Christopher Davis

When you study music for a long time, you analyze music almost without thinking. You tear things apart and generate formal, melodic, and harmonic maps of pieces almost without thinking. I was teaching a webcam lesson earlier this week on the Merlin Suite Del Recuerdo, and without thinking about it I had analyzed the melody and form.

This is a good thing in the sense that it makes it very easy for me to have something to say about a piece when teaching, even if I’ve never played it before (as was the case with the Merlin: I’d never looked at the sheet music before). On the other hand, this makes it very hard to listen to music while doing anything else. I can’t listen to music when I read; I can’t listen to music when I write blog posts or papers. About the only time I can listen is when I set aside time specifically for that or late at night.

It’s kind of a cool development, like the last six years of music training* has finally started to catch up with me. I can’t even imagine what goes through veteran musicians’ heads when they hear a piece of play through it for the first time. I have to think that the level of analysis that takes places unconsciously is amazing.

*That’s a long time–25% of my life so far has been spent in college/grad school.

1. HTML/CSS You don’t have to be good at it, but you should certainly know something about it and be able to screw around until you fix things. How can you update your website more frequently than never if you can’t write a bit of code? It’s a valuable, easy to learn skill.
2. Basic Audio Editing I own a Zoom Q3 which I use to make most of my youtube videos and recordings you find here. I would not be able to post any recording without some basic audio editing skills. Just download Audacity and start screwing around.
3. Engraving/typesetting Music I use Finale, but any notation program will do. Part of my brand is teaching, and part of teaching is creating useful materials for students. Even if you’re not a teacher, what would happen if you sold PDF’s (full sheet music or lead sheets) of your tunes? That’s a new revenue stream. Whatever program you use, take the time to learn it thoroughly enough to create beautiful scores.
4. Basic Video Editing Youtube is huge. Being able to create content specifically for that medium is important. You might as well be able to do it yourself. I use iMovie. It’s not great, but get’s the job done. There are plenty of open source video editing options.

I’m teaching a music technology class this semester, and it’s extremely frustrating that my students largely don’t care about the skills that I’m teaching: engraving music, basic audio editing, and basic HTML/CSS. Part of being a savvy musician is knowing your way around the computer. Those musicians who don’t are doomed to have an unexciting, stagnant online presence (unless they can hire people to do it for them). In a world where we increasingly rely on the internet, not having a strong online presence is a big problem.

This is something I wrote a while back. Needs a bit more development, I think. You can get the sheet music here.

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Here’s my lecture from the WIU Guitar Festival. It just goes over some basic tips on marketing and branding for musicians. The handout for the lecture is here.

This weekend, I’ll be at the Western Illinois University Guitar Festival.

The festival begins with a performance by Matt Palmer followed by two full days of lectures/workshops and two nights of showcase style concerts.

I’ll be giving a lecture titled “The Savvy Guitarist” (a deliberate play on David Cutler’s Savvy Musician) on Sunday morning. Topics will include branding and marketing. Sunday evening I’ll be performing for ten minutes in a classical guitar showcase concert.

If you’re in the Macomb, Illinois area, stop by this weekend! All events are free.

This is one of a set of Four Pieces I wrote last year. The score will be available again eventually, I just need to do some editing and clean up the formatting.