I’m featured this week in Time Out Chicago

My blog is featured this week in a Time Out Chicago feature! Written by Opera and Classical contributing writer Doyle Armbrust, it highlights some of the more popular posts I’ve put out over the years (which you can always access from the Stories link in the menu bar), and is a great summery of why I got into blogging and what it has (inadvertently for the most part) done for me. Jason Heath Time Out Chicago.png

Check out the full article here (warning–I use a little “rough” language talking about the music business in the interview, so it’s not 100% work safe).

July 3, 2009 · Filed Under bass, blogging

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How I Manage Comments on My Blog

I often get comments like the following regarding how I handle comments (which I moderate):

Jason Heath is censoring free speech.

I’ve tried to post several times but he won’t allow me to and all I have is a contrasting view-point without any foul language.

Here’s my response to this person. I didn’t mention this in my reply, but a sure way to not get your comment approved is to leave a fake email address or fake name. Generally, people who do that are leaving “flame” comments:

I moderate all comments on this blog and generally go through the comment queue once per day. This is due to hate speech and inappropriate comments that come through. This blog gets a lot of comments, so it takes me time to go through this material.

Also, this is not a public forum–this is a blog that I run, and I reserve the right to approve or delete any comment as I see fit. That’s how a blog works. I actually DO approve a lot of negative comments. I don’t recall the comments you mentioned posting, and I apologize if I deleted them inadvertently. I like to see debates get going on this blog, and I like hearing a lot of different viewpoints. But you’d be amazed at the hateful and vitriolic stuff that comes across my virtual desk in the form of comments. I simply have to approve them one-by-one.

A lot of kids read this blog, and I want to keep this place clean and not let crazy ranting comments stream under each post. If I didn’t moderate then that’s what would happen. I’m sorry if this is annoying, but this isn’t actually a public forum–it’s my blog. It even says so in the title! I welcome comments, but I will “censor” as I see fit. This is my policy. I even have a page on the blog describing this policy: http://doublebassblog.org/features/blogging-policy

I’ve found that people write things online that they’d never say in person. As a result, the level of discourse gets really low online–an perusal of YouTube comments will demonstrate this. If this starts to happen here (and it does), I try to nip it in the bud.

May 21, 2009 · Filed Under blogging

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Audio from my appearance at Chicago Music Commission panel

Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The audio track (about 1 1/4 hours) from the Chicago Music Commission’s Musicians at Work forum in which I recently participated as a panelist was released a couple of weeks ago. Podcasters Jim Goodrich and Fred Wells, along with Gaper’s Block writer Graham Sanford and yours truly all participated an a Q&A about podcasting, blogging, and how to get started doing both with some sort of business-oriented motivation in mind. Hope you find it interesting!

I’ve done several blog/podcast/musical entrepreneurship events like this over the past few years, most recently for the Chicago Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) down at Roosevelt University. Though my blog and podcast tend to be more geared toward the classical side of things, I’ve done a lot of more general chatter about how this kind of stuff I do can benefit all musicians. It’s funny–I never set out to have a successful blog, but I now find myself with a popular music blog, a podcast (which feels like the most constructive thing I do online!), and a guy who manages a few other projects like these for different groups. In fact, I was sort of embarrassed that I had this site for a long time, but I continue to realize that life’s twists and turns can take you down the paths that you’d least expect.

April 29, 2009 · Filed Under blogging, egomaniacal, podcasting

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Peter Tambroni’s great work on MostlyBass.com

Bassist, educator, and former Contrabass Conversations guest Peter Tambroni continues to put out informative and engaging posts on his blog MostlyBass.com. Pete is also a contributor for doublebassblog.org, and he and I work together frequently here in metro Chicago.

New Fun Stuff From Pete

Pete’s put out several posts that have caught my attention recently, including:

-Dusty Links – Classic informative links about the double bass from Lawrence Hurst, Hans Sturm, and others.

-Current Trajectory – The path you’re on isn’t necessarily the path on which you’ll remain…

Turbo Tune – Pete shows off photos of his latest tuning gadget.

Public school audition rant – Learn about Pete’s thoughts on required repertoire for high schoolers.

If you haven’t done so before, be sure to check Pete out on Contrabass Conversations–he was a brilliant podcast guest!

April 20, 2009 · Filed Under bass, blogging

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down in Champaign-Urbana for a talk

I’m down at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana today to do a talk about setting up a private teaching studio. Being the neurotic musician that I am, I arrived extremely early, knowing that where there’s a music school, there can’t be a coffee shop too far away. That turned out to be the case, of course, and I’m hanging out at Espresso Royale right now, getting juiced up on a dark roast brew and doing some blogging for the next few weeks.

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Contributor posts this past week

National Symphony bassist Jeff Weisner wrote a wonderful post this week about the “no-hire” audition situation that happens, unfortunately, at all too many auditions. It’s great to hear the perspective of someone in a major orchestra who, while being on the committee side of things during his NSO tenure, also was on the receiving end of many of these “no-hire” auditions. Check his post out if you haven’t yet.

Phillip Serna has also recently put out a couple of early music posts, and Peter Tambroni has contributed several posts recently as well. In addition to being regular doublebassblog.org contributors, both of these gents have been Contrabass Conversations guests as well (Pete’s interview link – Phillip’s interview link).

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More good stuff for Contrabass Conversations coming up

We’re also putting out several all-music episodes on the podcast in the next couple of weeks, including one featuring Indiana University student Ben Jensen and another with the very cool bass-centric Los Angeles band Haberdashery. We’re also continuing our interviews with Mark Morton and Lawrence Wolfe, and we have a few funny and thought-provoking special episodes in the can from bassists David Cardon and John Grillo. Whew!

April 9, 2009 · Filed Under blogging, music news

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Balancing blogging and “real” life

2009 marks my fifth year in the world of blogging–hard to believe for me, for it seems like only a couple of months ago that I started putting up blog posts on a regular basis. Man, does time fly! Challenges of Long Term Blogging.png

Stages of Blogging

I’ve gone through several different sorts of relationships with my blog over the previous five years:

strictly pedagogically-oriented
article repository
community-oriented
platform for freelance gripes
massive time sink
something I only occasionally check in with

For me, blogging can take an hour a week or 50 hours per week, and I’ve definitely found that 50 hours doesn’t produce 50 times the quality. Over the past year I’ve been trying to figure out a reasonable blog workflow, one that keeps (hopefully) interesting content flowing across the front page but gives me the time I need to perform, teach, and live my regular life.

Working in Chunks of Time Rather than Continuously

It’s easy with blogging (like email, social networking, or any other real-time updating service) to spend hours a day poking around for post ideas, responding to comments, and interacting with other bloggers and bassists. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time in this kind of role, probably spending 3-5 hours a day seven days a week working on the blog.

Over time, I’ve moved almost 100% to future posting, writing content in chunks of 4-5 hours, but only once every couple of weeks (or perhaps only once a month if I’m busy). If it seems like I’m slow to react to a comment, event, or situation in the music world, this is probably the reason why. My content here on doublebassblog.org is essentially on a time delay–I actually am getting folks’ emails and ideas, but I have to wait until I get one of those chunks of time to act upon it.

Drawbacks to this Approach

Do I miss out on interesting content that would be great for the blog? You bet.

Is it harder to interact with readers and other bloggers? Absolutely.

Has my blog become more of a one-way stream of information rather than a conversation? Yup.

For me, however, this is the sort of workflow that works with my life, and if I want to keep the blog going long-term, this is the way it’s gotta be. If I decided to try and do this full-time (something I’ve contemplated and could probably make happen, though I’m not sure if full-time blog man is what I want to be in today’s economic climate!), I’d be able to fulfill those roles I just described, but this is the way it is.

In the future, expect to see a mix of the following:

podcast episodes (weekly)
original content (pedagogical or music business-related)
photos, videos, and “cool stuff” posts
contributions from doublebassblog.org collaborators
“best of” posts
music news summary/link posts

You’re Welcome to Contribute Content!

If you are interested in doing some writing for doublebassblog.org, drop me a line and let me know!

March 30, 2009 · Filed Under blogging

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New Look for Arts Addict

Arts Addict, my other (non-bass) blog, just got a redesign that I think is pretty slick-looking. Check it out and let me know what you think!

March 18, 2009 · Filed Under blogging

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Musicians at Work forum Monday 3/9/09

I’ll be a panelist for this Monday evening’s (3/9/09 at 6 pm) Musicians at Work forum at the Chicago Cultural Center. Details are available at the Chicago Music Commission webpage–we’ll be talking blogging and podcasting, so stop on by if you want to chat about these topics!

March 8, 2009 · Filed Under blogging

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Best of the Blog for 3-4-09

Here are a few cool new developments that have been going on recently in the low-end blogosphere:

We’re on Stitcher!

Contrabass Conversations is now featured on Stitcher, a really cool service that aggregates your favorite podcasts together into a seamless stream of shows. Billed at the Pandora or last.fm of spoken audio content, this service also offers predetermined feeds of news, tech, NPR, and Apple podcasts. You can then listen on your iPhone or desktop computer. Stitcher also learns about your tastes based on positive or negative feedback that you give it about particular shows (similar to Netflix, Pandora, or any other recommendation engine service) and attempts to offer up shows you’re not familiar with based on your tastes.

Anyway, Contrabass Conversations is now available through Stitcher (just click the button below and search for ‘double bass’), and adding the show to your Stitcher feed would help us out a lot! If you haven’t checked out Stitcher before, take a moment and check it out (especially if you have an iPhone). I really think that it represents the next generation of podcasting and on-demand audio content.

doublebassblog.org featured on Alltop Classical

Oh yeah! Doublebassblog.org is now a featured site on the Alltop Classical Music aggregation page. It’s great to see my content listed alongside the likes of About.com Classical, NPR Classical, New York Times Classical, and other esteemed sites like these. Who’d have thought that a site filled with cat videos and obsessive Twitter news would qualify?

If you haven’t checked out Alltop before, it’s a pretty cool service, aggregating all kinds of sites into topic-specific pages.

Podcast Highlights

We’ve had so many fantastic podcast guests these past few years on Contrabass Conversations, and highlighting all of the awesome guests we’ve had would take dozens of blog posts. Still, it’s not a bad idea to put a few of the most popular guests on display for people who may not have caught these episodes.

Dave Anderson – Dave Anderson is a professional double bassist, joined the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans in September of 1996 after winning their Principal Bass audition. Prior to that appointment, he performed and recorded regularly with the Louisville Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, among others. Since 1994, he has served as Principal Bassist in the Britt Festival Orchestra in Oregon.

He has performed extensively with many diverse ensembles including, the Aspen Festival, Chautauqua (NY) Festival, Colorado Philharmonic (NRO), Colorado Music Festival, the LaSalle Quartet, and as a soloist with Richard Stoltzman, Gene Bertoncini, Nigel Kennedy, Bobby McFerrin, Doc Severinsen and many others. He has served as Bass Instructor for the Music School at Loyola University and also on the Board of Directors of the International Society of Bassists (ISB) as bassist/composer.

Mr. Anderson began his pursuits in composition in 1984, recognizing that the solo repertoire for his instrument was limited. The influence of Frank Proto, one of his finest teachers, also led him to turn to involved composition. Since then, his published work has expanded to other solo instruments, as well as for chamber orchestras and small ensembles.

Lawrence Hurst – Lawrence Hurst is the former principal double bass for the Dallas Symphony. He is a former faculty member of Southern Methodist and Eastern Michigan Universities and former faculty member, associate dean, and chair of the string department at University of Michigan School of Music. He was honored with the Alumni Award from the University of Michigan School of Music in 1998.

March 4, 2009 · Filed Under bass, blogging

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The Classical Music Twitterverse is Expanding

I’ve been an enthusiastic Twitterer for the past two years (you can find me at twitter.com/jasonheath), learning about the service through the numerous tech podcasts that I consume like digital candy, and while I initially resisted the idea of getting on myself (another service to update….great….and who would I tweet to?), once I got into it I never really looked back, realizing that it could function as a mini-blog within my main blog.

For the first year (or even more), I basically tweeted to myself, not caring too much about what was happening in the “Twitterverse” per se, but using the service’s ability to provide a more regular update stream within my main blog and serving as my Facebook status updater. These two functions were reason enough to keep using the service.

Twitter – My Real Blog

As my life kept churning past several important milestones (marriage, vacation, school) a funny thing started to happen: all these little random bits of 140 character digital scraps I’d been leaving all over the place started to make sense to me. They actually weren’t random….well, they were random, but…they had actually become my blog. I don’t mean doublebassblog.org, I mean my blog, my own personal blog. My bass blog had long ago morphed into a business and community site, and looking through the archives over the past five years of blogging left me with a strong impression of what I’d published but not much about the actual ups and downs of my life. On the other hand, my Twitter feed, despite all its silly little quips about “eating burritos,” “petting cats,” and “going for a run” was probably the closest thing I had to a diary.

Getting into the Community of Twitter

It probably wasn’t until I picked up an iPhone (I skipped the first generation of the super phone and got a 3G phone in July of 2008) that I really started to read what others were tweeting about on Twitter. I’d built up a lot of Twitter friends–being on since 2007 helped with that–but I hadn’t really done a lot of following along with Twitter happenings.

I quickly started to realize a few things:

1. Twitter was more than what I was eating for lunch – I’d been using Twitter as a way to keep a personal blog, but other folks were using it for much more than that, using it as an amalgamation of instant messaging, email, and blog functionality. It was all of those things and yet none of those things, something that combined previous technologies in a way that rendered them entirely new.

2. Twitter was a wicked way to share links – Discovering Twitpic was a revelation for me, and I quickly began tweeting photos of things I was doing, loving how it brought another dimension to my tweets. But that wasn’t all–I couldn’t help but notice how many people were putting links into their tweets, and many of these links were pretty darn cool! I wouldn’t be very likely to recieve these links from these particular people were it not for Twitter, and I began to follow more and more interesting linkers. As I did this, I began putting out more links of my own in my tweets and getting positive responses from followers. This was cool!

3. Twitter was kind of like the next generation of RSS – Is RSS dead? I often tell my less tech-obsessed friends that blogs are dead, and they look at me with incomprehension–they’ve only recently figured out what a blog actually is, and the concept of RSS was still hazy and confusing. What am I talking about, blogging is dead? Don’t I have a blog? Isn’t this a stupid thing to think?

Blogging is Dead?

I don’t mean, of course, that blogging is really dead, but I do think that the notion of using an RSS reader to aggregate news is quickly shifting to social sharing sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example, I now subscribe to about a dozen Twitter feeds from major news sources, and I find that the links I get are real-time and easier to parse than in an RSS reader. Things tend to get clogged up in an RSS reader, like stacks of moldy old newspapers, while Twitter is a stream of information that I can dip into, real-time, whenever I want to see what’s happening in the world.

Here are some of the news streams that I subscribe to through Twitter. If you click on many of these (including the New York Times) you’ll find that they actually have many feeds for different subjects, so you can follow NYT Science, NYT Books, etc.:

Some of these news sources just facelessly pump out their stories on Twitter, but others (especially the Chicago Sun-Times!) actually are real people who’ll interact with you.

The Power of Twitter

As I’ve gotten more into the complete Twitter experience, I’ve really started to get more out of it. There’s something to this–I just can’t quite articulate it, and judging from the countless other posts out there like the one you’re reading right now, many people feel the same about it as I do. This is something new and something powerful, and I’d encourage you to experiment with it and keep your eyes open to see how this develops in the next 1,2,5, and 10 years.

Classical Music Twitterers

Though still small (we classical music people always seem to be slow to the table with these new technologies), there is a rapidly growing community of classical music organizations, performers, bloggers, and fans on Twitter. This presence, I firmly believe, will ultimately be much more powerful than any mailing list could possibly be, and it’s great to see organizations like the Chicago Symphony (with whom I’ve directly communicated through Twitter) embracing this new technology in such a progressive fashion:

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TweetDeck and Parsing Twitter Data

One of the problems of Twiter is that it can feel like a disorganized fire hose of random information, and, to be honest, that’s kind of what it is! Finding some way to parse all this data can really add a lot of functionality to this service, which is where, for me, TweetDeck comes in.

TweetDeck allows you to organize people you follow into groups, search for particular keywords, and even see what topics are particularly hot on Twitter at that moment. Hugely useful.

Twitter clients I use

I currently use TweetDeck (free) on the desktop and Tweetie ($2.99) on the iPhone, which is a truly awesome Twitter interface for a mobile device–highly recommended.

I’ve also used the following programs, with various degrees of success: