Written by:Rob Archibald
3/11/2008 2:57 PM

I must admit, when I started doing conductingblog, I don't think I really knew how much writing I was getting myself into.  Starting a blog sounded easy enough.  I just write a little about what I'm thinking with respect to conducting every so often and call it good.  But, I also wanted to add a good set of reference material on the website.  I wanted to do it because it drove me crazy when I started conducting that I didn't know what I needed to be successful nor did I really even know where to look to find what I needed in many cases.  It's turning out to be a lot like writing a book.  I'm gathering all of the materials I've collected over the years, splitting them up by topic and arranging them together.  And, I'm starting to add my own words to tie it together and help it make sense.  When it's all done, I suspect it'll amount to about the substance of several books.  Having it all available freely on the Internet should hopefully help to better propagate conducting  information to the world. 

Like many professional musicians, I have more than one job to be able to support my family.  For me, the other job is being a software engineer at Intel.  I bring this up only to point out the stark contrast for me that I find in music vs. being a software engineer.  For example, when I started as a software engineer I had completed 4 years of college and had about 1 year experience in various internships.  On the other hand, with conducting I'm now finishing up 6 years worth of schooling (spread out over longer than 6 years thanks to part-time status) and a Masters degree, over a dozen professional training workshops and conferences, and the equivalent of about 3 years of full-time conducting jobs (spread over 6 years due to me being part-time).  Yet, despite the fact that I've got vastly more education and experience today as a conductor than I did when I started as a software engineer, I feel no more capable as a conductor today than I did as a junior software engineer on the job the first day.  Why?  Mostly because, as I mentioned before, I think it's so hard as a conductor to find the information I need. 

So, let's work together to fill the void for us and the rest of the conducting world.  Click on the "Contacts" page and shoot me an email or add a comment to one of the existing pages.  I'd love to hear from you.  With your help, conductingblog will do a much better job explaining conducting in much better depth, not just my particular knowledge areas.

TrackbackPrint

Location: BlogsRob Archibald's Musical Musings

Your name:
Title:
Comment:
Security Code Enter the code shown above in the box below
Add Comment   Cancel