Reader Question – Making Music Performance Connections

I do offer to let readers use my brain, and while for deeper and/or ongoing research or support I do charge, I’ll also give a bit of free advice when the question and my response are useful for a blog post. Here is a question I received last week, and my reply. I have redacted all identifying information about the querent to protect his privacy:

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Friday Faves 02-15-13

Firstly, some sad news for sewing and knitting folks in the Boston area: the venerable Windsor Button shop is closing its last remaining store, on Temple Pl. in downtown Boston, due to lease non-renewal. Read about it here, and stop by to pick up sale items as they liquidate their inventory.

Secondly, some more sad news that can be helped: the “fiercely independent” bookstore Longfellow Books in Portland ME suffered massive water damage during last week’s storm due to frozen pipes in the building over their store. You can help them out by buying ebooks from their website, gift certificates (which give them cash now and you/your giftees books later), and/or donating directly. See this letter from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance for more information.

Thirdly, you may recall that I recently recommended a Kickstarter project by ThinkMusicTechnology for an iPad app with musical note handwriting recognition for creating scores. They’ve now canceled the KS project as it wasn’t going to reach their (very ambitious) goal despite much interest. But they are looking for other funding resources and still plan to develop the app – so if you are interested, sign up for their mailing list at their website.

Friday Faves 01-11-13

This week’s faves include free online courses, some Kickstarter projects, and a kitten in need:

You can take online courses from some major colleges and universities for free at Coursera. I just found that they are offering four courses this spring from Berklee College of Music:

– Starting March 1st: Songwriting and Intro to Music Production

– Starting April 22: Intro to Guitar and Intro to Improvisation

Maybe I’ll ‘see’ you in the Improv course :-)

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Posting Your Music Samples

I’ve shown you how to share files with individuals via YouSendIt. I’ve also talked about using Dropbox and Carbonite to share files among your own devices. But suppose you want to share (legal original) music or sound files to a group of people, e.g., your band, or with the general public?

If you have your own website you can stream MP3s from there – but that could quickly use up your monthly data transfer allotment if the tracks are popular or large. If you are selling the tracks you could set up a Bandcamp account and post them there.

But if these are files like band practice recordings, rough drafts, non-music audio samples, etc. you may prefer to use SoundCloud.

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