Christopher Davis

The fifth variation of Giuliani’s Opus 107 is fantastic.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Some more things to work out musically still, but that’s what I was practicing today. Can you tell I need to change my strings?

I’ve been seriously working on Opus 107 for about four weeks. Late in July, during the Fort Worth Guitar Guild’s summer festival, I heard this piece done in a masterclass for Lorenzo Micheli. I knew I needed to play it after hearing what Micheli did with the student. Still took me three weeks to get around to practicing it, however.

Right now the work is in a refinement stage. All the variations on learned, just trying to get all the little musical details nailed down. It’s really a great piece–lots of good stuff to dig into.

Sometimes being a human is hard to do online, but here’s three simple thing to incorporate into your “social media repertoire.”

1. Humans have conversations

Humans don’t hand out business cards constantly, or take every speaking opportunity to tell others about their products or services. Humans interact — they share stories about little things that happened during their day. And they do it because it’s cathartic and interesting. Sometimes the craziest, coolest stuff happens during a day. That’s the kind of stuff I want to read about.

I truly enjoy reading Peter Hodgson’s (@iheartguitar) updates on twitter. It really doesn’t get any better than this. Peter is successful because he never pretends to be anything but himself, and he interjects all that personality into his writing.

This goes two ways, however. Humans also listen to other humans talking about their lives: they engage in a dialog. Earlier today some folks and I were talking about choral music on twitter. A choral composer interjected, but he did it in a not so good way. Instead of adding to the conversation (about understanding music) with some insightful thoughts, he asked us to go check out his music. That’s fine–I did check out his music. But I also didn’t follow that user. I didn’t give him permission to interact with me on a long term basis. Had he shared some insightful comments on the subject, I guarantee I would have been more interested in what he did.

2. Humans tell others about cool stuff

If you’re a human, you’ve probably told your other human friends about a cool restaurant you found. Or maybe you told them about a sweet new CD you bought.

It works in the same way online. Find a cool article? Share it. Chances are you’re connected to people with similar interests, so they’ll be glad to check out something you found cool.

In Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith recomment promoting others 12 times as much as you promote yourself. Here’s a more general rule: one or two out of every 10 or 12 updates should be self promotional. Have conversations and spread the word about all that cool stuff you find.

3. Humans do favors

Humans help each other out just to help others out. It’s easy, and it makes you feel awesome. Helping your friend move might be painful during the work, but nothing feels better than the exhaustion and sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

As a human online, you should make it your mission to provide a service to others. Sometimes that service costs money, and that’s okay. But most times it’s free.

A service can be anything: a few minutes of entertainment, an instructional article, a thoughtful discourse, or a helpful response to a question. Try to be useful in some way and you’re truly being a human being.

I like hanging out with other humans

So this is my personal message for people that don’t quite get using social media for marketing. It’s easy: be yourself and have conversations, share cool stuff, and be useful.

Most musicians do a terrible job on their websites.

Their design is often really good and unique, and all the relevant information is there and easy to find. But that’s not the whole story.

Tell People What to Do

In other words, provide visitors with a call to action. Tell them exactly what you’d like them to do.

Many independent musicians have a CD or three to sell. If you want visitors to listen to your CD and maybe buy a copy, put an image of the CD cover and a sleek flash player so folks can check it out. You probably want people to listen first, so make that the call to action. Perf de Castro does a great job of this.

What you tell your visitors to do depends on your brand, of course.

Don’t Waste the Top

The thing about Perf’s website, linked above, is that the call to action is above the fold. That is, you don’t have to scroll down to know what’s going on.

Think about the same things on your website. The most important things you want your visitors to see should go above the fold. Don’t make people scroll down.

Learn from Business

Take a look around the web at tech companies and subscription websites. They are (usually) great examples of well structured landing pages. You can also read up on landing pages at Copyblogger.

Let me outline the thought process of a typical undergraduate music major. They think it’s just three easy steps to get a job in the art music world.

1. Get a graduate degree (Masters or Doctorate)
2. Get really good at (insert instrument or voice or field)
3. Get a sweet, cushy college teaching gig

I mean if you’re really good at your instrument, you’ll definitely just get hired right? Probably not. If you go to Higher Ed Jobs and search for music, you turn up 240 results. Take into account a students specialty (guitar, music theory, composition, jazz, etc.) and the pool of available positions dwindles considerably.

There are hundreds of music majors at UNT. And all the other big music schools in the country have similar numbers. Add the thousands of music graduates from big schools to all the little schools and that’s a lot of people competing for very few jobs.

Frankly, getting a college gig probably isn’t going to happen. Sorry. No one cares how good you are at (insert instrument or field). No one cares if you went to a great school. There are lots of folks out there who are really good at their instruments, and there are lot of graduates who went to better schools. So what are you going to do instead?

What makes you stand out? How much networking do you do? How many equity does your personal brand have? And, most importantly, why the hell are you waiting to start your career? School is not a waiting period, and building a personal brand is a lot of work. You might as well get going.

I have a few big gigs/events to go to next year, but they’re spread across many months. I’d like to use each gig as a base, and play concerts along the way.

Here’s the routes I have to take:

1. Dallas, TX to Clarksville, TN – this one is around March 18, 2011.
2. Dallas, TX to Macomb, IL – Around April 7th, 2011. I can also go through OK City and Wichita and Kansas City on this one. If there’s places to play there, that is.
3. Dallas, TX to the Los Angeles Area – In Late October 2011. I would like to drive and play a few concerts on the way, but otherwise I’ll have to fly.

Do you know any venues in the areas or along the way? Would you like to host a house concert? Are you a classical guitar teacher and want to have a Masterclass or Concerts just for your students? Please leave a comment below or get in touch via email.

Thank you!

In a business roudtable-style discussion today at the APSU Summer Guitar Workshop a participant asked me what I thought about CD sales. He asked if I thought that was a dead end — an unprofitable business. I’ll tell you my answer in a bit, but first a story.

Richard Smith, the most fun guitarist on the planet.

Richard Smith is the man. He’s a great, fun-loving guy who plays the crap out of his guitar. When I saw him in concert last night, he blew the audience away. And he also sold a ton of CD’s afterward.

When Stephen Aron gave a concert of his own music, he sold it to the audience because he played with a passion that made it appealing to anyone. Steve writes great music, but his played sealed the deal. And he sold more than a few copies of his arrangements and compositions at the merch table after the performance.

I could go through every performer at this festival and talk about how they sold their product after the concert. They did very well, and they all created fans.

Take Home the Experience

When you buy a CD at a concert, it’s taking home part of the experience — it’s grabbing a chunk of the performer to put in your pocket for later. You catch the audience member right after they’ve had a euphoric experience in the concert hall. They are ready to buy something from you because you’ve spent the last hour tell them a story. Marketers do this all the time to sell us products: they make us believe a story. Musician’s do the same thing, but with a different language. A CD bought at a concert is forever associated with that euphoric, intense concert experience. People with cherish those CD’s forever because they cherish the memory of the concert. In short, the audience member told themselves that they loved the performer in concert and, therefore, would love them on a CD.

The CD is no longer a commodity. It’s now part of an experience.

Selling music is not a dead business, musicians just need to find a way to make the same product more of an experience than a commodity. Maybe that has to do with creating passionate fans — finding a way to instill the same, post-concert feeling no matter what the distance. Creating true fans, in other words, by mimicking the post-concert feeling.

PS: what everyone should have done at this event was encourage folks to sign up for their email mailing lists, gaining permission to interact with them on a continual basis. No one did that, however.

This is one of the pieces I played the WIU Guitar Festival. Great footage.

It’s kind of odd being on the other side of the wedding music thing. As I’m a composer (sort of), and my Fiancée is contributing her visual art skillz in making invitations, I thought I should creatively contribute to the wedding plans.

So here’s my first attempt. It’s an easy piece. AND infinitely repeatable (awesome for wedding musicians).

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(very quick recording, lots of flubs, but you get the idea).

See the music here (PDF)

I’m always really touched when students give me drawings or cards. Shout out to Ariana for this sweet frog (she did really well in her lesson today, too!).

Talking Frog

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.