A work-in-progress graph in Obsidian of my creative catalogue
So I'm in the beginning stages of trying to figure out a way that 99% of my material can be found by performers, producers, audiences, and researchers. This will probably end up being a website/wiki. I am going to try to do it through a program called
Obsidian, which calls itself a "private and flexible writing app." (I've been using a program called
Infoselect for years. It is solid and dependable--it works like a mountain of post-it notes. Very flexible and searchable. But can't do things like graphs and websites.)
Composers and songwriters end up with a variety of publishing relationships during the course of their careers. Increasingly self licensing is a practical and profitable option too. But all of these different ways of getting music to the public can make tracking things down difficult. I have seen this with the estates of composers--once the composer is gone, the writer's family sometimes has a hard time tracking down where things are. And publishers lose track of things too.
The graph illustrates that my work is mostly self published, with a several publisher relationships, the most important being with E C Schirmer Classical. I've also decided that there are works that I'd like to make available through IMSLP. These are things that are in genres--brass fanfares, string quartets--that I'm not known for, so there's no reason not to make them available for free. Eventually, I'll upload more works to IMSLP. What is less robust at this point is the archiving. I'm throwing out boxes of old manuscripts after scanning them, but haven't quite worked out where these electronic files (along with a few boxes of paper) will end up.
Eventually each of the nodes on the graph will be clickable for more information--collaborators, commissioner, performance history, and how to get hold of it.
