[LAU] OT: metal, money, changes, bleg

[Patrick Shirkey]

On 04/02/2011 05:33 AM, Ken Restivo wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 01, 2011 at 12:13:24PM +0200, Jostein Chr. Andersen wrote:
>    
>> On Friday 01 April 2011 11.44.57 Ken Restivo wrote:
>> ...
>>      
>>> Also, after about 4 years of trying to make it in music and failing, I've
>>> left the band, put my own music aside, and officially given up. Sorry,
>>> I've reached the end of my poverty rope. If I post any more music, it'll
>>> be whatever I can knock out in an hour so of break time.
>>>        
>> ...
>>      
>>> I like projects and contract work, not really looking for any kind of
>>> 9-to-5 committment-- I still think like a musician and work best on my own
>>> in the middle of the night--, so if anyone knows of random contract work,
>>> let me know off-list. If it pays (within reason), then I'll do it.
>>>
>>> Thanks all for everything, and I expect you may find me contributing more
>>> code than music as the years roll on.
>>>        
>> I'm not sure if this is sad or good news. It is sad news from a musical point
>> of vue, that's for sure. The hard truth is that the world do have a lot of
>> great musicians and composers and a lot of them are starving - and jazz
>> players do not have the biggest audience in the world.
>>
>> But you have a way to play, sound and improvise that makes you stand out. Only
>> a very skilled musician are capable to do the stuff you do, my heart bleeds
>> when I see all this moves over to /dev/null. I understand that you have to
>> make a living, but please, hold the door a little open officially and make
>> some space for the possibilities. The possibilities are allways there for
>> every person, but one must be ready to join them when they shows up. You have
>> been involved with gigs and recordings, I think that you are nearer the
>> possibilities than many other people.
>>
>> _Thank_you_ for everything, and..  ..I hope we will find you contributing more
>> music than code as the years roll on - and that you can make a decent living
>> of it.
>>
>> But anyway: -I wish you good luck with your future and hopes that you will
>> have a wonderful time whatever you do.
>>
>>      
>
> Thanks!
>
> I appreciate the outpouring of support and good wishes. The list here has made possible a lot of the music I've done, ao I should be thanking you, actually, and of course the developers of all this great free software.
>
> However, I wasn't posting this looking for sympathy as much as looking for pointers towards paying work :-)
>
> There are quite a few professional Linux-oriented engineers and sysadmins here, at least a few of whom work in the open source world, who have seen some of my code and hacking approach. I was hoping someone would point me towards where there might be contract work for software development, sysadmin stuff, embedded development (I'm good with Atmel), etc. Anything, really, if it pays. If it has to do with Linux, there's a high likelihood that I've already done it before and know how to.
>
> As for "Moment with Monosynth", that's a great example of the kind of music I will continue to post as time permits. Very simple, no band required, no real production necessary, just solo keyboards, took me like an hour to record and post, a couple chords and some noodling. I do indeed hope to continue on in that direction as I get spare time, and might even post more often than I have over the last few years that I've been busy with the band, if I end up with enough income and free time from other paying work.
>
> Thanks again. I'm not going away, really, just changing focus towards stuff that pays.
>    

How about this for an idea.

You release all your recordings as a single package with a downloadable 
archive and radio stream and ask for people to donate or pay for your 
efforts in order to keep the music flowing?

Start promoting it around the net as the most accomplished Linux Audio 
Jazz musician needing some financial support and we might actually see 
people contributing some funds. Then you can keep making that awesome 
sound and providing the backing music to the end of days while still 
looking for dev work on the side...

We have the resources to enable this option!

It's just needs some elbow grease and some active promotions from the 
community to make it a success. Even a couple of grand will be enough to 
make it worthwhile considering that there are at least 200mil Linux 
peeps of which a significant proportion of them like good jazz made on 
the most advanced live jazz system running on the Linux Audio platform 
we should be able to get a few of them to chip in actual cash as a show 
of support.

What we are currently missing right now is the marketing drive. Given 
that we as a community are more than capable of using the tools to 
enable the marketing drive all we need is the will to do it.

In fact we could add others into this mix as well. Perhaps some of our 
more accomplished Artists would like to take part in this exercise too?

Is the the birth of label.linuxaudio.org   ?




-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.