• personal friends
• colleagues in the web industry
• colleagues in the music industry
• colleagues who play trombone specifically
• random connections

My posts and comments on Facebook will sometimes be relevant to all of these groups, and at other times be very specific. Throw into the works the fact that my Facebook profile has relatively low privacy settings – I use it mainly for professional purposes and need people to be able to find it. (I am not arrogant enough to make a Page about myself to handle the professional traffic). This causes a few  problems:

1. Occasionally I may decide to post something that is not confidentially private, but I also don’t necessarily want it broadcast to the entire world.
2. Many of my connections, especially my personal friends, are very conscious of their own privacy. I don’t want that to be compromised by my own Profile’s settings.

Now, the privacy settings that Facebook provide are pretty blunt. But I don’t personally think Facebook has done anything untoward here: we all have to take personal responsibility for what we allow to be shown online. If something we have posted is so private/incendiary that we panic about how Facebook is going to treat it, then we really need to consider whether it should be online in the first place.

Facebook is an extremely useful tool for keeping in touch with family and friends, and connecting with new people. And it is, after all, a FREE service that nobody gets forced to sign up to. We all need to take personal action to keep control of our personal data. If we don’t want to worry about that, then don’t post it online!

Now, getting back to my point.

I know some people in similar situations to me (mixing personal/business stuff) have tried to work around the problem by having two (or more) profiles: one for business and one for just family/friends. But as it turns out, this is against Facebook’s Terms and Conditions and anyone found doing so risks having all of their accounts suspended. Argh.

So a few weeks ago a feature that has been on Facebook for ages finally popped into my consciousness: Friend Lists!

• Account > Edit Friends > Create New List >Choose a Name > select your friends that you want to be in that list

In my case, all of my friends are still in the Everyone setting, but are all in at least 1 other list. This allows me to have posts and comments only appear to a particular group if necessary. You just select who you want the post to appear to in the Share settings, and away you go! (You can also select who you want it NOT to appear to for extra protection).

It takes a bit more thought on my part, but I see it having a number of benefits:

• Personal stuff has an element of protection
• My entire lists doesn’t get bombarded with irrelevant stuff.
• I’m following Facebook’s rules

Check out this page on Facebook for more info on how to use this feature.

Until next time,

Adam

I came across some interesting articles over the past week that are influencing my thoughts about how orchestras can survive and even grow in the future. Whilst my thoughts are specifically focused on the Northern Rivers Symphony Orchestra, the principles can be applied to any orchestra.

Firstly, an article in last week’s Australian mentioned that the Sydney Symphony, despite a critically acclaimed first year under new Chief Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, posted a deficit of just over $1 million. The named culprit is, of course, the Global Financial Crisis pushing down ticket sales.

The article also noted something that didn’t surprise at all; rather it confirmed my opinion of the average classical concert-goer: ticket sales were strong for concerts featuring well-known repertoire (particularly those that make an appearance in a film here or there) but were significantly down for concerts featuring lesser-known repertoire. The symphonies of Anton Bruckner gain specific mention.

The Austrian Wagner devotee himself who wrote symphonies that at least matched Mahler’s for sheer length (certainly not in terms of depth and scope), hit me as a rather apt metaphor for the place that orchestral music occupies in most people’s minds today.

As I continued reading Six Pixels of Separation, Mitch Joel reminded me of a point that I heard years before at university. iTunes had just been made available in Australia and, like its counterparts around the world, was making a big impact. One of my lecturers mentioned, as does Mitch Joel, that today’s music consumer would much rather buy a collection of single tracks instead of a whole album, included in which is perhaps 3 or 4 tracks that they want to listen to. This no doubt drives many recording artists crazy, but that’s how it seems to be going.

The iTunes model fits this phenomenon like a glove – but the modern operational concept of orchestras runs in the complete opposite direction.

Now I certainly don’t think that orchestras should reduce themselves to playing 3-4 minute snippets of the works that everybody likes. Nevertheless, the success of iTunes and the trend it is symptomatic of perhaps reveals an awakening fact that all musicians, not just orchestras, should realise. No matter the quality of what is being played or the profile of who is playing it, today’s music goers do not go into things blindly. They simply will not pay for uncertain outcomes – they won’t buy an album full of tracks they don’t know, they won’t pay to sit through a 2-3 hour concert of works they haven’t heard before written by guys who died over a century ago. Quite simply: money doesn’t grow on trees and life is too short.

So….what do we do about it? Try to educate an entire planet of people to change the way they think, or  give up the game and let orchestras fade away?

Neither can happen. I still firmly believe that the death of the orchestra – and the artistic expression it makes possible – would be a tragedy for all future generations. But it needs to change in order to become relevant, indeed important, to today’s music consumers. And by music consumers I mean everyone. Who today *doesn’t* listen to music?

That’s it for now – I’m still thinking.

Adam

Joel is one of the world’s more prominent commentators on the online interaction already going strong in today’s world, and the focus of this book is on how businesses can utilise this phenomenon to increase their presence and engagement (and therefore, market position) within the growing online community. At least, that’s my nutshell take on it so far.

Having used social networks for my own “life” since Bebo was the newest thing out, but only recently included social media integration in my work at The Meyer Studio, I had already gone into Borders hoping to find a book on this subject. Borders being Borders, I found a wall of books on the topic. I am really grateful that I picked out this book from all the others I saw there.

I will post some more thoughts on the book once I finish. My apologies to Michael Gerber for putting his book down temporarily, but I do promise to pick up where I left off once I finish reading this one!

And for anyone out there who had never thought of using Facebook and Twitter, amongst other things, for business – get a copy of this book!

Check out Mitch Joel’s blog at http://www.twistimage.com/blog/

Anyhow, I can’t remember the context of the lecture but I remember Emerson playing excerpts from the first movement. By the next day, I had listened to the entire work twice in the library and by the end of the week had made my way to a music store (iTunes was still just a thought in Steve Jobs’ head at the time). Some 11 years later, I still listen to it and am moved in no smaller way as during all those years ago.

I am not going to talk much about the work itself – I won’t deny you that journey. I will say that I really LOVE music that draws directly from people’s experiences – not just an abstract concept or music written for it’s own sake. I still dig those types of music too, don’t get me wrong.

And…yeah – that’s all I’ll say. Enjoy and be moved

The production? Buddy – The Musical.

It was great, I never realised how cool Buddy Holly was. However, shortly after rehearsals started the original cast member who was going to play the Big Bopper withdrew due to poor health. So here I am only just learning the ropes of MDing a musical theatre production, and then I find myself taking on something for which I had no previous training: singing and acting!

I was freaked out half the time, lost a solid 15 kilograms from the stress….. but I had a blast. This time in my life did more for me professionally and personally than anything else to date. I look forward to that record being broken though.

The quality of the video is poor, but I watch it with joyful nostalgia every time. My friends laugh their head off and now….. you can too

Adam

This is the first of what could be a multi-part series. Rather than being structured, I’d like to keep this in a as-stuff-comes-to-my-mind format

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As touched on in my previous post, a good proportion of my professional attention is at the moment focused on steering the Northern Rivers Symphony Orchestra through an important period of analysis and re-invention. Established in 1993, NRSO has gone on to become (arguably) one of Australia’s leading community orchestras, with a regular size of about 70 players presenting 3-5 concerts per year as well as a smaller chamber group (the Camerata) doing a similar number of concerts. The popularity of the orchestra has allowed, for a number of years now, the engagement of professional players which, in turn, has increased the standard of the orchestra. But the downside of course is that the financial bottom line has also lifted and, therefore, the ticket price. This is starting to impact on audience turnout.

That, and several other factors, begs the question: where does NRSO go from here? Dial things back and return to the comfortable “community” ranks or push forward and become a full professional orchestra? The former will solve the immediate problem, but end an era. The latter will bring long term benefits to the region, but is fraught with danger if not thought through with long-term survival in mind.

For nearly ten years now, since I first read the writings of Norman Lebrecht on the current and future states of classical music, I have been agonising on where orchestras will be in 10 years, let alone 20 or 30, in Australia. The reports and studies released in that time, most notably the James Strong report in 2005 pretty much all agree on one thing: the present-day orchestra as we know it is unsustainable. If it were not for government funding, every single professional orchestra in the country would be gone. It is only a matter of time before governments will think to themselves: why are we pumping millions of dollars into something that very few (if any) people want to go to?

Whilst the problems are apparent to all, there is very little agreement on how to fix it. Perhaps this is due to the various stakeholders being entrenched in their positions and unwilling to budge. You have the managers and accountants pulling the funds, you have the artistic directors and conductors drawing the line in the sand on what is acceptable, you have the musicians themselves fearful of their livelihood. Each of these views are totally valid: yes, like any business an orchestra should be able to care for itself financially, yes the orchestra is the guardian of a valued artistic tradition that mustn’t go extinct and, yes it is the security of employment that allows the musicians to reach the standards that make the orchestra perhaps the greatest artistic organism ever developed.

Orchestras have tried salary cuts, firing players, bringing rock stars into the concert hall, ramped up the sponsorship and fundraising drives. Some, like Deep Blue (formed by staff at QUT when I was there as a student) have tried to redefine the orchestra as a whole and done the Bond thing writ large – playing rocked up Mahler and Bach, granted with considerable input from contemporary composers. That said, the jury is out in my mind as to whether Deep Blue can really be classified as an orchestra, but that’s a whole other discussion. My feelings on Deep Blue aside, I will grant them that they are perhaps one of the few groups to look at what so many other orchestras seem to be ignoring: the product that orchestras offer.

Another question that I have been considering is this: does dwindling audience support for orchestras mean, by default, a dwindling support for orchestral music? I’m going to put my hat in the ring and answer this with a resounding NO. Otherwise, blockbuster films wold not have orchestral soundtracks, DJs would not be remixing classical pieces, and so forth.

I believe the problems facing orchestras today is not so much about changes in consumer tastes as it is about changes in the manner in which those tastes are satisfied.

That’s about all the time I have at the moment, more to come.

-Adam

On my latest trip, I picked up a copy of The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber and am enjoying it very much. (E-myth is short for Entrepreneur Myth).

I have not yet finished reading it, but am looking forward to implementing its ideas in my personal business pursuits and also in my key project at the moment: steering a community orchestra into the professional realm. In a future article I will share my thoughts on this further.

Until next time,

-Adam

• music production and publishing
• music training and resources (predominantly in the vocational training sector)
• web design
• custom spreadsheets and publishing for small business

After working exclusively in music education for the past 4 years, I must admit I am finding the break quite refreshing. If there is any one downside to teaching young children music, it is that the main KPI (key performance indicator) is the results you get from your students. Obviously. But why is that a bad thing?

As far as young adults and mature learners are concerned this is no real problem – they stand on their own feet. As long as I provide good teaching, they will more or less reciprocate with earnest effort. But with young children, it is another thing altogether. No matter how motivated they are, kids will be kids, and that’s even when they’re not juggling their lessons/practice with other subjects, swimming, problems at home, and whatever.

Now for someone like me who – whilst not being a control freak – does like to at least be in control of his own affairs, the fact that the main indicator of his success/failure as a teacher is so heavily swayed by things beyond his control doesn’t exactly thrill him. So for now, I will focus on activities where the earnestness of my labour and faculties brings due reward. Once I am refreshed, and back to practicing like I did in my university days, I may very well return to the private music studio to start working again with tomorrow’s Joseph Alessi’s and Arnold Jacobs’.

Started by Matt Rowbottom in 2000 and getting a major upgrade in 2007-2008, this site has listings for almost 3000 music teachers across all of Australia’s capital cities and major regional centres. Teachers and Schools alike can register (either for free or upgraded membership) and effectively open their own website, listing their general details, what services they provide, testimonials, etc. Check out the profile that I have created on the site.

Of course, a lot of websites claim to do this too, but this site stands head and shoulders above the others because:

1. It is well-designed!!!
2. Teaching services are sorted into locations and standardised categories, allowing you to quickly track down a teacher in your local area who offers what you are looking for. With that said, it still lets you customise the description of what you do and provide detailed information on such.
3. It is currently the #1 Google result for “music teacher” on google.com.au so it is the most likely place that prospective clients will visit. No point listing your info on a site that people will have to search high and low to get to.

On the Sunday, Mr Alessi was conducting an excerpts masterclass. Whilst working on a student’s performance of the infamous solo from Ravel’s Bolero, Alessi decided to perform it himself. I have never grabbed and turned on my camera in such a short period of time. I decided to post it to YouTube for the pedagogical benefit of trombonists the world over (90,000+ views last time I checked). Simultaneously, it turns out that I also provided the first footage of Alessi’s performance on the prototype of what is now the Edwards T396-A Alessi Model Trombone; confirmed when Edwards themselves distributed a link to my YouTube to their entire mailing list. (Imagine my surprise when I clicked the link only to watch my own video!)

Anyhow – please enjoy