January 2022 - Wrap Up

We are 2 years old! In January 2020 I launched this Patreon without much of an expectation but more as an experiment. I wouldn't have believed how big this would become and how many people are actually willing to pay hard earned money to read my posts. However, it is also more work than I was anticipating to keep a regular posting schedule and provide quality content but I'm throughly enjoying the process and it has formed some connections and interactions that I value a lot. And as I mentioned already before, being required to explain something to someone else forces you to organize your thoughts and concepts in your own head which I find really beneficial for my own writing.

However, my year started with a positive Covid test. Fortunately without any symptoms at all and the only a PCR test showing a positive result but still I needed to quarantine for a week. Not that this is much different from my usual life but nevertheless it was a weird feeling being imprisoned in your own apartment. But somehow it seems like almost everybody is going through this at the moment. At least in my social circle several people are currently in quarantine.

Fortunately my quarantine ended a day before I was supposed to go to Salzburg/Austria for a week where we recorded the score for THE MAGIC FLUTE, a feature that I had the pleasure of co-orchestrating. This was quite a special experience as we recorded with the Mozarteum orchestra in the Mozarteum hall just a few houses away from Mozart's birth house recording a score for a movie that partially plays in the world of Mozart's Magic Flute.

It was also special because neither the orchestra nor the conductor had any film scoring experience, so playing to click was a new experience to them. They were however super enthusiastic and after some time getting used to this and nudging them a few times into the right direction regarding what sound and playing attitude is required for film scores, they did a fabulous job of performing that score.

Just a few days ago I also received some wonderful news about an upcoming project which I can't share quite now but it will have a big influence on my year and I will talk about it as soon as I can. It might have some influence on this Patreon channel and how much time I can dedicate to it over a few months but we'll see.

Regarding this Patreon, I was participating in the "Creator Census" that Patreon was launching, specifcially addressing some issues that I'm having with this platform and hope to see some changes in the future. From what I gathered, they are working on a few things that should be really beneficial for what I'm doing so I hope that this will all be implemented relatively soon. Particularly the huge back catalog of posts on here is becoming harder to handle and even with the index that I manually created, it is quite hard to find what you are looking for. 

As you might have also seen I started to post the results and documentation of our first Orchestra Discovery Session from September. I'm really happy of how this turned out and can't wait to plan the next session. If you haven't, make sure to listen to the results over on soundcloud.

Another observation that I made just a few days ago is that even if you have the budget for it, it currently is impossible to get an opening at Abbey Road or Air Studios in the near future. Abbey Road 1 is currently booked out until November (!) and Air until July. It seems like a lot of productions that were on standby due to Covid now have picked up again and create a considerable wave of recordings in London. Good for them, bad for me. Fortunately I could postpone the project and "wait it out".

As always, thanks so much for being part of this community. If you have any wishes, suggestions or critizism, please let me know, either as a message or you can hop on to our Discord Channel.

Robin