Music

Here is the upcoming Bryn Athyn Orchestra Concert.  

I sit on the Board of Directors of the Orchestra

and the design/publishing of these materials and the Playbill is one of my jobs.

Feel free to print this out and distribute it to your friends.

This is linked to the Orchestra's Home page, but it can be printed out.

This is linked to the Ticket Sales page, but you can also print it to order tickets

Regarding The Gnomes of New Hope Music;

    Some time ago, years actually, I was working on scoring the music, which by-the-way was diverted in lieu of publishing the Illustrated Storybooks, and the hard disc in the Mac I was using completely failed. Talk about utter anxiety ! 

   Well, at the time I was working on Time & Key signatures, and the SATB Divisi for the singers, as this is absolutely needed for a workable score.  When the hard disc failed I lost six months worth of work, work that cannot be reproduced. Yes I can do it again, but it won't be the same as what I had done.

   Recently I sent that hard disc out to have the data recovered. This week I got my answer; "No data can be recovered". it only cost me $500 to find that out. But there is good news here, not about the disc, but about the fact that I found my backup files of all the music and I duplicated them again to another backup disc. It's still a bummer that I lost all that work, but at least we didn't loose all our music.

   There are 33 songs in Act One and 29 songs in Act Two for a total of 62 songs in the show. Whew !

   So I will be setting up a few workstations for music. One for Scoring/Publishing,  a Second for Digital Performer Five with Reason for the voices on a G4 (which we used to compose the music) and a Third for Digital Performer Nine, with Mach Five on a Mac Pro for updated arranging (which may be upgraded),  and a Fourth on my Laptop for remote work with scoring.

   As you can see, the advancement with Publishing the Illustrated Storybooks has allowed me to begin focusing somewhat on moving the music forward. As it is, I am working  toward recording "The Stone of Wisdom" and I have a few people reviewing the scores, piano and orchestra, so that we can have a viable piano reduction. Although, Graeme Bier, who has consented to singing that song for us, has indicated that we should do it using the MIDI orchestrations. I hesitate to use my main workstation to do any work on the music until the Illustrated Storybook is finished being published. The last thing I need is to have a failure of my main disc again. so for safeties sake I am not engaging with music on that computer. I do have three other machines I could use. So now that I am relieved to have found ALL the music, I think I can wrap my head around setting up the G5 Quad to serve as an interim machine and record the music with that. 

    I could also set up my linear A/V workstation again if I had to, but that is connected to the construction of the Recording Studio that I am beginning to plan out. I do not expect that to manifest for a few years, as I need to clear out the space for that construction and that is also tied to reducing the machine shop down in size to free up floor space. Just to give you an idea of other factors that come into play.

   Enough for now.  AG

Story-Telling Sessions

A sample of the Trading Card Design.

I've moved this post up, because today I decided to publish 

every one of our characters 

as a trading card, in this format.

We have over two thousand pieces of artwork,

because our illustrations are broken into many different paintings.

The back of the cards will be different, because 

I intend on using them as Two-fers & Free Passes to the stage shows,

but there will be other applications for publicity

and collectability, of which I am not certain at this time.

I expect that I will include a packet of these cards with every book purchase 

that is made directly with IMS via our Shopping cart, once that is set up.

ARCHIVE;

Here's a link to a post on Story-Telling Sessions on

  IMS Publishing

The Gnomes of New Hope was designed as a Read-Out-Loud Book and as we work to release the Book One of the Series "The Gnomes of New Hope; an Introduction" part of the plan includes reading sessions at local libraries and bookstores. This link discusses some of the work needed for that program and suggests us bringing sponsors into the process. I will be pursuing that by crafting a budget and Production Approach Summary (outline) for that aspect of the project. If you would like to be involved, as a sponsor, reader or manager, let me know; 

image.of.the.mind.studios@gmail.com 

If you have ideas about this program, I'm happy to discuss it via email, in person, or over the phone. AG

Just to make it interesting:

Some of the Collectible Trading Cards

Printing

Ferny Reading to the young'ns

   We have this Gnomette (Ferny) sculpted as a Garden Gnome (below). We haven't made the molds for the casting, but we did scan her into a 3D image, which we will use for a 3d Printing test.

We used Sculpty. This image was taken when she was under construction.
The sculpture needs to be fired before we can make molds.
I bought a kiln, which is being set-up to do that.

As you can see, she is not yet holding a book.
That book will be made separately.
She is intended for use as a display in bookstores.

Regarding Printing;

    As we progress to completing the Illustrations for the book series, publishing methods come into play. Bringing the wholesale cost down to the lowest possible amount, allows for discounting the MSRP. this gives the retailers and distributors more latitude on the selling price.  But for the sake of registrations, the MSRP is set based on jobbing the components out, which basically means there is a mark-up at every step along the way. If I keep the publishing in-house I can eliminate that markup, or at least reduce it. In-house that markup is not an immediate outlay and I have more control over that expenditure.

   If I receive orders for large quantities, it might be practical to explore a printer who uses a web press. but that would only come after some distribution contracts are in place and demand is increasing, along with income..

   The biggest issue, other than cost is quality. I have found that different printing presses produce different results. And those result are not always acceptable.  This leads me to believe that we need a printing press in house, so that we can maintain consistent results. But beyond that consistency, an in-house press will allow us to print only the quantities that match the orders for product.  Jobbing the product out means printing quantities that give us the best price on the job.  That also means excessive inventory on the shelves. If we have the press in-house, those costs remain consistent and we can print on-demand. The only variable there being that if the press sits idle for too long, that is costing us money.

   So I am up-in-the-air in regard to outlay on one against the other.  Jobbing it out, the outlay sits on the shelf, while setting up a print shop gives us a much more extensive and wide range of capabilities for other product lines and services.  It seems pretty clear what the correct route is to take.  But that won't happen right away.  

   There are other issues at hand; production line practicalities, wholesale distribution, On-line Sales, shipping/receiving, supply inventories, ancillary markets, retail display... it goes on... and on.  So we are approaching it cautiously, but there are "things" in the works that will allow a shift of resources toward crafting the operation to produce these products in-house. In large part it will be an issue of personnel, because certainly, we have the product lines and equipment to do the job. We only need competent and experienced people to implement the plan as fully as possible and proper management and acquisition of the resources, both available and needed.

   That could happen through a partnership with an organization already in place, so long as IMS profit margin remains set on a per item basis and a reasonable percentage is pre-paid, but  that's a discussion for another time within contract negotiations.

   I think a Print Shop is in the cards, as they say.  AG