Let's Have an Orchestra Session!

One thing that I was thinking about a lot recently was that it would be awesome to have (regular) dedicated orchestra sessions for this Patreon page. Let's imagine, we would have a recording session twice or three times a year and what would be possible by doing that:

1. I could write dedicated pieces for this page, taking you all the way from inception to mixing as there wouldn't be any third party rights involved that prevented me from doing something like this. So the whole process would be super transparent. I could do screencasts of the composition process talking about my decisions, we could do live streams from the scoring stage and share all materials (score sheets, sessions etc.) with the community. We could even tackle writing in specific genres, or for specific film clips, or for specific line-ups or we could simply "try out" things. For instance we could dedicate a part of the session in trying out different voicings or instrument combinations that would be discussed about in tutorials (for instance the series on orchestral voicings that I'm currently running).

2. We could include patron's compositions into these sessions. This is where it gets really exciting. Imagine we found a mode to pick let's say three compositions from patrons to record in each session. This would give people the chance to record their music with a live orchestra who normally wouldn't be in the position to do something like this. But the really big benefit would lie in the "community learning" aspect. I would make a it a prerquisite that the pieces to record are not touched by the rights of third parties so that we could document the process of their inception as well. I would be taking the part of mentoring the composers to make sure that the piece is readable and playable by the orchestra as well as giving feedback about the piece itself. So even if your piece is not going to be recorded we could document going through different stages of the pieces that are being recorded and create a community learning experience from that. It would even be possible to use these recordings commercially, so you could release them on Spotify/Bandcamp or license them for other projects.

Patreon does not allow chance based benefits or lotteries so the picking of the composers who get recorded would need to happen either by me picking them or by a community vote. The community vote would probably be more fair but could have the downside of always technically proficient composers winning while I would love to give the chance of recording a real orchestra also to composers who are just at the beginning of their career. But this will need to be decided (probably by community vote) at a later stage.

So the general idea is to use part of the income this Patreon Page generates to crowdfund orchestra sessions. Now the income growth of this page has stalled a bit recently so the question is how to handle this session funding. Considering the price of the session plus the time that I would need to invest into it, I would say that we look at a funding goal of about $10,000 per session. At least if we're going to record a full symphonic line-up.

So the question is how we achieve this financial goal and this is where I would like your vote in the poll below. Please read the options carefully and then cast your vote below:

Option A:

I set aside a percentage of the monthly income of this Patreon Page until we reach the target. Every patron (who has gone through at least three payment cycles) could apply to have their composition recorded.

Pros: 

• No additional costs to your current pledge 
• Everybody gets the chance to be included
• Easiest to administer and most transparent

Cons:

• At current growth rate of this site it will probably take quite some time (we're talking about years) until we reach that first funding goal, so it might be too much for a lot of people to financially commit to something so far in the future
• Possibly many entrances so rather low chance of being picked

Option B:

I create a dedicated tier that you could join (probably around $50/month) that would exclusively finance this "crowdfunding" goal. Only people who are in this tier for more than three payment cycles would be eligible to apply for being included in the recording. Of course they would keep access to all the other articles that I post.

Pros:

• Depending on how many people join this tier, we would probably reach the funding goal earlier and therefore could have recordings more regularly.

Cons:

• No guarantee to be included in the (first) recording so it might take some people several cycles until they get the chance to record 
• No chance for "poor and up-coming" composers who cannot afford to pay $50/month to ever be included in a recording

Option C:

I create a high priced tier (around $500/month) that if you go through three payment cycles would guarantee your piece to be included in the recording as soon as the funding goal is reached.

Pros: 

• You definitely get your recording
• We will probably reach the funding goal quite quickly

Cons:

• Expensive
• Same as above that it doesn't give the chance to people who can't afford a recording
• You could also just book a shared session with any orchestra but would lose the mentoring aspect

I could see a combination of different options as well. For instance with Option A+B we could for instance pick one entry from all patreons and two entrances from the higher tier. But I would make that depending on how the ratio between these two Options are. (E.g. if a lot of people support the high tier then more composers would be picked from them). Also a combination of B+C or even all three seems possible.

The bottom line is however that all options depend on a considerable growth of pledges to make this idea into reality in a reasonable time frame. I'm slightly in doubt whether this is going to happen but it's worth a try as to my knowledge I don't think anything like this exists. It would of course also depend on a community spirit of joint learning and the idea that the more wealthy create a chance for less wealthy to have their music recorded, so there are a few ifs and buts to this idea.

Thanks for reading up to this point. If you have any specific comment about it or another idea that I didn't think about yet, please let me know below in the comments.

And please cast your vote telling me which of the Options above you feel like the best solution.