How do we determine who our audience is? When we figure that out, how do we reach them? How can we grow our audience? Can we consider people outside our audience?

We respond to listener comments. Tim gives some (more) unsolicited fashion advice. After that, we take on that most eternal of music questions: What are you listening to?

What's the difference between good things and crappy things? How do we develop our senses of personal taste in art? Can we convince other people to value the same things in art that we do? Should we?

We continue our discussion of virtuosity, this time examining it from a composer's point of view. How do composers write music that is challenging but not impossible? Should we deliberately try to write hard music? Can composers be virtuosi (5 Italian grammar points!), or is that distinction only for performers?

Yeah, music is hard, but should it sound like it? Performers struggle technically, musically, cognitively, etc., but should the audience see or hear that struggle? Is anything lost or gained in hiding it? Inspired by an eighth blackbird blog post.

How do we promote ourselves online through streaming audio and score PDFs? How can we balance sharing and integrity? Tim and Dave discuss various strategies and common pitfalls.

How can we guide students to make better music while still allowing them to make their own artistic decisions? What important non-technical lessons can we share with students early on?

As musicians, what role do we play in educating non-musicians about what we do? What is the goal of doing so? Why is it important? How can we do it better?

What role does notation play in the creative process? How can composers use it to their advantage? How do performers interpret it? Is notation a form of visual art? How do conventional notation, graphic notation, and augenmusik differ?

What technologies do we use in performance? Why might we be inclined to use it? What risk do we take in using technology in live performance? How should we react when the technology fails us?