Opinons wanted - should I?

jeffwj

Platinum Member
I have been finishing the latest revision on my book. It has been through numerous revisions in the past years and I have gotten pretty good at Finale music notation. When I started, I could barely write a single exercise in Finale. Week after week, month after month, year after year, I have become quite good at using the notation program.

I know there are music engraving services out there that deal with scoring music and parts, but my expertise in engraving is in drum notation. Would it be a wise idea to market my skills toward drummers and drum teachers who have handwritten exercises that they would like converted to musical notation files? I know my students seem to take me seriously when I hand them exercises that look just like pages of a book. So a few questions:

Do you give students handwritten patterns and exercises, or do you already use Finale or Sibelius for your handouts? If you don't use a notation program, would you rather have them professionally engraved? Would you consider spending money on more professional (and an easier to read) handouts/books for your students?

Thanks for you input.

Jeff
 
Let's see, how to market this skill? First, I think I'd be contacting publishers of all sizes and letting them know you're available for contract work- you'll definitely get an idea of how realistic a prospect that is after a dozen or so phone calls. For your own business, I'd be trying to cast as wide a net (among drummers/teachers, of course) as possible- you don't need to be on the same continent to this kind of work. I'd be thinking about doing some test marketing, putting ads in the drumming magazines, and maybe Google Adwords and seeing what kind of response you get- though you want to have a pretty strong presentation/well-formed business identity before spending the money.

I don't know if people want to spend much money on mundane things like exercises- I get the feeling that there would be more bread in big, quasi-vanity projects. I'd think about going full-service- in putting together people's books for them. You would engrave and lay out the book design; because you write well you can help people edit their copy; you may have to learn some meatball graphic design skills if you don't have any; you can print the books through a service like lulu.com, which is inexpensive enough that you can mark them up and still give the client a reasonable price per copy.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head- I hope that helps.
 
Hi Jeff.

Usually I write exercises out by hand. I often photocopy from books but I have a limit of 3 pages per book. If the student likes it after 3 pages they can buy the book.

But I see notation and books these days as a risk. Just last Friday a student I had asked to buy a book arrived with it on pages having been downloaded from a pdf file. I was p'd off because I hate to see musicians ripped off. But this seems to be the way these days. The student said "any book you want, I can download it".

I was shocked. But I am also kind of old school. All I know is this: Nobody is going to download my hand written lessons.

This may not be of help. But there you have it.
 
Hi Jeff.

Usually I write exercises out by hand. I often photocopy from books but I have a limit of 3 pages per book. If the student likes it after 3 pages they can buy the book.

But I see notation and books these days as a risk. Just last Friday a student I had asked to buy a book arrived with it on pages having been downloaded from a pdf file. I was p'd off because I hate to see musicians ripped off. But this seems to be the way these days. The student said "any book you want, I can download it".

I was shocked. But I am also kind of old school. All I know is this: Nobody is going to download my hand written lessons.

This may not be of help. But there you have it.

I see your point Wy, but what's the difference if you get it notated or your student does it on his/her own from your handwritten copy? I don't know why it would be any different than getting tabs for a song, it still doesn't come with your knowlegdable input with it. It's just music to play.

I think this is a genius idea, Jeff. So many times I've written corp music that, well, was just plain sloppy to read. For a reasonable price, I would absolutely pay a person to make it easier to read, as well as making individual parts for snare, bass, tenors, etc.
 
I think this is a genius idea, Jeff. So many times I've written corp music that, well, was just plain sloppy to read. For a reasonable price, I would absolutely pay a person to make it easier to read, as well as making individual parts for snare, bass, tenors, etc.

Thanks for the compliment. It would be written in Finale, so it could be printed as an actual percussion section score. The individual parts would also be printable as well - so there would be end products for both the director and student.

Jeff
 
Jeff- I'm curious how much would you have to charge for this to make it worth your time? Would you charge by the hour, by the page, the note, or what?

Charging per page would seem to be a good idea at first, but one page of rock or jazz independence exercises may take a half hour. While one page of 16th and 32nd technique exercises with rolls, flams, and accents wold take much longer.

I have looked into some of the music engraving/copying sites for people that do all around music notation (piano, chorus, horns, jazz ensembles, etc...) It seems that they are charging $20-40 per hour. I would probably give an individual quote on the entire project - so that I could not be accused of "milking the process".

Jeff
 
Another idea would be taking on projects from drummers who want to put their lesson notebooks from years past into a readable, and printable form. Exercises such as the one below can be great for personal reference, but difficult for others to interpret.

photo-73.jpg


Jeff
 
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