blog

With the foundational elements of the site now complete, it’s such a rewarding experience getting to reflect on the vision of the website coming to life.  Once the site is fully up and released (June 1^st 2018) the aim is to get promoting it to various ad agencies in hopes to get more freelance work.  As such, having a detailed and easily navigable version of my portfolio is a very important part of the completion of this site.  Unfortunately, the desktop version of the portfolio wasn’t translating well on mobile, so I decided to have a separate mobile portfolio.  Since this button was added, I’m convinced that my musical creations and sound designs are now all ready to be viewed at a quick glance.   Having organized my song sessions, song arrangement, session templates, and folder/disk allocation over the past few years, it’s great to finally have my music better organized for those wanting to explore my catalogue.
Future Collabs: Next, I’m looking forward to recording an informational video with Craig McDonald and KC Pickett approximately 2 weeks after the site is released.  This video will help my clients understand my business process as a composer, and also when it’s important to purchase custom music vs. sifting through a licensing catalogue.

Future Additions/Improvements: At the same time this video is released, I plan on adding a massive list of musical terms that are important for ease of communication between myself and the client during the “story board” phase of a composition.  This way, if I’m explaining in detail how the music will be constructed to a client, and they are confused by any term along the way, they have a resource to be better understand the lingo most often used within my creation process.  I would also like to hire Joe Cantin again to revamp the photos used within my portfolio.  Right now I feel like the site, although being called joshthemusician.com, has too many photos of myself.  I would love to have some more elements based on graphic design to help bump up the professionalism and variety of the visuals.  Also, having had many projects in the past where I have mixed/mastered music, I was most comfortable only adding my work with the band Simcoe, as it is my most recent mix work.  That said, I’m looking forward to adding more to this page on the site, as it is currently the sparsest.  Finally, it’ll be great to add more testimonials to my Composer/Sound Designer page, as well as my Teacher page, to help further outline what I can offer as a professional in this industry.

I’m thinking it will be a good idea to add more additions to this blog series, but perhaps only one addition each year.   This site will always be evolving, so it will be great to reflect back on the process of creating this site, while also giving others insight as to how the site was created, and then managed.  There will be plenty of other blog topics along my musical journey.  Some topics I have in mind are: my education as a musician; past musical projects; future goals; business strategies; recent reads; music teaching approach and philosophy, among many others.

Feel free to comment on my blogs with what you enjoyed, think can improve, and what you would like me to blog about next.  Don’t forget to follow me on social media to keep up with my latest musical adventures!  Until the next blog…write soon!

*Home page main photo – behind the scenes

Having now familiarized myself with Word Press and the FWRD/Iron Template the site is coming together quite quickly!  But what is a bunch of well placed chunks of data if the data isn’t interesting or eye-catching?  This is where I’m very thankful to have had my good friend Joe Cantin help me with the design of the website.  From taking the main pictures on the Home and Composer/Sound Designer pages, to creating my logo, to also suggesting a colour and font scheme, Joe has helped capture a similar energy to my music and bring it to life visually within my site.  To see more of Joe’s work, visit his Instagram HERE

Next up is having two good friends of mine help me with some educational videos that will help clients better understand my process as a composer, and why/when hiring a composer is the right move.  Craig McDonald has been my best friend for many years, and so when he needed some work to beef up his portfolio as a Copy Writer, the timing couldn’t have worked out any more perfectly.  Craig has a way with words where he can be concise while painting a full picture in the readers mind.  A true wordsmith, Craig has been very helpful in the creation of my Compositional Blueprint, and creating the written content for each of my educational videos (also, there’s a good chance he’ll have proof read these first few blogs).  It will be exciting to see where his new career takes him, and I’m very thankful to have had his help on the site thus far.  Wherever Josh the Musician takes me in my career, and however far Craig takes his new gig in Copy Writing, it’s great to know we will always be there for one another, no matter what the journey.  Also, I need to mention my good friend KC Pickett who has recently got a job as a video editor, and will be assisting Craig and I in the completion of my educational videos.  Any video editing tricks, colour correction, or general video goodies will have been because of KC’s hard work.  Many thanks to both of these stellar friends for coming to my rescue in areas that I otherwise would have attempted, and executed in a sadly unprofessional way.

Next goals for JTM:

Seizures Palace – this page is currently just a bunch of links to other social media outlets.  For now, I am considering switching to a new online distributor (Distrokid, instead of Tunecore) and once that’s done the links will be updated.  Furthermore, the Seizures Palace page will be filled with new content, including: music production tutorial videos, DJ sets, upcoming gigs (also seen on Home Page currently), photo gallery, and a new album release in late summer 2018.  Of course, any other passion projects associated with my electronic music stylings will be posted on the Seizures Palace page as well, but those goodies are often best left as a secret…for now.

Composer/Sound Designer – for this page I’m looking forward to adding some testimonials at the bottom of the page to show my past clients’ impressions of the work I’ve done for them.  I also have a couple of larger projects that I’m working on, one including a nine and a half minute long song that goes through over 10 genres of music, and will be presented as a simple music video done by my great friend Pedro Peres from Los Angeles.  Also, my Song a Week video series will be presented in an easy to navigate fashion, as well as any other passion projects (which will be disclosed at at a later date).  I am also still trying to decide if I’d like to put my gear/software list on this page, or my Seizures Palace page.  So far, this page is looking like the appropriate spot.

Teacher –  I will also be adding a testimonials page at the bottom of the Teacher section to show both the perspective of current students and parents in regard to my teaching style, professionalism as a teacher, and anything else they feel is worth sharing.  Also, down the line I’d like to do more videos going over some of the basics of piano/vocal technique, and a couple of advanced videos to catch the eye of people at the intermediate level that are hoping to bring their playing up another level.  These videos will hopefully lead people to my full online teaching courses, which is another large project that I will be taking on during 2018-2020.  For current students, these videos will serve as resources to help instil the fundamentals that I have taught them through our lessons, and might just be fun to watch.

Mixing/Mastering – I will be adding the mixing work that I’ve done for the Toronto band Simcoe, as well as some mastering I’ve done for my Seizures Palace projects.  For my mastering section, I’m going to show how the songs sound before and after the mastering process.

Blog – shortly before the release of this website, I will be doing my third blog post on the building of joshthemusician.com, which will help explain any other major developments to the site, as well as discuss issues I had along the way and how those issues were fixed.  After that, my blog will open up to many other topics that I am very much looking forward to explore (composition/teacher philosophy, software/hardware reviews, upcoming projects, general journals, and many more!)

Until the next blog, cheers!

*Alternate idea for the home page’s main picture

It’s been too long that I’ve put off streamlining my business. Diving deep into the vast world of composition and music production for the past 15 years has allowed me to focus on my musicianship and workflow, but now it’s time I focus on owning the idea of being my own manager. I have been part of many musical projects to date, but have found them all through friends, referrals and website gigs (ie. Upwork). Now it’s time I focus on organizing my portfolio and image as a musician to help increase the amount of gigs coming in, in a real effort to make this my full-time career.

I want to have total control over the content and updates, and so it seemed best to start with a template and learn WordPress from there. I chose the FWRD template by Iron Templates, as it contained 5 themes that were all very artistic and well suited to musicians. I ended up going with “The Lab” template as I found it to be the cleanest looking (mostly simple black layout with coloured accents) as well as the most well suited for my varying projects. I’m at the stage currently where I have no idea what I’m doing, but I can tell you.  I’m very excited to learn and put out a great product in the end.

This website is the future of my career as a musician. It’s me leaning into trying to make a great living as a well-trained composer. Although I will always enjoy teaching music to earn a living, I believe that to be the best musician I can be, I need to strike a pretty even balance between being a music teacher and staying active within the music scene/business. I’m very excited to better organize my portfolio on Youtube and Soundcloud to better highlight my most recent, and favourite examples. From heavy electronic tracks, to lush orchestral scores, I intend to offer a wide range of genres, and can fuse them together as the client sees fit. Perhaps hip hop drums, rock bass, funk guitar, EDM synth leads, and orchestral accompaniment is the sound to best accompany your hybrid business. From projects that stay aesthetically accurate to one style of music, to an intricate level of musical style amalgamation, I intend to continue to hone my craft and my business skills, so that I can offer a unique product to those that can benefit from my services.

To my future self: go to where the fear is. Let this website be a reminder that when you think you have it all figured out, you don’t. There’s always new avenues to improve yourself, and if you don’t take risks, you’ll never know what you’re missing.

PS – this was my first blog post ever. I hope it was of some value to you!

*First idea for home page’s main picture