What's Happening: Week of October 1, 2018

Why do people say "spring has sprung", but they don't say "fall has fallen"?

Autumn is indeed upon us, and that means media producers should be thinking about Christmas. To help out, I have a nice collection of traditional (and not so traditional) Christmas music.

The traditional side includes arrangements of such holiday favorites as:

• Deck The Halls (available in either a brass quintet or string quartet arrangement)
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas (as a brass quintet arrangement)
• Greensleeves (What Child is This), a sort of New Agey arrangement
• O Come O Come Emmanuel
• Joy to the World
• Shchedryk (the music that forms the basis of "Carol of the Bells")
• Jingle Bells

The less traditional includes "Holiday Hustle Bustle" (it's sure to remind boomers of childhood holidays), and a goofy western swing arrangement of Jingle Bells.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE COMPLETE CHRISTMAS COLLECTION

Meanwhile, my featured stock music item this week is 'Ambient Tension Builder'. The title is pretty self-explanatory: percussion and weird, drony noise combine to build to a heart stopping finish.

You can license it here.

By the way, you may notice that I'm streaming audio for the preview of this week's item directly from Pond5, as I alluded to last week. I contacted Support and asked whether doing so would violate my Contributor Agreement or Website Terms. They punted my to someone else at P5, who never responded all week. So, I'm moving ahead with it. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I guess.

And with that, I'm out. Have a great week.

What's Happening: Week of September 24, 2018

I currently have no new music in the pipeline this week, but am considering making changes to my website.

I was poking around on Pond5 and noticed something. It turns out that part of that site's recent makeover included a new wrinkle. I noticed that they now use HTML to embed media in the artist forums, forsaking Flash in the process. This is potentially huge, because browsers now don't particularly like Flash due to security concerns. I myself stopped using Flash to embed files on this site, choosing instead to create and host my own mp3 preview files and then use HTML audio code to embed the previews.

I sent a request to Pond5 asking if it they would have a problem with me using HTML code to embed files in my own site. They provide different ways of integrating content, but most of these involve some combination of PHP/JavaScript/AJAX and I'm not in the mood to do that much coding. However, if I can embed HTML in the pages then it becomes a simple matter to install WordPress and use the built-in audio shortcode. If I can do that, then I'll probably look to migrate my current one-page site to WP and host a lot of audio previews there. That would allow me to use WP categories and tags to create a keyword-rich site environment that would be awesome for SEO. But first, we'll have to see what P5 has to say.

My featured stock music item this week is Dramatic Sorrow. It's a plaintive piece with classical guitar and orchestra. I hope you'll check it out. Maybe next week I'll preview my featured item here with HTML embedding from Pond5. For that matter, if it works out well and I migrate the main site to WordPress, I may just consider migrating this blog there as well.

What's Happening: Week of September 17, 2018

I'm spending more time recently on non-music projects, but I do have some news to share on the stock music front. First . . .

I have a new intro in the Pond5 pipeline. It's another "heroic" intro with big orchestral sounds, cinematic percussion and strings. Here's a sample:



My featured stock music item this week is Blues Rock Intro (30 Second). It's gritty and has a Bo Diddley rhythm cranking out. Consider this one for sports or talk podcasts where you want to impart a gritty, edgy vibe to your audience.

I have a couple of other items that are sort of on the back burner at the moment. They've been sitting since I took my end-or-summer break and I'll probably have a fresh look at them this week. One is an upbeat EDM track that AudioJungle rejected. I'll probably go back and try some fresh tweaks of at that this week. Another is more ambient and a third is more corporate/business oriented. More info when it's available.

And with that, I wish you a happy week!

What's Happening: Week of September 10, 2018

I'm back from seeing my son, daughter and beautiful granddaughter in Utah, and am ready to get back into the swing of things.

New this week is a project I think I mentioned a few weeks back. It's a 60-minute ambient soundscape I created for Danita in the hope of helping out with her tinnitus. It combines white noise with water sounds, bird calls and some sampled synthesized music, plus a few odds and ends thrown in. The working title was "Environs," but I've decided to call it "Sanctuary" instead. It's available now on YouTube.

My featured stock music item this week is Corporate Podcast Intro 9 (15 Second). It's a straightforward, upbeat opener for business friendly podcasts and similar content. I hope you'll check it out.

Finally, a little more rumination. After taking a good long look at the data, I've come to the conclusion that my social media efforts have been, at best, marginally helpful in promoting my work. Therefore, I plan to change my strategy to focus more on promoting collections and my artist pages rather than individual items. I'll continue to plug individual items that sell. I also think I'd like to do more writing (as in essays/non-fiction), so I'll probably start spending less effort on social media to accommodate that. Also, I'm not really sure I want to release any more new music outside of the stock realm. It just doesn't seem worth it, at least not in the near term.

But, I've been known to change my mind . . .