Piano Thor'sdays: You aren't leaving your house anyway

People and their gosh darn flannel pajamas

I firmly believe in praising the people who have helped me, and giving credit where credit is due. That's why I'm blaming my friend Shawn. This, of course, relates to the progress of my musical endeavors. And pajamas.

But before we talk about misshaped eyebrows and out-of-place nose hair, I want to summarize the reality of my current situation. Right now I'm at a crossroads, of sorts, and many people may be aware of this already. In the past year or two my music has really had two main facets: the private piano lessons, which have been a decent success for me (they're now providing about half my income) and the other one being the occasional live performances. When it comes to the "end goal", I've maintained consistently that the live performances are my focus. It's been my dream to tour, perform, play my music live for a big audience, etc., because what person wouldn't want that? For the moment, the piano lessons are much better financially, but as it stands my dreams still haven't changed.


I'm sometimes mildly concerned that this two-tier system is too multi-faceted, and that I need to pick just one, instead of offering two services. The very few opinions that have been given to me have been somewhat mixed; a business guy once told me that it's good to be multi-faceted, but not too multi-faceted. On the other hand, when it comes to providing private lessons and live performances, many people have responded with "why not?" when it comes to the idea of doing both.

A live show I did at La Rocca last year

Aside from the fact that I actually sort of enjoy teaching piano lessons (most of the time) the reason I do it is to make money and invest it in better music equipment, and in the live performances. The other way I make money for this purpose is by droning on about independent clauses to a classroom full of confused foreigners, who mistakenly say "My wife is a bitch," when they meant to say "My wife is at the beach." The income I get from teaching English as a second language is not without the entertainment of mispronounced vowels and catastrophic misunderstandings.

So I figured, what's the difference if I make my money just teaching music lessons instead? I may also be able to use my piano instruction as a springboard into the live performances (see my recital hall idea on my previous blog post, August In Bloom Album (And Other Updates) ). And in addition to the recital hall idea, another way I may be able to use it as a springboard towards getting more live performances is by Internet marketing, an idea concocted by Shawn himself. If people are able to learn the piano without leaving their homes, they can just stay in their fuzzy flannel pajamas, and not have to get all gussied up to drive to a lesson. It is fall, after all. Did you think I was not going to somehow relate this to flannel nightwear? I don't just spout out words willy-nilly, you know. This is also why my unusually long eyelashes will come in handy.


Smile! It's time for Piano Thor'sdays

It's not enough that I have the Thor'sday Blogs, a Discussion "Thorum" on my website, and "Throwback Thor'sdays" on my Facebook page for people who want to see my face during the dorky pre-bearded era, but my friend insisted that I also call this Internet marketing endeavor "Piano Thor'sdays." The next thing you know is I'll be opening up my own piano store and calling it "Thor's Hammers."

In any case, the idea is that each week (I'm sure you can guess which day of the week it is) I will record a few-ish minutes of live Facebook streaming, in which I play "teasers" on the piano, either to introduce a new song or to showcase part of a song for an upcoming album or show. The live streaming feature on Facebook is apparently becoming popular with businesses because it reaches a lot of people. Plus, people are drawn to videos in general; they gravitate towards them like a moth fluttering straight into a porch light.

This, of course, is also where the springboard comes in. Not a real springboard, a metaphorical one. Stay with me here. Eventually (somewhat soon, I would think) I would do a short mini-lesson on the piano, during one of these Thor'sday streaming vids. If people liked it, they could sign up for the at-home piano course that I'm going to offer. This means that people can pre-pay for a series of videos, and once they pay they will have access to, say, 20 videos, each containing a piano lesson (I would be in the vid, giving the lesson). They would have to watch them in order, and as per my recommendation they would watch one video each week. That way they could sit at their piano at home, in their flannel pajamas, and have their lesson right there while they drink their morning coffee. Again, this is why my long eyelashes will come in handy, as will my trimmed nose hairs and eyebrows that I mentioned earlier. And if people don't like my long eyelashes then they don't have to buy the videos.

These at-home video lessons could be put on my website for purchase, and as I said the reputation that I might be able to build could help me launch into the live performances more easily, especially if I'm able to announce and promote the upcoming shows, using the existing fan base to reach more people in the process.

The first video for this Facebook live stream series will be tonight (or, it was, depending on if you're reading this after the fact) and this is because Shawn is making me do it. Apparently I'm not allowed to procrastinate, hence me placing the blame entirely on him for even giving me this idea in the first place.

Remember, flannel is underrated. So stay tuned and you might be able to take piano lessons without leaving your home... because I know that's exactly what you've been wanting to do :D

   

August In Bloom Album (and Other Updates)

The making of a new piano album

The vast majority of people know that chicken noodle soup doesn't just contain chicken. I mean, obviously you would expect to find other ingredients, right? Maybe celery, carrots, some other veggies, and certainly you'd expect to find some noodles. And let's not forget the broth. What does this have to do with the title of the heading, you ask? Well, a lot. If you ate nothing but chicken the rest of your life, you would get bored of it. People like variety, and they can get bored of being exposed to the same thing day after day. In the same way, the Heart of Storms album seems to be well-liked, even though it is a "home recording," and there are no reservations for my wishes to re-record it using either the Yamaha N2 or an acoustic piano (with a mic, of course) but I didn't want this to be my next big release. People like something different -- variety. That's where the new piano album came into mind, and it didn't take me long to convince myself that this would be a good move. Hence, the chicken noodle soup analogy -- I wanted to give people something different to listen to, in addition to Heart of Storms.

The equipment I intend to use for the new piano album remains to be decided, although I've already started working on the album. Three of the songs ("Dozing on Avalon's Shore," "Drifting of the Dandelion Seeds" and "Stars at Crescent Lake") have been rehearsed profusely (I don't know if that particular adverb is a good way to describe it, but my dental hygienist uses it to describe how my gums bleed if I don't t floss enough, so I'm using it to mean that it was "a lot"). Recording of two of the songs ("Dozing on Avalon's Shore" and "Drifting of the Dandelion Seeds") are scheduled to be recorded this weekend, and even though it's not going to be on the album, "Velvet Touch" will also be recorded because I'm going to use these three recorded pieces as a new demo CD to hand out at potential gigs.

Possible album cover for August in Bloom

But, I digress. Enough about the chicken soup. I'm working on a new album, August in Bloom, and I hope to set a date soon for its completion but I want to get a better idea of the rate of progress, seeing as there will be 10 tracks, and a few of them are really difficult to play.

Also, it's summer-themed, a contrast I decided to create because Heart of Storms featured many of the songs I wrote that were inspired by my experiences in Iceland. You know, contrast -- I want carrots with my chicken soup.



The Yamaha School of Music has snuck up on me like a thirsty raccoon 

This actually happened to me, by the way -- not the new music school, but the raccoon. The scary part of this is that I had just parked my car, at about eleven o'clock at night, and I happened to be wearing sandals, with no socks. I looked behind me and an enormous raccoon was tip-toeing behind me, within attacking distance. When he saw me he freaked out and started drinking water from the street drain. The new music school has done the same as far as sneaking up behind me, but in a good way. The long-term goal that Vince Chambers (the piano gallery owner) and I have envisioned is that a new music school, very much like a small conservatory, will open up in Chico, and it will be at a separate location from Apollo Piano, the actual piano dealer and gallery. Vince wants to start off having a single piano lesson studio at the gallery, though, to start getting students in, so that this location will be temporary. That way we can generate some cash flow from the students and use it towards acquiring a separate location. These ideas have stemmed from Vince's dream of opening up a music school in Chico, and it's more than enough to get me insanely excited about it. The sneaking-up part of it is that students might be able to start signing up as early as next week. A massive collection of sheet music and songbooks have been ordered for me to use to start teaching new students.

Temporary lesson studio at Apollo Piano

New additions to the office space

As said before, the Yamaha AvantGrande N2 hybrid piano will be used for recording. For live performances, I've been using a Roland F140R digital piano. I don't want to talk about how many other pianos I have in my office. It's embarrassing.

An old Knabe upright piano, to be tuned and fixed up in the near future.

Upcoming Recital Hall

Speaking of something that has absolutely nothing to do with recital halls, the live events I attend (such as a performance by the Chico State opera workshop last month) may be a good way for me to network and get more exposure with my music. The opera performance, for example, which was extraordinary, is something I may look into because I arranged about ten of my songs, years ago, to fit lyrics for female vocals. Even just one of these arrangements could be of good use at, say, a recital hall, for instance. I've been pushing the idea of a recital hall for a few reasons, one of them being that if we have one at the new school, I could use it to put on a sit-down concert of my own and get exposure. The plan would be to then use that as a spring-board to start touring, and the touring/performing part of my career is really the "end goal" for me, and it always has been. I've made this clear to Vince and others, even though I do actually get quite a bit of enjoyment out of teaching the private music lessons.


I want more carrots!

Enough of the monotony of eating chicken noodle soup with nothing but chicken in it. I need variety, like anyone else, and talking about verbs all day is synonymous, analogous, equivalent and the same conceptually as eating the same food over and over. This is also true with writing a string of completely redundant adjectives. I'm fairly sure that I could spend the rest of my teaching career talking about verbs (and fancy adjectives) to students whose first language is not English, but as much as I occasionally enjoy this job, it may not be long before my days as an ESL teacher become numbered. This would be especially true if I get enough students at the new school to actually support myself. By "numbered", though, I mean to say that it could be something like "in a year from now." Don't get too excited. In any case, verbs are like chicken. Talking about them day after day in an ESL class is like eating that soup with 100% chicken. I want carrots too.

I'm actually far more excited, though, about getting going on August in Bloom, so hopefully the development of the project will be the focus of my next blog post. My posts are shorter than some of my earlier ones, but that's because I find myself remarkably busy these days, and usually in a good way. Talking about verbs, getting an old violin repaired, getting an acoustic piano moved into my office, writing web content for the revised website for Apollo Piano, ordering sheet music, and having to make another trip to the store to get my French vanilla creamer, is a lot to juggle. Nevertheless, I do respond to comments, as I believe in reaching out to people who are interested, so make sure you leave a message if you have questions or comments. Happy fall to everyone :)