The Music Instinct

The Music Instinct - how music works and why we can't do without it - by Philip Ball
Our friend Philip has come out with yet another superb book. This one about music.
On Tuesday we went to the Royal Institution where he was lecturing on the subject of his book and very fascinating it was too.
The lecture hall and gallery were sold out and we ended up sitting on the steps as we were a bit late. Anyway I managed to catch up with what we had missed by listening to the audio recording which is conveniently included on the Royal Institution website

There are more great reviews in today's papers. Here are a couple:

The Independent on Sunday

The Observer

Philip is repeating the lecture at the Royal Institution on 27 February.

Classical Music - 2010 Piano Calendar

Why are there so few calendars with a classical music theme?
There are plenty for pop, rock, hip-hop, jazz etc but hardly any for classical. I have therefore produced four:
Opera, Piano, Great Composers and Russian composers on Zazzle

This one is 12 portraits of great composers for classical piano. They are:

• Bach
• Beethoven
• Brahms
• Chopin
• Debussy
• Haydn
• Mendelssohn
• Liszt
• Rachmaninoff
• Schubert
• Schumann
• Scriabin
  

You can see them at my Zazzle store

Russian Classical Composers - 2010 calendar

A bit late but I have at last published my 2010 calendar of Russian composers. I managed to finish the 12th portrait Balakirev last week.
There is a composer per month:

• Borodin
• Balakirev
• Glinka
• Khachaturian
• Mussorgsky
• Rachmaninoff
• Prokofiev
• Rimsky-Korsakov
• Shostakovich
• Scriabin
• Stravinsky
• and of course Tchaikovsky

You can find it with my other calendars at Zazzle

52composers.com - My new website

I am building a new website for the series of classical music composer portraits I'm working on.
So far I have been putting all my art into my www.PaulHelm.com site which just isn't getting much traffic and therefore no sales.

I have been building on-line stores at imagekind, art.com, lulu, cafepress, zazzle and various other sites with varying success. These sites are fantastic at providing a Print on Demand service but it is up to you to drive traffic to them in order to get sales. You cannot just build a store and sit back hoping for the dollars to roll in.

Having had some success with the composer portraits I have decided to build a site dedicated just to my composers. This way, if I can generate the interest I will be able to drive traffic to my stores.

I have called it 52composers.com as 52 is an easily remembered number and my plan is to produce one a week for a year. I have done over 40 portraits so far so I will have plenty of work putting them onto the new site.

Having spent a long time evaluating various site building options I have settled on using SBI for my exciting new project. I will keep you informed on progress in this blog.

Take a look at progress so far at www.52composers.com

2008 CLASSICAL MUSIC CALENDAR

Yesterday I published my Great Composers 2008 Calendar on Zazzle. It looks great. I was flattered to get an email last night telling me that it was selected as one of 'Today's Best on Zazzle'.
I was also astonished to find that within 24 hours it was ranked on the first page of a Google search for Classical Music Calendar. That is truly impressive SEO by Zazzle.
I am getting the hang of Zazzle and I will be putting more work on there soon.

New Wagner Portrait

Here is the portrait of Wagner I have been working on. It is a 2 plate photoetching from my pencil drawing. The coloured surround is a collagraph printed at the same time on Somerset paper. Prints and merchandise are available as follows:
Fine prints (framed or unframed) from Imagekind
Poster from artist-rising.
Giftware from Cafepress

New J S BACH artwork ready
I have finished my new print of JS Bach. I kept putting him off as he was quite a challenge. However I have been asked by an American symphony orchestra if they can use my portraits for a series of educational cards and Bach features in the first, to be published this month. So here he is. It is available as a fine art print from imagekind and will be sold as a poster print from art.com.
I have also added it to my cafepress shop - great presents for Bach lovers!

Which CALENDAR printer to use?
It's time to prepare and publish my 2008 calendars. Following the success of my 2007 calendar I have decided to try publishing some online. But which service to use? I have found three sites which I will certainly try out: cafepress, Zazzle and Lulu. I'll write here my experiences.
Today I have just published my Great Composers calendar on cafepress.

• There are 4 styles: a single page calendar print and three spiral bound 12page wall calendars.
• You have the option to set your own selling price which is good.
  
• It is a US based service so postage is likely to be expensive for international orders.
• Quick and easy to implement.
• Affiliate program available
• They take the order, print, ship, collect the money and pay you your markup.
  

You will find it on the front page of my cafepress store here:
http://www.cafepress.com/paulhelmshop