Thoughts on musicians’ websites

ByBret Pimentel

I first set up a personal website in about 2000 or 2001. There wasn’t much reason for me to do so—I was a college undergraduate, with virtually no worthwhile content to share. But it was a start, and fifteen or sixteen years later I have a few hundred blog posts and some other resources, plus a few college degrees and a university teaching position to perhaps bolster my reputation, and I enjoy a modest flow of web traffic. For what it’s worth, here are a few thoughts on websites for individual working (or aspiring) musicians, particularly those in non-“pop” genres and whose reputations exist primarily regionally or within specialized circles (such as academia).

photo, Markus Tacker
photo, Markus Tacker

“Home” page: Put some content here. Why have a “landing” page that is nothing but a menu/obstacle to the meat of your site? Put your professional biography here, or maybe a recent blog post (the actual text, I mean, not just links to blog posts).

Biography: Ask yourself, are your site visitors really interested in your life story? (“Bret Pimentel started playing the saxophone at the tender age of ten…”) Keep it simple, professional, and brief. Let people know what you do.

For “who I have played with” lists, I suggest keeping it to 10 or 12 entries, tops. When you play with someone famous/interesting enough to add to your list, drop someone else.

Résumé/vita: Potential employers (for gigs, teaching positions, etc.) aren’t harvesting résumés from websites. Your short bio is probably enough. If you insist on posting your résumé or curriculum vita, strongly consider posting it as a web page, not as a PDF or word processing document. (As a general rule, use a word processing document—preferably an “open” format—if people will want to download and edit it, a PDF if they will want to save or print it without editing, and a web page if they will just want to read it online.) And I suggest removing your address and phone number for safety and privacy.

Blog entries: Not everybody needs or wants a blog, and that’s okay. But if you are hoping to use your website to build an online audience, it helps to have an avenue for publishing new stuff. (Nobody is coming back to read and re-read your bio.) I strongly suggest real blog software (such as WordPress, or a link to a WordPress.com or Blogger.com hosted blog), rather than just typing new entries into a plain web page. That way you can benefit from built-in syndication feeds and other technologies that make it easy for people to find and follow your content in their favorite apps, leave comments, etc.

It’s okay to post only occasionally. Many, many of the musicians’ blogs I follow consist of annual apologies for not posting lately and promises of great stuff coming soon, and nothing more. Just post if you have something to post.

Even if you are planning mostly to use social media sites to connect professionally, bear in mind that those can come and go quickly, and it’s nice to have a home base for your content where it will remain under your control. By all means, post your new web content to the social networks you use yourself, as those connections are the ones most likely to reshare and amplify your content.

Articles/resources: For content that you intend to update or improve over time, it probably makes sense to publish it as a “static” page rather than a blog post. If you are old enough to remember these things, you might consider a blog post to be like a newspaper article, which you probably read once and then look for fresh content the next day, while “resources” are more like phone books, which you refer to on an ongoing basis and which get replaced by newer editions.

Audio/video: I think it makes sense to host these elsewhere (YouTube, SoundCloud, etc.) and link or embed them on your site, since putting them in places where people are already looking for music and video gets them to a larger audience and boosts their search engine juice. They should never play automatically—only when your site visitor intentionally starts them.

Photos: I used to have a photo gallery on my site, but I have removed it. Ask yourself: are you famous or interesting enough (yet) that people are going to have an interest in seeing your career’s visual history? Are you hoping they will be impressed by something related to your physical appearance? Consider using one or two photos on your bio page, and put the rest on Facebook for your friends and relatives to enjoy.

Equipment: I am on record as believing that listing what brands and models you play is useless at best.

(Also, if you have endorsement deals you want to brag about, remember that the correct wording is that you endorse the brand, not that the brand endorses you.)

Contact info: Contact forms are kind of a pain. I suggest providing a real email address so that people can communicate with you using the software or webmail of their choice. Worried about spam? Use a free webmail account with powerful spam filtering.

Social links: You don’t have to link to all the social media sites, just the ones you use and see as good places to connect with internet strangers.

Instructions on how to use a website: If your website includes instructions on how to use your website, either your website is poorly designed or you are talking down to your visitors.

In general, look at each page of your website and ask, is this here because it is potentially of use or interest to my site visitors, or is it only interesting to me? Would I read this content on someone else’s site?

Similar Posts

  • Clarifying woodwind doubling goals

    ByBret Pimentel

    A couple of months ago, I wrote this as part of a sort of tongue-in-cheek FAQ:

    Q. Should I be a woodwind doubler?
    A. In most cases, no. If you already feel driven to do it, and have the time and resources to devote to it, then maybe.

    I got a comment on this by “C Lee”:

    I’m a teen who started playing pits last year on flute and piccolo a year ago. Since then, I’ve fallen in love with pit, have played in four more musicals and am actively seeking out other gigs to gain experience. In addition, I’ve also taken up the saxophone and have plans to learn as many woodwinds as I can if not all of them. Do you think I should be a woodwind doubler?

    It would be irresponsible to make a recommendation based on so little information, and of course it’s ultimately a very personal choice. I’ve previously suggested some questions worth asking oneself before pursuing woodwind doubling, so I won’t rehash those here.

    But I think it’s also worth considering exactly what you mean by being a “woodwind doubler:”

    • Playing as many instruments as possible?
    • Playing a select group of instruments?
    • Playing multiple instruments as a hobby or part-time semi-pro gig?
    • Studying multiple instruments at a university/conservatory level?
    • Playing professionally or semi-professionally as a specialist on one instrument, but adding doubles to increase employability?
    • Competing for the highest-profile doubling gigs in a major market like New York City or Los Angeles?
    • Performing recital repertoire, orchestral music, and/or chamber music on multiple instruments?
    • Using multiple instruments in the creation of a unique personal repertoire (jazz, avant-garde, electronic, etc.)?

    Your individual goals might include several of these, or others I haven’t listed. And your goals might be a little fuzzy or might change, which is okay. But just “woodwind doubler” isn’t a very clear path. Having some sense of direction might help you make decisions about education and training, investment in instruments, location, practice strategies, and more.

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    Frequently-asked questions about woodwind doubling, and their unpopular answers

    ByBret Pimentel

    Q. Should I be a woodwind doubler?

    A. In most cases, no. If you already feel driven to do it, and have the time and resources to devote to it, then maybe.

    Q. What’s the trick to getting in enough practice time on all these instruments?

    A. Figure out what to de-prioritize in your life to devote more hours to practicing.

    Q. What’s the trick to affording all these instruments?

    A. Figure out what to de-prioritize in your life to devote more money to instrument purchases.

    Q. What instrument/mouthpiece/etc. should I buy?

    A. The one that you have carefully, methodically selected from among dozens or more high-quality specimens, without blindly following internet recommendations.

    Q. What’s a good mouthpiece, instrument, etc. for a doubler?

    A. Only buy things “for doublers” if you want to sound like a doubler. If you want to sound like, say, a good clarinetist, use what good clarinetists use.

    Q. Which instrument should I learn next?

    A. Whichever motivates you enough to devote the necessary time and money.

    Q. Playing one instrument already means it will be easy to learn another, right?

    A. If your goal is to develop only a superficial command of the instrument, then yes. 

    Q. How do I know when I am “good enough” at an instrument to count it as one of my doubles?

    A. You stop getting fired for how you sound.

    Q. How do I get gigs?

    A. Sound great, behave professionally, and be liked by the right people.

  • What should be on your musician website

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s cheap and easy to create a website. Any serious freelance musician (or aspiring musician) should have one.

    This should be a website about you, an individual musician. It should be separate from your ensemble’s website or your academic institution’s website. It should exist long-term, and serve as a sort of permanent address for finding you online. If you do most of your online stuff on social media sites or on your organizations’ sites, that’s fine. Your individual website doesn’t have to replace or duplicate any of that. It can simply point people to those resources.

    I won’t go into any technical details here, because there is very extensive information available online about the ways to make websites. Suffice it to say that if you have only enough technical skill to send and receive email and post things on Facebook, there are website services simple enough for you to operate. Or if you want to roll up your sleeves and code every line from scratch, you can learn how to do that too.

    Here’s what you need, content-wise:

    Mandatory items

    • A domain name. Preferably this is something very simple and clear, like your name. Mine is bretpimentel.com. It works well because there aren’t a lot of Bret Pimentels, so web searches for my name usually put my site right at the top of the results.
      • If you have a more common name, you might need to add something meaningful to it. bretpimentelwoodwinds.com might work well, or bretpimentelmusic.com.
      • Pay for a real domain name. It’s not expensive. Something like bretpimentel.freewebsites.com looks unprofessional.
    • At minimum, a simple indication of what it is you do and how to contact you. That’s enough to be your whole website if you like. Here’s an example: “Bret Pimentel is a performer and teacher on the woodwind instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. Reach him at bret@bretpimentel.com.”
    • Some longevity. Go ahead and prepay the domain name and whatever hosting services you need for a good long time, maybe five or ten years, or set it up to renew automatically.

    Optional items

    • A more detailed biography.
    • A nice picture of you, especially one that helps reinforce what you do (like one where you’re holding your instrument).
    • Links to your social media profiles, YouTube channel, or other online things you want people to find.
    • Links to the websites of things associated with your career, like your performing ensembles or the institutions where you teach.

    Optional items with caveats

    Most of these things have to do with updating the content of your site on some kind of regular basis. That’s worth doing if your intention is to bring people back to visit your site again in the future. If you prefer to use your site as just sort of a digital business card, with no updating content, that’s fine too, and is much less effort to maintain.

    • A calendar of your upcoming performances. Only do this if you are thoroughly dedicated to keeping it up to date. An expired calendar makes your website look abandoned.
    • Recordings (audio and/or video) of some of your performances.
      • If you are hoping your website will help you get hired for things, only include recordings that you think appropriately and honestly reflect your current abilities.
      • Only post material you are certain you have the rights to post. For most individual-musician websites, chances are slim that anyone will take legal action against you for posting copyrighted material, but it’s still decent and polite to respect others’ intellectual property. (Acknowledging your non-ownership doesn’t make it okay to post something that isn’t yours. The copyright owner has to specifically give you permission or license the material to you in some way.)
    • A blog and/or some articles or other resources.
      • Again, this should be your own intellectual property or something you have explicit permission to post.
      • If you start a blog, start with a post that is about something, not a post about how you intend to start blogging soon, or asking people for ideas what to blog about. Lots of blogs start that way, with a single post promising big things to come, and then nothing more ever.
      • You don’t have to blog on any particular schedule if you don’t want to, just post when you have something to say.

    Don’t include these

    • Lists of who you have played with, unless they are significant and career-defining.
      • As a graduate student I got to play at a university event honoring Dave Brubeck, including playing in an ensemble “with” him. For years my professional biography indicated that I had played with Dave Brubeck, even though after the one gig was over he almost certainly wouldn’t have remembered me, much less considered me some kind of collaborator. Listing him on my website was a pretty transparent inflation of the truth. (If he had hired me to join his quartet and go on the road for a few years, that would definitely be worth mentioning on my site.)
      • There have also been many less-famous names I have performed with, and why list those?
    • Lists of the equipment you use. One possible exception is if you have official endorsement deals that contractually require you to include this information. Otherwise, what is the list for? To prove how much money you have spent? To encourage others to blindly buy the same products as you?
    • “Links” lists, except in the rare case that your curation brings something valuable to the table. Lists of sites that you think are interesting or somehow related to your site are an artifact of earlier days of the web. Now if people want to find sites related to a topic, they just do a web search or follow related entities on social media.
    • Gratuitous photo albums, unless there’s a good reason to post them. Being attractive and/or vain isn’t a good reason, if you are hoping people will focus on what you have to offer musically. And you do need permission from the copyright holder.

    A simple website is part of the modern musician’s professional face—you need one the same way you need a phone number, an email address, and black clothes for the gig. You can start for a few dollars and finish in less than an hour, or spend years building it into a powerful communication outlet. Get started today!

  • Students and gig pay

    ByBret Pimentel

    Over a year ago I wrote about responding to free or underpaid gig “offers.” A commenter asked a fair question, which has haunted me since:

    I was wondering how much of this still applies when taking on gigs as a student.

    I’ve wrestled with this a bit and I’m not sure I have a real answer, but I do have some thoughts. (As usual, I’m talking here about markets that don’t benefit from a strong union presence, such as most of the USA.)

    For someone hiring musicians for a gig, I don’t see a good reason to consider student status at all. You should hire musicians who can do the job, and should pay them fairly. If they are students, what does that have to do with anything?

    photo, Ryan Hyde

    But the Right Thing to Do seems a little less clear from the student perspective. In a situation where someone is attempting to treat student musicians (or anyone) in an exploitative way, the options are to accept, to attempt to negotiate better terms, or to refuse the gig. The problem is that freelance careers depend heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations, and being “easy to work with” is a prized quality. A student musician trying to get a foothold in the business could hurt his or her cause by complaining about unfair pay, or by staying home instead of playing.

    Student musicians have to find the best balance they can between advocating for fair treatment and going with the flow. It’s not reasonable for the least-experienced musicians to have to navigate such a complicated thing with their careers hanging in the balance, but it’s the way things are.

    Here are some questions you might ask yourself if you’re a student musician and think you’re being undervalued in the professional freelance marketplace:

    • Who else is on the gig? Would this be a genuine opportunity to make some connections and let some other musicians hear what you can do? Are those musicians the kind who might be able to offer you future opportunities in the near term, or are they others who don’t have much of a career yet?
    • Do you have peers who have taken this gig in the past? Did it pay off in terms of “exposure” or future gigs?
    • Is the experience something that would look good on your word-of-mouth “résumé,” or would it be kind of an embarrassment?
    • Do you have a trusted friend or mentor who is more established in the business, who can advise you on this specific situation? The music world is a small one, and someone who knows the local freelance scene might be able to offer some background.

    Be careful of talking yourself into free or below-market gigs because you “just want to play.” That kind of attitude serves you well in school, but not so well when you’re trying to make a living, and it drags down other musicians’ ability to make fair money and pay their bills.

    A parting thought: I certainly did some free and underpaid gigs as a student, and in some cases that may have opened doors to better opportunities. (It’s hard to connect the dots definitively.) But I think those of us who are established as freelancers should be careful about treating unfairness as a “paying dues” rite of passage. Shouldn’t we be using our success to make things better for the next generation of musicians?

  • Stuff bad music teachers say

    ByBret Pimentel

    We can all stand to improve our teaching. Here are some things I’ve either said or heard said that are symptomatic of gaps in pedagogical knowledge.

    “I’ve been doing it this way for years and I’m very successful.”

    Nobody is arguing with your success. But success isn’t a reason to stop improving, nor is it evidence of a perfect approach. Be open to new ideas. Choose to accept or reject a new approach based on its merits, not based on inertia.

    “My famous and well-respected teacher taught it to me this way.”

    The craft doesn’t progress if your let hero worship blind you to new ideas. Would your teachers want you to cling to outdated pedagogy out of loyalty, or to further your knowledge and advance the discipline?

    “Well, those scientific results don’t matter, because this is music and it can’t be studied in that way. I think musicians know a little more about music than scientists, don’t you?”

    Sound is a phenomenon very observable, measurable, and understandable through empirical study. Don’t worry, more information won’t ruin the magic. Take the example of high-level athletes and embrace careful, systematic scientific method as a means of achieving more.

    In woodwind teaching in particular, I hear a lot of vague, contradictory, or fantastical ideas that fall apart after even a cursory study of anatomy, acoustics, or fluid dynamics.

    And, just like you wouldn’t expect a stodgy old scientist to fully grasp the finer points of your musical performance, recognize your own limitations when it comes to scientific rigor. The Wikipedia article or a blog post you read probably aren’t very solid sources, and the experiment you did with different mouthpieces in your living room probably wouldn’t pass muster with a scholarly journal.

    “It’s not a contradiction.”

    If your teaching is making you and your students experience cognitive dissonance, getting defensive and brushing past the problem doesn’t help. Watch out for this kind of nonsense: “You have to increase the breath support as you go up to the high register. No, no, don’t reduce the breath support as you go back down to the low register.”

    “No, I haven’t read it.”

    Music teachers should be active readers of pedagogical materials new and old, and should be actively questioning what they read. (Attending masterclasses, watching videos, etc. is also good, but you will find someone’s clearest, most organized thinking when they have to commit it to paper and/or digital text.) Proliferation of small publishing companies, self-publishing operations, and, of course, the internet, have made the bar for “expertise” very low, but have also made it possible for conscientious readers to consume more and to police what is written. Readers shouldn’t take anything at face value, and authors shouldn’t expect a pass on low-quality work.

    Have the courage, conscience, and dedication to pursue deeper, broader, and more accurate knowledge of the concepts you are teaching!

  • |

    Does woodwind doubling prevent you from being the “best?”

    ByBret Pimentel

    My recent post about woodwind doubling has been cited lately on various social media sites to fuel discussions over whether doubling is a good or acceptable pursuit.

    Many of those arguing that woodwind doubling is a bad idea raise the issue that the “best” players of such-and-such instrument don’t double, and you can’t be the “best” at such-and-such instrument if you are doubling. If you think that, I could name a dozen prominent doublers who might change your mind, but that’s not really the important point.

    As an undergraduate saxophone major, I daydreamed occasionally about being the “best” saxophonist. For me it probably wouldn’t have been a realistic goal, and the pursuit of it wouldn’t have led me to happiness, nor to success as I would have seen it through that lens.

    When I made the decision to commit myself to woodwind doubling as a career path instead, I knew that would mean my progress on the saxophone would slow down. But it has been a very worthwhile choice for me: I get to play interesting music in a variety of settings, I get to spend all day at my university teaching job talking about the music and instruments that fascinate me, and I even have an audience of like-minded folks who stop by to read my blog posts. Now it’s hard for me to imagine myself being content to play just saxophone music all day.

    Most of us won’t land a top orchestral job or tour the world as a concert soloist. And, believe it or not, not all of us want that anyway. We should be encouraging aspiring musicians to seek out niches that they enjoy and are motivated by.

    Very, very few of us will ever be the “best,” so if that is your goal then I wish you luck. But for many of us, myself included, that’s not the goal at all. Mine is to have a successful and enjoyable career doing what I love, and so far, so good.

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