Don’t Forget Your Mouthpiece

As I start to think about a redesign for this site, the first and most obvious question is: what is it for? I always intended to produce a site advertising my services as a performer, arranger, conductor and teacher, but up to now the only element of jamestopp.com has been this blog, and its purpose and intended audience was not something I defined at its beginning. I was more of a mind just to start writing and see what happened.

So far most of my posts seem to have had something to do with web design or the web in general, and are generally either of a “hey, look at this!” nature, or, like my Apache/PHP/MySQL tutorial, are an effort to condense a lot of reading and web trawling on a particular problem or subject into a form that might save someone else the hassle in the future.

I’ve so far had little to say on the subject of horn playing. I’m not sure why this is. I have some strong ideas on horn playing, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call them my own. I certainly don’t feel comfortable declaring anything so grandiose as a “teaching method”, but I have a definite approach to my own playing, even if I sometimes don’t apply it as rigorously as I should. Anyway, that’s for another post.

I’m quite happy blogging on the wider subject of music. I’ve always had pretty eclectic tastes, and I’m quite secure in the conviction that James Blunt is the most anodyne travesty of an excuse for a singer it has ever been my misfortune to have my auditory channels polluted by (with the possible exception of Aled Jones). Also the Nizlopi album was a waste of 9 quid - just download the JCB song, the lyrics are clever and funny but all the other songs sound pretty much the same. And as for… ok, that’s enough of that.

So the blog is not directed towards any area in particular, and for the moment I’m happy to let it meander as it has done up to now. I don’t really see any conflict between its content and that of any potential (music) business site. Two of my favourite bloggers, Helen Radice and John Oxton, both keep their blogs separate from their business sites, for whatever reasons, but I don’t really see the need to do this myself. The problem is how to reconcile the web presence of James Topp the musician with the already-established presence of James Topp the web designer.

It’s a sad fact that the modern freelance musician needs to be versatile, often to the point of working outside the music business altogether. Musicians’ Marketplace is a site aimed at musicians who have such ancillary skills and services to offer, and already encompasses such areas as joinery, driving tuition, massage, personal training, life coaching and even lingerie selling, as well as web design. Interestingly, not many of the websites linked to by Musicians’ Marketplace appear to mention that their owners are in fact musicians. The one exception I’ve found is that of Simon Haram (silentage.co.uk), who as well as being one of the UK’s most eminent saxophonists, offers a range of recording and production services, and is also available for IT/hardware/software-related work - all advertised from the same site.

While Simon is clearly comfortable with the need to be versatile, not very many other people in the same situation seem to be. This is perhaps understandable, as potential clients may well perceive a multi-careerist (is this a word? well it is now) to be an unreliable choice for some types of work. With web design, however, I have a strong feeling that my musical background and resultant strengths in areas of creativity, teamwork and communication may well be a valuable asset.

So what it comes down to, to start with, is: what am I? Am I, as it says at the top of this page, horn player and web designer? Or are these two facets of my life that should be kept separate, thus requiring separate sites? Comment away.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 4:02 am and is filed under Web Design, General Musings, Music, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.