April 2020 Wrap-Up

So here we are again and it seems like the longest April of our lives has finally come to an end. First of all, I hope all of you are safe and healthy.

I had a few lengthy talks with a few friends and colleagues working in the music industry over the last few weeks and while it seems like the composer community isn't affected as badly by Covid just yet, for many musicians the situation is really frightening, often losing both sources of income: gigs and teaching.

In spite of many countries issuing support programmes for the arts, this situation is not sustainable for a longer period of time for many artists and particularly people working in the live industry will also probably be some of the last who can get back to work once the situation relaxes a bit.

In the light of these events, I'm even more grateful for your continuous support for what I'm doing here on this little Patreon page and I'm very happy that we're still growing in Patrons, so thank you again and welcome to all the new people here!

As you might have noticed, I started the walkthrough through the Hero score this week. I will still finish the video series on the mockup of WE HAVE TO SHAKE THEM OFF, but was having some technical issues the last week which prevented me from continuing with them. These are fixed now so expect a new part on this soon.

Other than that, there are a few cool things coming up in May. I will keep posting more score sheets from PASTRY PARTY as well as making their multitrack recordings available. As I mentioned, additionally to the orchestra we recorded a small band for this project which should be interesting to get a look at in the multitrack.

I also will continue the current multi part tutorials. My prediction for the one on Voicings is that it will probably go on for quite some time as at one point I want to make the shift towards instrument specific voicing strategies. I have a few more multi part articles coming up about topics that I might have covered already in my old DAILY FILM SCORING TIPS but always wanted to go deeper into which I now have the right platform for :)

Due to what is currently going on in the world, practically all orchestral recordings have come to a stop so there are no recordings for me on the horizon as well, but as soon as these things start moving again, I'm planning to cover this here if time and rights allow.

However, I was doing a small orchestration for a client last week which was remotely recorded a few days ago in Budapest, so they seem to still be working. Here's a picture from the session:

It is a very two sided stituation. On the one hand they sent out emails a few weeks ago more or less begging to keep hiring them as this is the only way many of the musicians still can earn anything, yet seeing 50+ people without proper safety distance and many not even with face masks playing for hours in the same room is a very unsettling sight at these times.

Current safety regulations in many countries would probably not allow such a thing, yet it seems to still be possible in Hungary.

On the upside it seems that most countries have this under control now and are slowly opening up again, so let's all hope we have the worst part behind us and a brighter future lays ahead of us.

In the meantime, I'm trying my best to provide you with useable content here. As always, if you would like me to cover any specific topic or have questions/remarks don't hesitate and write comments or direct messages. I was having a vivid conversation with a patron under my last part of the Vocings Tutorial which on its own might be just as much worth reading as the article itself. The great thing about this Patreon is that it is a more or less confined space with people from all sorts of backgrounds so we can all just benefit from people sharing opinions or questions.

Stay safe and healthy!

Robin