Catalog
Tell me about your catalog...
At this point, the catalog is made up of music that I have written in various churches, with varying resources, for folks with all levels of skill and training. In some cases, pieces have been slightly modified if it could be so that a wider audience might be able to use it. In my experience, the most varied groups have been in bell choirs. What do you do when you have seven beginning handbell rings or four? Ensemble music for that size is more often for very experienced ringers, not beginning ringers. And if you have seven excellent ringers, what do you ring? The handbell market is geared to the average choir; eight ringers for two octaves; eleven ringers for three and thirteen for four or five octaves. My experience (and maybe it's mine is alone, is that the average choir is fairly rare. If there is an unusual configuration that you have available and you don't see anything in the catalog, send in an email. It's possible that I have something in the file which has not been published yet, or perhaps you might consider commissioning something for your group....
Are you going to publish music by other composers?
Yes. After I get as many of my own compositions and arrangements published and available as is appropriate, SacredMusicDownloads.com will publish works by composers considered to be among the greats in Western Civilation, works that intrigue or interest me. In other words, I will make editions of my favorite dead composers whose music is quite alive. This includes organ music, choral anthems and choruses, music, piano music, etc..; Bach, Brahms, Stanley, Franck, etc.; arrangements, transcriptions.
I ponder if folks would be interested in subscriptions of series of music. An example would be Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier". They are not hard pieces, but how many of us know all of them? If you received an email every two weeks with an attached file of one of the 24 keys, you might learn a book in a year, and a very worthwhile endeavour.
Phase Three would be to publish living music by living composers. But before that happens, we need to have a better understanding of how this model of purchasing music works. What are the economics, the issues, the market, the practicality of this model. But stay tuned.
Why are you selling music that is available in other EDitions?
For purely selfish purposes; I learn. By setting these pieces into new editions I am intimately involved in the composition, following the voices, inputting every motif and theme. This is, after all, the way composers learned about music, but copying the music and working with it at a tangible, manual way. Bach did it, Beethoven did, and so did many other greats. I learn tremendously from this process. That's one reason.
A second reason is that most editions are more complicated than they need to be. How many editions are scored for piano and choir? I would like to make them available with organ editions.
Another reason is because you might need them immediately. Your options are that you can call your favorite music store and they will overnight ship it to you, probably as part of a collection and you will pay at least 20 dollars for the piece. You can track down a friend who will loan you your copy (and that is a good option.) Or you can download the piece for $2.95 .
Creating new editions in notation software is not an immediate process, or at least I haven't figured out a quick process yet, despite many music notation software company's rhetoric. It does take time and I would need to sell a bunch of copies of a piece to 'get paid' for my time. But I am confident that I will do that. It seems to me that it is a win/win transaction.