Awesome Valentine's Week

It definitely was an awesome Valentine's week. I did thirteen jobs from Wednesday, February 8th through Wednesday, February 15th, and most of them were Valentine's parties. There were some years I didn't do that many Christmas parties. I guess love is in the air. My hat is off to all of the Activities Directors in the various communities where I performed. Their decorations and food were outstanding. They all created a very special day for their residents. It was such a pleasure to walk into these very romantic settings. Several facilities had a "tunnel of love" which consisted of couples photos of many of their residents. This really added a nice touch.

Even though they were celebrating Valentine's Day, a party atmosphere still prevailed. They tolerated a few love songs, but most were anxious for the usual fare of party music I provide. We soon had them dancing around, tapping their feet and clapping their hands. I always stress involvement and my goal is to engage everyone there. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

I finally got a day in the office to play catch up. It's amazing how much work piles up when you're a one man operation. That's all for now.

In The Zone is on the Air!

In the Zone is finally up and running. The playlist has a long way to go before it meets all the specs of live365.com and it won't be listed in the directory until it does. But it is on the air. I will put a link on the website. It really is an incredible feeling to be up and running on a major internet station. It reminds me of the good old days of MP3.com. During the peak of that time I was being heard in an average of 40 countries per week. The web truly is world wide.

I am in the process of uploading many more songs and artists. They have very strict guidlines as to how a playlist is to be set up. While at first this is very frustrating, it's much better in the long run as it insures that any station you listen to will have variety and not just a single artist. Once I have a large enough playlist in place, I can put more of my own selections in.

This station has huge potential. The trick is finding just the right nitch. After the initial hump, I'm now really enjoying the process. Stay tuned for more.

Frustration

The view for this post is from behind a slightly different keyboard, the computer. As an independent musician/artist, the job of promotion falls to myself. This is pretty much a one man operation. So over the weekend, I spent many frustrating hours trying to put up an internet radio station. In the long run this will be an awesome way to get piano music in front of a large listening audience. One such station has 20,000 listeners daily and was just picked up by iTunes and is poised to be picked up by either XM or Sirius.

I know I can be successful in this area, there's just a huge learning curve involved. The first thing that happened was a dumb mistake on my part. To post music to the internet radio site, it has to be in the MP3 format, not a WAV file like CD's are. Problem is there are about 20 different ways to convert to an MP3 file. The way I've always used was not compatible with Live365.com. To complicate the problem, I didn't discover this until I had upload 20 songs and 5 announcement spots. And it takes about 15 minutes per song to upload. So I had to dump what I had already done and start over.

Once I got everything uploaded, I found out that there were playlist rules about how many times an individual artist could be played. I'm now in the process of navigating around this. It's actually on the air, but not listed in the directory. It won't be listed until I satisfy all the requirements. That's alright. I know in the long run it will be a great station.

Well, back to the keyboard. Computer, that is.

New Grand Piano

The View from behind the Keyboard just got a whole lot better at church. We just received an absolutely beautiful Yamaha C 3 Conservatory Grand Piano. It is awesome, even better than it was in the store. It has such a rich tone and in the space of the church it sounds magnificent. It is a memorial gift from a choir member in memory of his mother who passed away in March of last year. I'm still in a state of shock and awe. I went over and played it for more than an hour yesterday afternoon. It's hard to describe the feeling all alone in the sanctuary surrounded by stained glass. Truly a special moment.

I can hardly wait to play it for tomorrow's services. Most people don't know about it yet so I'm real anxious to hear the reactions. It sounds so much better than what we had before. And what we had before wasn't bad at all. We had a Yamaha studio upright that sounded real nice. We will now use that piano in the fellowship hall and choir room.

We will be planning a special concert to dedicate the piano and I will be playing music from my CD as well as music from my next CD which is still on the drawing board. I thought it would be great to record a CD of really nice hymn arrangements on the new piano. I guess I know what I'll be doing in the next few weeks. That's all for now! Thanks for stopping by.