For Orchestra!

Always give your best. I came across this video (below) by Srikumar Rao about being Happy. This concept is simple, we are born happy. But everything around us has taught us to be unhappy. You have to find what excites you, what drives you, and what make you passionate.

This video is everything I talk about with people. I remember seeing a video by Nalts and he said something like this: “When choosing to be happy, you have to be in control of it yourself, because if you find your happiness by what other people think, then you’re leaving that lever for them. And you have to be in control of that lever”. This mindset changed my perception of life, and my confidence.

Happiness to me is bringing back the orchestra, raising money for music education, taking risks, and continuing to do For Orchestra. It’s an idea I thought about every day. Music Lessons were never my forte. I wasn’t happy, and so I did something about it. You can’t concentrate on the outcome of things, because that’s out of your control. You can only concentrate on doing your best every day.

My very intelligent and hardworking friend Shira Lazar, once asked what’s a good thing to think about with the new year now that we’re entering a new decade. I had said that instead of looking back at the past year of what you’ve accomplished, perhaps you should think about the future.

After those words left me, I began to think of how powerful that is. Because nothing is more exciting then the future. And that should make us all happy.

A few years ago, I made the promise of always “going with the flow” and continually trying new things. It was something my friend Justin had preached to me one night, and I thank him for it. As a musician, I always gravitated towards the more eccentric things anyway. I felt like we all should. The other day was Purim, which is a much celebrated Jewish day, and when I was invited to check it out, I couldn’t wait.

I saw a bunch of stuff, lots of cowboy hats, and even a girl wearing the Twister board game as her costume. The people were awesome, I was with a cool group of friends, the venue was very relaxed, and the music was completely different:

Littlefield in NYC was hosting a good Purim party, and I was excited to attend my first one. The music was awesome, but I was surprised that it wasn’t purely a Hasidic Jewish band performing. In the picture above you can see there were Ratchets, Djembe, and a horn without any valves. Not sure what the name of that would be. Oh and there was also a Contrabass Tuba player.

At one point in the night, the entire 14 member band came into the crowd and performed their instruments as everyone danced around them. Then they made us get low against the floor, and slowly rose us to our feet. It was similar to the Danza Fiesta event I attended earlier last month. It was abig group performance. No one really “watched the band” – it was more like they were “performing” with them

And one of my Facebook followers told me about “Chag Purim Sameach” which is the equivalent to saying “Happy Holidays” – very cool!

So what’s this have to do with the orchestra? Well, nothing directly, but I liked experiencing new music, new people, and new events. We all should. For Orchestra started from an idea of trying something new, and I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

I came across this Avatar-izer that seemed kind of interesting. Basically, you upload a picture and it makes you look like one of the people from Pandora. I couldn’t stop laughing at this because my eyes looks a little wacky, and my nose a little off, but like my friend Damien Basile would say “it’s a perfect use of branding because it takes the consumer and places them in the product”. I totally agree.

Big ups to Oddcast, David Chaitt, and McDonald’s for a cool product. Avatar was seriously one of the better movies I’ve seen in quite some time.

So how does my Avatar look?!

As an orchestrator who has always been interested in technology and trying new things, I’m actually very excited for the Apple iPad. But why? It’s not an instrument, or a standard computer. Exactly… it’s actually so much more.

The orchestra assembles over 100 musicians – violinists, flutes, oboes, trumpets, percussion, and more. And they all need music, they all need to be on the same ‘page’. Although expensive, orchestras should use the iPad on music stands, and order the music through a store like Sibelius Scorch. Imagine, a 120 person ensemble all living in the cloud.

Living in the cloud would allow audiences to interact in real time, set lists to be arranged on the spot, and group collaboration that Beethoven and Tchaikovsky would have only dreamed about.

Apple is set to launch the iPad next month, and everyone is on stand by for the preorder.

According to their Keynote it’s big stand is for books and for internet publishing. But the iPad can also, and should also be a new orchestra instrument. In a world where DJ’s and Techno artists have collaborated with the classic ensemble, I’m excited to see how this will become a part. Like any genre or business, innovation should be welcomed.

I’m currently selling my music here at ForOrchestra, but yesterday I was stuck with the age old question between two distributors for my iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon release coming next month: Tunecore or CD Baby?

I asked everyone on Twitter and FacebookFacebook, and the majority of the answers said to go with Tunecore.

The biggest difference between the two is that Tunecore has an upfront fee and CD Baby simply take a 9% cut of each sale.

So apparently if I plan on selling more than 300 downloads then Tunecore is the way to go, because it offsets the upfront costs, and the rest is 100% profit.

The problem is that I already have my CD Baby account from 2006 – and so I would like to not have to start ANOTHER account. I’m thinking about using Tunecore for my digital distribution, and CD Baby for my physical copies.

I’m leaning strongly towards Tunecore. What do you think?