#second from last is when I was on post limit live-blogging the new Frank podcast on Halloween

[prettygirlgerard]

I only have like 5 drafts

[robertemeryofficial]

Preparing for a concert: A conductors point of view

Preparing for a concert is a bit like preparing for a job interview; with the exception that you face a panel of 80 or so players, staring and waiting to decide in the first five minutes of a rehearsal if you're the worst candidate in history or not. That first three-hundred seconds can make or break you, regardless if you have a baton in your hand or just a good old CV - and as anyone who has been successful in an interview knows, it's all in the preparation. So how does this conductor prepare for those three-hundred seconds?

First Steps

My first step is getting a job in the first place! There is a technique to this, and it's mostly called luck. After that, add in a peppering of contacts, mix in the ability to blackmail a concert promoter with the secret photos of them and the local sheep, and finally garnish with a bit more luck, and Bob's Your Uncle. Now I have the job, I need the music.

Well over half of the concerts I conduct I orchestrate. This means it's my responsibility to fill the orchestral blank pages with squashed flies and hope they sound harmonious. Orchestration is a complicated affair and one that I'll explore in another post. That leaves the other half of my concerts where the music is already written. It's the promoter or orchestras responsibility to post out the substantial, A3 sized scores to me; and when the postman rings the doorbell, I have a mixture of excitement and mild panic at the mountain I'm about to climb.

The Score

The conductor's score is a culmination of all the individual instrumental parts. It has every element that'll be performed on the page, so that means a lot of information crammed into a relatively small space; similar to a miniaturised version of the Bible without the whole parting of the seas thing.

Once I have my scores, I'll try to find existing recordings of the work. It's a lot easier studying the scores knowing how the piece actually sounds. If I am allowed to keep my scores, then I'll use brightly coloured pens to make notes. In a pressured environment such as a concert, the last thing I need is to look down at a faint pencil mark and wonder what on earth I've written. If however, I need to return the scores after the concert, then I have no choice but to use a pencil. But what do I doodle on my page?

Here is a perfect example. When I have a new orchestra with only a three-hour rehearsal and straight into a performance, one of my primary responsibilities is to give confidence to players by being clear with their entry. A player may sit for twenty bars or more without a single note, and instead of dreaming about their next holiday, they have to count the empty bars so they can enter successfully when they need to play next. If you have ever tried to do this, it's surprisingly easy for your mind to wonder, and before you know it, you have no idea how many bars are left before you need to play. This is where I can help, look at them and indicate that they need to play. As there are literally thousands of entries in a piece of music, I can't be there for everyone, so I need to choose the entries that will make a real difference if it's missing. This red marking is telling me 'make sure this player is going to play the part, and if needed, help them out'.

This is a score from a concert I'm about to conduct in Poland with Stewart Copeland. It's a European tour called 'Light Up The Orchestra' showcasing some of Stewart's film music. From looking at the scores, I could immediately see one of the main challenges will be rhythm. As Stewart is probably the world's most famous drummer, and their main occupation is hitting things as hard as possible to complicated rhythms, it's no wonder that his orchestral works need Einstein to figure out the rhythm.

Predicting Problems

To a non-musician, rhythm is a difficult concept to understand; 'how do you read those dots in real time and play your instrument, not only figuring out what note to play but in what rhythm?' But reading music is just the same as reading this article. Your brain learns patterns incredbly quickly, it summarises the word and makes an educated guess at what it says. If a word is spelt wrong, you can still read it successfully, and sometimes you'll not even notice. Did you realise I spelt the word 'incredibly' wrong in the penultimate sentence? Your brain uses the same technique with rhythm on a sheet of music. There are probably only 30-50 everyday rhythms, so once they are learnt, they seem natural. Unfortunately, Mr Copeland clearly thought this was boring, so he decided to use rhythmic structures that are challenging. And although they look complicated on the page, once you've figured them out, they 'feel' very natural and one just has to remember to 'feel' the rhythm when playing rather than analysing it. And the reason for telling you all this? I can safely predict which rhythms will be tricky for the orchestra, so I need to learn them in advance; or I'll be another puzzled musician with a metaphorical question mark above my head; which is no use to anyone.

Discovering The Unusual

After figuring out which entries I need to be aware of, and any challenging features of the music, I need to check for out-of-the-ordinary techniques. The beautiful thing about music is that the rules are flexible, and creativity is king. So if a composer instructs a player to pluck the strings inside a piano, or the percussionist to use a typewriter for a sound effect, I need to know this in advance. The strangest thing in Stewart Copeland's music is to play the guitar like 'Hank Marvin', the percussionist needs a 'Trash Can' to hit, and the pianist needs to play a cluster of notes with his elbow - so I think I'm safe!

After discovering all of those things, I just need to practice conducting any tricky parts and read the scores as much as possible to immerse myself in the music. If I do this well enough, I can stand in front of the orchestra and hopefully pass the test!

Checklist

Leading up to the big day, and for me that is flying to Poland at 5am on Saturday morning, I need to tick off my checklist:

And yes, this list is essential. I once conducted for Raymond Blanc at his world-famous restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxfordshire, and I completely forgot to bring any concert clothes. Thankfully I realised just in time for my assistant to break into my house and drive up the motorway to meet me ten minutes before curtain up. I've also forgotten my baton many a time, have left all my music at home and had to reprint all 1,000 pages at the venue. Most hilariously, I forgot to bring shoes to a memorial concert (where I thought it was only proper to wear footwear!), so I sent my mother out to High-Quality-Footwear Street in Blackpool (sadly she couldn't find that specific street so ended up at Primark) to buy me a pair. I've even forgotten my belt, and as my trousers were on the large side, I thought the idea of accosting an audience member to borrow a bit of black leather was a more appropriate option than the audience watching my bottom wobble around.

Wish Me Luck

So as you can see, being a conductor is much more than turning up and waving a stick. It's turning up, waving a stick and pretending to know what you're doing with limited prep time. At the end of the night, if I'm not booed off stage by the orchestra, I know I've done well. With any luck, the next candidate isn't as well prepared as I am, or I may need to find a sheep photo for them too.

If you want to find out more about Stewart Copeland, his life and work, listen to my podcast interview with the legend here:

Books & Podcast recommendations discussing working in the music business and Stewart Copeland

The Bulletproof Musician - an excellent blog and resource useful for all musicians. Fantastic advise that will help any aspiring or professional muso to learn how performance psychology can help you play your best when it counts.

The Musician's Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness - Veteran performer and educator Gerald Klickstein combines the latest research with his 30 years of professional experience to provide aspiring musicians with a roadmap to artistic excellence.

The Alexander Technique for Musicians - This is a unique guide for all musicians, providing a practical, informative approach to being a successful and comfortable performer.

Strange Things Happen: A life with The Police, polo and pygmies - an autobiography from Stewart covering everything you need to know

Dare to Drum - a story of the rock star composer teaming up with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

Ben Hur live by Stewart Copeland - a CD performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra

Orchestralli (+ bonus) - a 2 disk set of Copeland performing in concert with a select group of classical musicians on tour in Italy

Gizmodrome - a record of Copeland’s latest band, featuring Mark King (Level 42), Adrian Belew (ex King Crimson, David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads) and Vittorio Cosma (PFM and Elio e le Storie Tese).

The Police: Everyone Stares - The Police Inside Out - DVD filmed on Super-8 giving an insider’s view of the band’s rise to fame and eventual split.

Related & Recommended Posts

[cartoonessays]

Pissing People Off as a Political Ideology

I may not show it very much on this blog, but I have a sense of humor.  As a matter of fact, my sense of humor is often very dark.  A couple of examples of dark sense of humor were in the short animated films I created for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in college.  One of those films was about an old tiger in a zoo bitterly retelling the story of her tumultuous life and the other was about an artist’s dive into madness through his dogged attempts to impress a critic with his painting.

I got interested in dark comedy in my early to mid teens.  Around this time, I started watching South Park, I rediscovered Family Guy when it began airing again on Adult Swim, The Boondocks TV series premiered, and I started to get interested in stand-up comedians.  Some of my favorite comedians became, but aren’t limited to, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, and Rodney Dangerfield.

Some of the examples I’ve brought up have found humor in subjects like murder, suicide, dismemberment, rape, bigotry, psychological abuse, addiction, etc.  Who in God’s name would look at subjects like these and find something to laugh about?

Without getting into comedy’s history or Aristotle’s definitions of it, one would have to understand where this kind of sense of humor comes from.

Most often, people that find a lot of humor in really dark subject matter funny have created that ability to laugh about it from some sort of personal pain, tragedy, or disillusionment.  This personal pain or tragedy could be direct or fairly indirect.  In the case of my short films in college, the comedy of the undergrad film manifested from the various horrific things done to tigers that have critically endangered their population and the comedy of the grad film manifested from a painfully arduous semester I had just gotten to the end of capped off by a demoralizing graduate review.  The latter is obviously very directly personal and the former isn’t so direct.  I have no personal relationship to tigers and I’ve never even been to any of the countries they live in.  The personal part is that the tiger’s near extinction forces the part of me that wants to believe that the world is a just place to confront the bitter reality.

This type of comedy is often, if not always transgressive, especially when it is aimed at other people.  South Park is particularly known for this, which has the reputation of taking comedic jabs at everything.  The show became famous, or rather infamous for its philosophy that no cow is too sacred to tip over.  South Park relishes in ruffling feathers and making monocles drop into martinis.  The next few generations of comedians would follow South Park’s example.  Many current-day comedians still do.

There is a dark, well darker side to this dark comedy, especially dark comedy that transgresses against others.

The Comedian from Watchmen is… to put it lightly, a piece of work.  The book opens up with the Comedian’s grisly murder.  You feel kind of bad for him at first, but when you read on and find out who this guy was… ugh.  Some of his “highlights” include raping Silk Spectre, gleefully shooting and incinerating Vietnam protesters, and killing a Vietnamese woman he impregnated after she caught him attempting to abandon her.  The Comedian is driven by greed and a love for violence.  He calls himself the Comedian because he portrays himself as what he considers a mockery of society, which he thinks is inherently barbaric.

I bring up the Comedian because he’s a cartoonishly exaggerated version of a type of transgressive behavior that is unhealthy.  Too often with too many people, whatever personal pain or disillusionment they are dealing with manifest in antisocial or harmful actions towards others.  And too often, these harmful transgressions get passed off as entertainment, usually by people who are hacks, irresponsible, or just don’t know any better.  There are productive ways of dealing with that inner turmoil and there are destructive ways of dealing with it.

Getting back to South Park, the reason it was so good and the reason it has lasted for twenty years is that it always had a very thorough understanding of comedy and a sharp execution of it.  It always had more going on with it beyond all of its vulgarity at the surface.

I know I’ve been talking about this in my past few posts, but it bears repeating.  Once something has been co-opted by the market, it is cynically sold back to us consumers as a watered down project.  South Park has been monumentally successful and influential as a bold and edgy cartoon, so the market responded to it by co-opting its edgy and incendiary veneer without doing the hard part and recreating the quality.

Which brings me to… ugggghh, this.

First of all, Milo Yiannopoulos is not brave, daring, original, or some kind of crusader for true comedy or free speech, regardless of what useful idiots like Bill Maher, Dave Rubin, or any of his right-wing sycophants tell you.  He saw an emerging market he could seize on, learned how to market himself on social media platforms, and all the other big media figures propping him up are simply trying to cash in on his market too.  All he has done is found a new way to market the polemicist theatrics that propelled Ann Coulter to fame fifteen years ago and Rush Limbaugh to fame twenty five years ago.

The conservative politics of these three pundits is based less of beliefs and conviction and more on a puerile glee in mocking liberals.  They relish in scraping the bottom of the barrel in order to get their point across, whether by encouraging racist and misogynistic harassment of Leslie Jones, indirectly calling John Edwards a “faggot”, or suggesting advocates for contraception mandates film themselves having sex and posting the films online for men to watch.  A political ideology based simply on pissing other people off is superficial and stupid.  There is no moral basis for such an ideology; it’s completely reactionary.  Figures like Milo, Limbaugh, and Coulter dress their bankrupt ideology and some kind of brash but righteous “tell it like it is” conservatism and convince their audiences to adopt this ideology so they could cultivate a zealous fan base that will purchase whatever crap they hock at them.

Milo revealed on a podcast that he was sexually abused by a grown man when he was a teenager.  He has also been upfront about his own self-loathing of his homosexuality.  He has said that his sense of humor and extreme persona is a cathartic way of dealing with his issues.  That makes sense to me.  However, I don’t shed any tears for the guy because he reminds me of the Comedian, except without the killing.  Having a dark sense of humor is one thing, but when you use it for what Milo has used it for, it goes beyond you finding a cathartic release.  Milo profited and elevated himself off of pretentiously framing his racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic transgressions as grade-A comedy/some kind of free speech martyrdom, not considering for a goddamn second any of the people he stepped on to elevate himself.  He doesn’t even care about any of his fans or sycophants either.  If at any point he decided it would be in his best financial interest to stop pandering to bigoted crowds, he would do it at the drop of a hat and mock all the people he used to appeal to.

He doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself.  He’s a nihilist.

I’m more concerned about the people Milo appeals to, especially because so many of his fans are teenage boys and young adult men.  Whatever frame of mind or sense of disillusionment that makes Milo or people like him appealing to someone is very real.  Our country’s economic prospects haven’t been very good for most of the populace for almost ten years.  Our collective understanding of mental health is still insufficient as ever and the availability of resources for everyone is even worse.  The rigid gender roles enforced on all boys to live up to plant a seed of anxiety in them that grows as they get older, especially in their interactions with the opposite sex.  All of that in itself is a desolate enough existence to breed nihilism.  People like Milo seize on those feeling of powerlessness and isolation and perverts it even further by twisting those feelings into anger and apathy towards others not like them.  They learn whatever is going wrong with their lives is because feminism, “social justice warriors”, or political correctness keeps impinging on their lives.  By the time they get to this point, the psychological ramifications of rape matter less to them than their #triggered jokes.  Anybody with a different experience or point of view from them is just a “snowflake” or a “cuck”.  Aspiring for an egalitarian society is less important than “shitposting” for the “keks”.

And unlike Milo, the large majority of these nihilist men polemicists like him breed won’t become rich and influential.  But they will still find themselves angry and disillusioned.  What do they do then?  Some of them might be convinced to support politicians that won’t do anything for them because they can at least stick it to those “SJWs”.  Some of them might find themselves enticed by Nazism, white nationalism, or fascism.

A few of them might want to do more for the cause than “shitpost” online.

Further info:

Thomas Frank “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

Frank does not specifically talk about Milo and his crowd, but the parallels between them and who he does talk about are unmistakable.

[podcastcoach]

Marketing Your Podcast - How Long Does it Take?

Understand Before Being Understood

About a month ago I left a comment on the Spreaker Live show, and this comment resulted in a response from the host that in a conversation he had with me was "Disproportional." So after we both hissed at each I set up a time when we could talk about this and see how we pushed each other's buttons. We did and it was a great interview. The bad news is my SD Card ran out of room, and my backup (mp3 skype recorder) didn't get it either. I could call Alex back on, but at this point, so much water is under the bridge, I thought I would just paraphrase what really happened.

In my comment, there were times when I used ALL CAPS to make a point.

Alex is used to dealing with comments from YouTube which are much crueler, and personal that the average podcast comment

This was the first time he had been challenged on the podcast side of this content (vs the YouTube side) and it caught him off guard.

He apologized for calling me a schmuck, and I explained that when he made a joke about me not having any listeners (because I don't use Spreaker), and that I wasn't up front with people about the fact that I work for Libsyn, and we chatted about that. I explained how I wasn't trying to push his buttons, and then we did something that most people miss out on.

We had some cool conversation about topics we have in common. For example, Chris Cornell had just died. Neither one of use quite gets while World Trade Center Tower Number 7 went down.

In the end, I look forward to meeting Alex at Podcast Movement. If I had not taken a second to step back, and wonder if there was something I DID to create such a reaction (instead of just condemning the other person) then I would've lost out on an opportunity to learn something (be careful using caps in comments), and Alex wouldn't have been able to see his reaction. Lastly, I think we both gained a new friend. So instead of being so set on proving somebody wrong, instead maybe ask, "Why did you say that?" or "What were you feeling when you said that?" and try to understand before being understood (Which is a lesson I learned from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)

Seriously, How Do I Grow My Audience?

Devlin Wilder posted in a Facebook Group, "Please, for the love of all that's good and pure, someone please help me WITH REAL INFO on how I get the numbers. I don't want to hear I need to have my show out for years or I need to get to 200 episodes or what not. And I've had no luck with Fiverr. I need to know the real deal"

This is like saying, "I want to know about making a baby, but I don't want to hear about ovaries, sperm, or having to wait 9 months."

THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS 

In her book Beyond Powerful Radio Radio Consultant Vallerie Geller states, "in my experience, with few exceptions it takes about three years to build a talk station." She points out that the original Star Trek Series was canceled after three seasons and it was re-runs where the audience found the show. Jerry Seinfeld has framed a memo stating that his show has a poor supporting cast, and most people who saw the test pilot would not watch it again.

Gary Vaynrchuck says nobody watched his show for the first 19 months

Rand Fishkin tells about his wife, Geraldine, and her travel blog, Everywhereist. For two years she never broke 100 visitors a day (she does a blog). Five years later she gets 1000,000 visitors a month. Source

Success comes from feedback, and the ability to look at yourself and ask "Can I Improve This?"

Growing up I had a basketball hoop in my backyard. Every time I shot a basket and it bounced off the rim and back at me.... that was feedback.  I watched Kareem Abdul Jabar and his sky hooks shot. It was unblockable. I practiced my skyhook over and over and over. Eventually, I could shoot it with my eyes shut. That took time.

If you want to quit your job in six weeks, I would recommend that you not even start podcasting. This is like someone wanting to lose 40 pounds in six weeks. You soon learn that six weeks is not that long, and 40 pound is not that small.

The Answer is There is No Answer

There are so many factors that play into this

Are you working full time? What market are you in and how crowded is it? How unique are you? Your Web Design

It's Not Who You Know, It's Who Knows You

Podcast Movement is coming up in August, and DC Podfest is coming up in November. I will be at Podcast Movement, and I plan on being in DC Podfest. Do these cost lots of money? Just the travel alone can be expensive based on your budget. That is the key, what is your budget? If you don't have the budget, don't be stupid, don't go. I'm saving money as we speak for Social Media marketing world. I have to plan. I have to put money in my budget. If you have a family with a spouse and kids, don't be stupid.

Is It Worth Going to An Event?

I have a podcast group for people in Northeast Ohio. I rarely get more than five people in attendance. One of those people (Matt from theauthorinsideyou.com) helped get me on a local TV show.

I met Gary Leland, Paul Colligan, and Rob Walch at one of the fire New Media Expos. Rob was the person I called when I found myself out of a job and looking to work in the podcasting industry (I now work for Libsyn).

I met Ken Blanchard at an event and I haven't stopped laughing yet.

I met Jared Easley and Dan Franks at the New Media Show. Later they would start Podcast Movement and I've been blessed to say I've spoken at every single one in one capacity or another.

I met Eri kK Johnson and came up with the idea of adding him to the Podcast Review show at an event.

I met Mike Russel of Music Radio Creative at the New Media Show

I met Glenn The Geek At Podcast Movement. Glen got me involved with Chris Krimitsos and I was able to speak at Podfest.us That lead to me helping with the Messengers Podcast about their documentary. That lead to me being the closing keynote at podfest.us this year. One person, one contact.

Last year I met a whole bunch of people at DC Podfest including Matthew from Podtopod.com.

Most of those I paid for (events post-2016 I typically can expense out).

When I was a musician, I once drove four hours after getting off work at 8 PM to drive to Cincinnati and hangout with a bunch of indie musicians for three hours before turning around and driving home (I was probably 20). One of the relationships I start at that meeting was a guy who went to another event and learned about podcasting.

Whooshkaa Free Media Hosting

For those who are new to me reviewing media hosting, I have some criteria.

1. Don't mess with my file. What I upload is what I want people to download. 2. Give me the ability to have an unlimited back catalog (unlimited storage) 3. Don't limit my audience size (unlimited bandwidth) 4. Don't control my feed, and make it easy to leave if I choose to do so. I need to be able to put in an iTunes redirect script. 5. Give me support. 6. Charge me for your service so you can stay in business 7. Give me stats so I can see what's working. It would be nice if they were accurate

Whooshkaa is doing something that has been tried by audiometric.io and before them podango.com. This is where you give free hosting so you can see advertising on the podcast. Do Whooshkaa meet my criteria? No, but there is an asterisk.

They mess with your file (as they put code into the mp3 file to alert when to play an advertisement), so they keep most of your ID3 tags, but they ditch you image (so if someone downloads your show to their computer and plays it, the dreaded gray music note of death appears on a windows machine). They also change your file name. They don't change your file format, but by nature, they HAVE to change your file to stay in business.

Their support was quick and very helpful. Their stats are very similar to what everyone else provides (number of downloads, geographic, operating system, the technology used, etc). They do offer how long someone has listened. Unless they have cracked a new code, this is typically a wasted stat. The only way they can get that information is if you are using their player. To this, I point out that over 80% of podcasts are listened to on a mobile device (so this stat is kind of a "Corinthian leather" feature, sounds good, but in the end not that accurate).

They have a built in "Clammr" feature, called highlights. Clammr.com is the first service that allows you to make snippets of a show and share it on social media. With Clammr you can share a snippet of the show and when they click on the snippet they are taken to a place where they can listen to the rest of the episode. You can see how many people listened to your "Highlight." For me, I thought the design could be adjusted to make it go from easy to SUPER EASY to hear the rest of the podcast.

They do have a weird "Sign up for our newsletter" when you send people to an episode on Whooshkaa. The problem is that for the Whooshkaa email list (not yours).

Getting Paid

As the code in the mp3 file has the word "Triton" I'm guessing that they are using Triton for their advertisements. This means that podcasters can probably expect 1 to 2 cents per download. So if I had my Weekly Web Tools on their platform I might make $12 for the month (at 1200 downloads a month). That is if you are lucky enough to have advertising.

When I enquired about their CPA, they responded, "We don't have any information on the CPA for ads.  We generally only work with our larger podcasters/media companies for ad injection." When I wanted to know how many downloads you need to get a sponsor, a support person lets me know, "Generally more than 10k per month before we approach a podcaster for ads. Some of our current partners monetising include News Corp, Fox Sports, Sky News, Bauer and a few large Australian Sporting organizations.

When I pointed out to them that others had tried this model, they responded, "We support the podcast ecosystem with free hosting, while making ad revenue from the top 5%.  At the end of the day, the cost of hosting a podcast with small downloads is negligible.  We hope that some of the smaller podcasters turn out to be the next Ira Glass or Alex Blumberg :)

It's super easy to pick a spot where you want your advertising to be placed. By default, they want to add three advertisers (I chose one). I believe you will be contacted when you reach certain milestones for advertising as there is nothing in the dashboard (that I can find, and nothing in their help section) about getting paid (i.e paypal, direct deposit).

Conclusion

Call me weird, but building your podcast on a host that doesn't charge is risky business (again, podango, audiometric.io) but if you're in a boat and have zero budget (they do redirect feeds if you want to leave) then I would recommend Whooshkaa over another free service Pinecast if you're looking for a free service with all the trimmings. If you asked me which one will be in business in five years between Pinecast and Whooshkaa, I would put my money on Pinecast as their free service motivates you to upgrade to their paid service. With Whooshkaa they are hoping that people with 10,000 downloads per episode take their advertising, and don't leave for another host. I notice in their terms of service it states, "If you are a Commercial User/Channel Partner, this may be altered by any specific agreements we hold with you."

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