Arranging and making some money?
May. 5th, 2017 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artsyhonkerI'm feeling skint again (quelle change) and I was thinking aloud about this over at the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
crowdfunding community. I got some good advice, and have some ideas to be getting on with.
Specifically, though, I'm wondering how people would feel about something like this? It's a bit likeysabetwordsmith's Poetry Fishbowl events, which seem to work quite well.
I arrange a work -- say, "She's like the swallow", for descant and treble (that's soprano and alto) recorders, since I'm actually working on that at the moment.
When I finish it, I'll post and say so, and you can buy the sheet music from my Lulu shop, but not for another full calendar year (or other arbitrary date). But if crowdfunding for it reaches, say, £100 (or some other amount, I'm going to base it on the length of the pieces though) by the end of the week, I will not only unlock the physical sales, but also put the sheet music online next month for anyone to use. If you donate, your name will go in the .pdf, and for £15 (or some other amount, again this will depend a bit on the length, especially as anything more than two sides of A4 needs me to send it away for printing) you will get a printed copy, signed by me (whether or not the total goal is reached).
The plan would be to wait until I have 5 or 6 different arrangements -- maybe a couple for recorders, some vocal ones, some brass ones -- and then have a sort of sale, so I can batch the admin. There will be robotic instruments playing a selection from each piece. Any that don't reach their total amount can be held back to go into a later sale; I can also say "if the total for this sale reaches £500 (or some other amount), there will be a bonus arrangement" and then people can vote on which one that should be.
I'm not sure of the right timescale. Monthly has some advantages, but I'm not sure I actually have time and spoons to produce enough arrangements and do all the associated admin on a monthly basis while I'm also composing and doing a PhD. Quarterly might be better to start out with. I also need to work out whether to host it here at Dreamwidth or at my Wordpress blog, which I tend to keep for more polished updates. I'm leaning toward there, because for people who aren't from the livejournalliverse, WP looks more "professional"; but here would let me do things like polls in a way that I'm not sure how to on WP. I'll have to think about this further, and explore the technical options.
The idea is that this would be a supplement to, not a replacement for, my composing income.
Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Would you prefer it with prompts, so you can request more arrangements of Canadian folk songs for recorder duo, or of Swedish music for Sancta Lucia arranged for upper voices, or of Easter hymns for brass quintet? Is this the sort of thing you would contribute to? Is it the sort of thing you would signal boost?
crowdfunding community. I got some good advice, and have some ideas to be getting on with.Specifically, though, I'm wondering how people would feel about something like this? It's a bit like
ysabetwordsmith's Poetry Fishbowl events, which seem to work quite well.I arrange a work -- say, "She's like the swallow", for descant and treble (that's soprano and alto) recorders, since I'm actually working on that at the moment.
When I finish it, I'll post and say so, and you can buy the sheet music from my Lulu shop, but not for another full calendar year (or other arbitrary date). But if crowdfunding for it reaches, say, £100 (or some other amount, I'm going to base it on the length of the pieces though) by the end of the week, I will not only unlock the physical sales, but also put the sheet music online next month for anyone to use. If you donate, your name will go in the .pdf, and for £15 (or some other amount, again this will depend a bit on the length, especially as anything more than two sides of A4 needs me to send it away for printing) you will get a printed copy, signed by me (whether or not the total goal is reached).
The plan would be to wait until I have 5 or 6 different arrangements -- maybe a couple for recorders, some vocal ones, some brass ones -- and then have a sort of sale, so I can batch the admin. There will be robotic instruments playing a selection from each piece. Any that don't reach their total amount can be held back to go into a later sale; I can also say "if the total for this sale reaches £500 (or some other amount), there will be a bonus arrangement" and then people can vote on which one that should be.
I'm not sure of the right timescale. Monthly has some advantages, but I'm not sure I actually have time and spoons to produce enough arrangements and do all the associated admin on a monthly basis while I'm also composing and doing a PhD. Quarterly might be better to start out with. I also need to work out whether to host it here at Dreamwidth or at my Wordpress blog, which I tend to keep for more polished updates. I'm leaning toward there, because for people who aren't from the livejournalliverse, WP looks more "professional"; but here would let me do things like polls in a way that I'm not sure how to on WP. I'll have to think about this further, and explore the technical options.
The idea is that this would be a supplement to, not a replacement for, my composing income.
Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Would you prefer it with prompts, so you can request more arrangements of Canadian folk songs for recorder duo, or of Swedish music for Sancta Lucia arranged for upper voices, or of Easter hymns for brass quintet? Is this the sort of thing you would contribute to? Is it the sort of thing you would signal boost?