Do Musicians Play In Fear?
MUSICIANS
Frank Zappa’s Amazing Final Concert
Musician Plays the Top Piano Riffs of Jazz Tunes From 1899 to 1964 in 100 Seconds
Training for a Marathon String Quartet at the Cloisters
Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 (1983) lasts roughly five hours, about as long as the average time taken to run a marathon. The Calder Quartet, who will perform this exceedingly quiet behemoth in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters on Saturday, is modeling its rehearsal schedule on the training program that the quartet’s violist, Jonathan Moerschel, follows to prepare to run marathons.
The musicians have been experimenting with a practice of making micro-adjustments to body position in order to avoid fatigue as they play the same gesture many, many, many times. Andrew Bulbrook, one of the quartet’s violinists, recently told me that the greatest challenge is going to be the fight against gravity: To play the violin quietly the bow arm must resist the pull of gravity. To relax the arm into a bow stroke produces a sound that is much too loud for most of this vast collection of miniatures that whispers to the audience.
⇒The Calder Quarter will perform Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Met Cloisters (99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan) on Saturday, November 12 from 11:30am–4:30pm.
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The Correlation between Music and Increased IQ
Research has been done many times to see if there’s a correlation between learning an instrument and intelligence, and it has been found that those who have learned to play an instrument often are better at multi-tasking and are able to problem solve better than those who don’t know how to play music. Children in some of the recent studies have been tested for higher-level thinking, and those who knew how to play an instrument did better in this area than their counterparts who didn’t.
Studies are now being done to eliminate the potential for outside factors to also have an impact on the results, which can help narrow down whether there is an actual causation. Future studies have plans to watch the participants over a significant period of time to see just how learning how to play impacts their intelligence.
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How To Get Your First (Or Next) Gig In Half The Time Using These 3 Steps
Step 1 – Find Venues
Before you get a gig you obviously need to find the places in town that have live music. Please don’t email every bar you know asking if you can play there. That’s like asking every woman you meet whether she wants to go out with you.
Step 2 – Find Email Addresses
Once you’ve made a list of all the venues you can play at it’s time to find a way to contact them. Find their website and see if they have a specific booking or live music page. If you’re lucky you’ll find an email address. If you’re less lucky you’ll find a contact form. If you’re really unlucky or the venue is terrible at online marketing you’ll only find a Facebook page.
Step 3 – Save Time With Your Emails
Once you have all the emails and/or contact methods it’s time to reach out.
The emails should not be long but they do need to include some important information.
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Musicians: Why You Should be Using Content Marketing
Why Content Marketing Works So Well
Think about it like this – would you be more likely to purchase an album from an artist you follow if you just saw one or two announcements about it’s release? Or if you had been following a weekly vlog series documenting the creation process that went into creating the album for a month?
You see? It’s presented like entertainment – who wouldn’t be interested to see what goes on in the studio? But after spending all that time watching that series, the fan is invested in your project – both from a time perspective as well as emotionally.
Start Before You’re Ready
The key to effective content marketing is to start before you’re ready. Don’t wait until you have something to promote (like a new album, tour, gig, or song) to start building an audience. Start NOW. Begin creating a fanbase around what you’re already doing everyday. Remember, the process can be just as valuable to you from a promotion standpoint as the finished product. Then, by the time you’re ready to release, you have a captivated audience just waiting to see what you have in store for them next.
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