alternate forms of income streams and that sort of thing. At the moment, things aren't disasterous, we've been lucky so far in comparison to many other musicians... however, this just buys us time! So, time to prepare, time to pivot... time to plan!
This means that a lot of slight infrastructure tweaks need to be made so that I can appear more presentable to potential future employers!... whether that is in music or something else entirely!
First up on the cleaning block is the old SoundCloud account... this is a bit of a chore, as I have many many old recordings that I never cleaned up and uploaded and also some ongoing isolation recording projects. Anyway, I'm dusting off some old performances and seeing what is acceptable to go up there... and then also making some recordings of new works with some digital tweaks so that I have cover all the lines of the music!
So, first job of the day was to create some playlists of some current and past recordings. I had been using SoundCloud more as an online storage rather than a promotional tool... although, I do wonder about the value of it as a promotional tool anyway (it does seem to have it's share of automated accounts and bots...)... however, that said, it is still a place that I can point to for all my online recordings. It's also the easiest point for me as I don't have to make a video or anything like that... which would test my creative and technical skills to the limit!
So, first up... get some some tagging working properly on individual tracks and then getting some playlists sorted.
A short playlist of Isolation recordings, where I play all the parts together. I'm starting to enjoy this form of recording... it does give me something creative to do that relates to my training... and the editing together of the various parts, I do find it to be a curious intellectual puzzle!
Next up, a playlist of live performances and better quality recordings. The previous playlist is mixed and edited by me, and it is most charitably described as "amateur" from the sound editing point of view! However, I do hope that the professional quality of the playing does manage to shine through the amateur digital lens!
Most of this "Website" playlist are LIVE recordings... I'm not a fan of the cut and paste technique of recordings... where you find that the actual performer isn't actually capable of replicating anything even remotely close to the digital illusion! I've played in some performances with singers (pop ones..) where it was acutely embarrassing how terrible they were! A testament to the recording industry prioritising looks over skill... and selling an image and a story rather than something of substance! Still... that applies to many things in our modern life... sadly!
Anyway, the complete collapse of our concert life has been a bit depressing... in many ways, it is nice to just come and find a bit of peace online and write a bit about what I'm doing. Even if the end goal is a long way off... and it is baby steps to try and drag ourselves out of this interesting situation that we find ourselves in! There are times that I feel like breaking down and crying... but we are healthy, low in expenses and with no debt... and I am surrounded by my loved ones... even if some of them are much further away in Australia. So things COULD definitely be much worse!
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