Forem: RIchard M Blumenthal

What'cha Workin' On? August 2025

RIchard M Blumenthal — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 04:38:20 +0000

What are your hopes for productivity this month, whether in work or in life?

Alright folks we are COOKIN these days. I'm running a week behind (hence this post also being a week late), this week I'm frantically practicing so I can do some recording & filming on Friday or over the weekend. Just lost a couple days with a birthday, couple days for traveling to meet up with family and watch a roller derby bout, and a solid couple days working on my frankenstein desk. Cover photo related - There's already a fair amount of custom cable management and things permanently mounted to the underside of the desk top itself so I didn't want to replace the whole thing (and actual studio desks are stupid expensive anyway), so took off the legs and put it on an adjustable frame finally, and found a company on etsy that made wooden slide outs for full size keyboards. Couple dozen hours of redoing cabling and trying to get the drawer side mounted parallel enough that it would slide out properly and here we are.

ANYWAY, things are about to get shuffled again in freelance land, with the start of the academic year some of my teaching schedule is getting flipped. Also New: working for the theater department at the same university where I used to work in the school of music (lol), just a few hours a week to help out with a musical theater performance workshop class and to be on hand to play for audition days and things.

In light of some of that, I'm feeling pretty good about this month even though I'm behind. On the docket:

1.) Teaching/Scheduling: Just trying to make it all fit together. Theater stuff definitely on Tuesdays (and possibly some studio accompanying). In person at home Wednesdays, Columbus Thursdays but later now (possibly theater stuff in the AM), remote students currently both on Sundays. Adding 1 more remote student and 2 more in person at home, so that'll fill up most of the time I'm interested in carving out for that unless I add another day, trying to keep my teaching on Sundays to only be when allison is out of the house at derby practice ;)

2.) Recording/Filming - Two chunks: stuff I'm practicing RIGHT NOW to be filmed and recorded asap, and stuff that's not quite so pressing because I can't record them until I get the piano tuned (or just needs a lot more practice time)

Stuff Now:

The Contortionist - Reimagined Recording & video lesson.
CHON - Splash, recording & video lesson. Collab project with a guitarist & drummer in north carolina
Del Amitri - Roll to Me (you know this song, you just haven't thought of it in decades), recording & video lesson.
c#minor collab riff - swapped riffs with this great acoustic guitar player that's a new contact. We found a drummer to fit the riffs as well so just seeing if anything comes of it. Here's an example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMdCmY_OTmM/

Stuff Later:

whole tone cubano riff thing - just another demo idea.
Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man, found a fun piano arrangement that I just need to practice a little bit.
Bluehew - session work recording
Vilera - session work recording
Zelda - an exhaustive comparison of the Great Fairy Fountain theme from every mainline game. I did not mean to do this, I was originally just transcribing the like, OG fairy fountain theme from ocarina of time and then comparing it with the updated piano theme they used in BotW/TotK, but then I got sucked into the the woodwind quartet version from Echoes of Wisdom and then I found out that there's a proto version of the theme in the super mario brothers 3 water level, and then and then AND THEN I woke up 4 hours later and I now have like a dozen different versions to record.
Third Stream Jazz - got a couple friends now that have written really nicely laid out piano music that I want to start chipping away at recording. Sjaak Douma, Pietro Beltrani, and Ben Vidal.

3.) Writing & Engraving Work

Got a good chunk of new transcriptions & arrangements done last month, so aside from continuing to chip away at requests and keep track of any Vilera changes that hit my desk between now and the actual recording dates, I don't have anything pressing. Which is good because:

4.) Mixing & Editing

Need to finish pretty much everything that was on my "TBD" list last month: Some Notes/GGD Demo, finishing CoastalDives long form analysis vid, musical theater demo reel, AAL Apeirophobia harpsichord layered cover.
Really I need to finish this musical theater demo reel, wanted to get that done in time for the new school year to send out to some voice studios that may have need for backing tracks.
Will have more collabs to edit as other people get their footage to me: c#minor collab riff from the rest of the trio, drums for Del Amitri, the CHON Splash trio.

All that being said, I got a bunch of spontaneous stuff done in July with meeting a couple new people and making some new sounds, so even though I didn't get to the whole planned list, it feels like a productive time. Worked on my color grading a little bit, trying to move on from the blue-orange contrast 'cinematic' era of my editing and land on something a little more organic/warm/emphasizing the live acoustic nature of piano in this digital age. Let me know what you think and if I'm on the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tN21m2EIkk

OKAY stay cool, summer can't last forever (or...?)
tricky dick blumenthal

Workflow Discussion - pls halp

RIchard M Blumenthal — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 01:20:31 +0000

Y'all are smarter than me, my whole life I've just played piano and any other skills have been accumulated haphazardly. Let me map out what's exhausting me, and see if smarter dev brains than I can help with ideas on how to streamline any steps of this.

Background: While there have been other points in my life where I was freelancing full time, that has always been largely based IRL (freelancing to play with students at various university schools of music, hold down a church job, pick up musical directing gigs/pit orchestra runs, teach some lessons, all the things that you cobble together to make a living). Where I am now is fairly remote, so I don't have all those typical options available to me at all times. I have been slowly building up additional online platforms for education/entertainment - consistent activity on social media to rustle up remote session work, a library of pdfs of worksheets, arrangements, & transcriptions for sale, and now just recently finally taking the plunge to patreon for direct support and creating video lessons, etc.

However, there are so many tendrils to keep track of, that I have been working on documenting the complete workflow so I don't have to try and remember everything offhand. Ready? here it is:

Make a transcription/arrangement. Bounce to ipad. Practice if needed.
- film quick WIP Teaser raw audio just on phone, at the piano/keyboard for social media (SM)
Record said transcription/arrangement
- Film with ‘real’ cameras & proper mic setup.
- Decide short list of clips or an additional full phone run (or something vertical) as well
Record & Film patreon lesson video (for full song vids) - phone cam, but good audio + lav mic for narration.
- this is a separate pro tools session - "Patreon Ramble - [INSERT SONG NAME]"
Record & Film Gentle Alarm clip - artsy cam angle, good audio, muted piano
- Separate session for all gentle alarms - "Patreon Gentle Alarms 2025"
Audio Editing
- Mix main vid in pro tools, bounce wav (move to video project folder VPF). Also export midi demo at this time for patreon assets folder.
- Mix lesson vid (cutting out lav mic audio when playing vs speaking), bounce wav (move to VPF)
- Mix muted piano clip, bounce wav (move to VPF) & mp3 (move to patreon assets folder)
Video Editing
- Main vid, horizontal cut
- YT Thumbnail
- Main vid, vertical cuts for socials
  - Upload to gdrive social posting folder
- Secondary/sheet music synced vid, horizontal - if it’s a guest solo, follow up YT vid with sheet music
- Secondary/sheet music synced vid, vertical - 1 section for socials.
- Lesson vid, full cut for patreon
- Lesson vid, excerpt for socials/free sample on patreon
- Muted gentle alarm piano clip, horizontal & vertical edits.
PDF revisions (corrections from practicing & recording). Final bounce.
Upload pdf & midi to gumroad & patreon shop.
Youtube Main vid upload
- Caption, links. Teaser image (thumbnail? Sheet music?) to community posts.
When youtube is live - update the gumroad listing with live video link.
Social posts - IG, TT, YTS, FB sometimes. Update Patreon playlist of full vids (if full vid).
Patreon sheet music & midi drop post.
Patreon lesson post.
Patreon gentle alarm post.

Repeat ad nauseum.

What's the move? What are the tools you know of that could help declutter some/any of this? THANKS

What'cha Workin' On? July 2025

RIchard M Blumenthal — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 05:05:59 +0000

What are your hopes for productivity this month, whether in work or in life?

I've had some things pick up recently, so apologies for not properly maintaining this fledgling series. Partly it felt a little redundant, like I was just typing out things that were already in my day planner with more detail. HOWEVER, I am a pretty big documentarian, and I find it's encouraging to have journals, spreadsheets, summaries, just things to look back on showing the pile of work that's been done, since the day-to-day/week-to-week/etc sometimes only feels like a treadmill or just tiny incremental growth & progress.

Pseudo-philosophy aside, perhaps a birds-eye view of what I'm hoping to accomplish this month will be more actively useful to me, as something I can refer back to for "ope, never got around to that" as well as "oh nice, forgot that I finished that up back in [INSERT MONTH HERE]". Onward!

1.) Teaching/Scheduling:
I have begun teaching in Columbus one day per week at a new studio started by a vocalist friend of mine (https://www.theswainstudio.com/). With in person teaching now filling up most of my energy Wednesdays & Thursdays (plus a few scattered remote students on other days), am finding that I need to do better about planning reasonable amounts of editing on the other dedicated 'studio days', especially if I add another day of teaching in Columbus come fall.

So, July goal - test out a couple weeks of routine, now that teaching days and studio work days are more delineated.
Mondays: Uploads (youtube.com, social media, patreon, gumroad), communication, invoices/billing, setting up pro tools sessions & premiere project ingests/footage alignment, editing for the realtor I run social media for, mixing. (Recording Day 1 if needed).

Tuesdays: Lesson planning & transcribing, clean ground floor in preparation for Wednesday teaching. Video edits. (Recording Day 2 if needed).

Wednesdays: Teaching, lesson logs, video edits OR transcribing.

Thursdays: Teaching in Columbus (+ 1.5hr commute). Plan weekend catchup work.

Fridays: Writing, set up for demo recording if that's part of the weekend or next week's work. Video Editing final exports, thumbnails, & filesorting.

Saturdays: Transcribing.
Sundays: Plan week. Make sure all assets (videos, thumbnails, captions, pdfs, mp3s, collab posts) are finished and scheduled.

(As always, this leaves off the things that are a given/every day, so actual practicing at the instrument eats up a couple hours of course. brushing cats. showering. you know)

2.) Recording/Filming:
Piano was tuned last week so I have had a glut of recording to work through while it still sounded fresh. Rest of July will be editing, and writing/transcribing/practicing for the next batch.

Finished recordings: GD guest solo tracking + addt'l live take, Sports live playthrough, Blumen idea live demo with James' drums, Aashdurg acoustic idea collab, musical theater samples for a demo reel next month to try and get more recording work making backing tracks.
Still to record: Sports lesson vid, Cloudkicker lesson vid. Some string stuff.

3.) Writing & Engraving work:

symphonic tech prog instrumental project thingy (Vilera) that I need to clean up the musescore files for the 3 movements of session work recording in August.
Bluehew part writing to their demo.
Aashdurg tinker with that c#min idea and send it to them.
Loam finish first etude and send it to them to write their layer.
Catch up on requests on requests spreadsheet (5 or 6)
The Contortionist, Reimagined transcription.
Cleanup Zelda transcriptions that got delisted from musicnotes and set up a bundle for gumroad/patreon.

4.) Mixing & Editing:
At the time of writing this, I desperately need to organize and sort my footage from the past week, so I can't even really make a quick list of what's priority for editing right now. Of the like, Big Projects, I know I'll need to do the lesson vids, Sports playthrough, GD solo playthrough, and Gentle Alarms set of vids & mp3s, but unsure of priority beyond that.

TBD: Some Notes/GGD Demo, finishing CoastalDives long form analysis vid, musical theater demo reel, AAL Apeirophobia harpsichord layered cover.

Okay bye. Posting soon about looking for ways to help smooth out the constant barrage of folder navigation and remembering what goes where & when. Just finishing the documentation first that I can use as a checklist for every project, then will turn to the wiser minds around here that have more savvy to available tools that exist, trying to keep this manageable as everything splinters further now that I've added patreon.

Before & After: Tedious Engraving Edition

RIchard M Blumenthal — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 17:50:57 +0000

Okay, so I am near the finish line with this choir engraving project (recap: guitarist working on their debut huge concept album for the past decade, they have a small session choir hired to record the choral excerpts in July (because if there's no choir are you even prog), I'm preparing the parts for the choir to read off of because if you just try and bounce midi files from guitar pro or any other program directly to the built-in pdf/sheet music editor it looks like garbage).

Have sent the second wave of deliverables to the client, so the last step is going to be touching base with the music director liason of the choir itself to see if they have any further requested revisions or layout preferences.

Here's a little before and after - client exported pdfs from guitarpro just to have something visual to send me (but also sent the midi files so 95% of the time I've just been looking at the midi in my DAW and not using the pdfs).
Before - bit of a mess

After - maybe still a mess? But you can hopefully see what information I've been trying to include for each excerpt:

timestamp of the excerpt
cues showing what the track will sound like right before the choir enters
then the actual choir parts with hopefully reasonable splits and reasonable ranges for each voice.
What syllable to sing on (most of the parts throughout the album don't have lyrics, so a small range of Ahs, Ohs, and Hmmms depending on the vibe.
subdivision for some of the more rhythmically dense/additive measures.

Isn't this NIFTY.

What'cha Workin' On? 6/2 - 6/8

RIchard M Blumenthal — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 21:35:46 +0000

Yesterday (6/2) I bounced pdfs & bundled up draft deliverables for this choral engraving project I had (client in the UK has been making this huge progressive metal album for years, just slowly hiring musicians and mix engineers/artists to record and build the album from the ground up from their midi compositions. Blake Richardson from BtBaM did drums, for example, just to be a little #namedropping so-and-so. ANYWAY, I have been prepping/engraving choir parts from the demos so that the lab choir they are hiring to record live vox will hopefully have a decently efficient time in the studio reading music that has cues and timestamps and reasonable divisi and all that.)

When that was done, I took a half day mentally and worked on some house projects in and outside, and took the dog to the vet, which is why this post is a day late in the week. Whew, okay, long walk for a short drink explaining that. To business:

This Week

Sunkeeper - draft deliverables
More Sunkeeper - Lyrics, cover sheet/composer style sheet with general performance notes for the ensemble, any revisions from client.
Lesson Planning & Teaching - Tuesday & Wednesday
Marketing/Self Promo - send out June email to mailing list with update on new transcriptions & heads up about upcoming streaming/lesson videos/etc.
Main Video Editing - VOLA - We Will Not Disband. Also cut a collaborative post with clips from the drummer.
Mix Feedback - VOLA - find a balance between how I mixed the solo piano and the effects the drummer added they sent me.
Secondary Video Editing - Phone quick projects - Pictures at an Exhibition (5 seconds of each movement lol), Rehearsal Prep clip with Biedenbender recording & sheet music.
Transcription Work - Synestia/Disembodied Tyrant string parts.
Filming - couple string clips. Starting teaching at a studio in Columbus starting in a couple weeks, so with that in mind I want my channels to occasionally include some string content as I jump back into that pedagogical world, don't want my presence to just be piano if I also have string students.
Vinyl organization - I have some catching up/labelling to do of vinyl that has arrived (also been pulling and listing some stuff on discogs if anyone else is hunting anything right now).
Realtor Editing - color corrected and did layout for a short talking head video from that client, new type of content they're making. Now that there's a baseline edit, got about a batch of 20 of these vids that I need to copy paste the template onto and clean up the audio for.
Tech - Working on setting up laptop for streaming. I'll make a whole separate post at some point of the circles I've gone in over the years to get audio broken out of Pro Tools over to OBS - the video part of setting up to stream is ezpz, any form of complexity of audio routing is a nightmare, at least on PC (there's no easy equivalent to Loopback for pc/windows). I honestly expect this to be much easier to set up on my macbook, and then I can teach & stream from the actual piano in the living room instead of the keyboard at my desk.
Gear/Hardware Research - Was planning on building a NAS server this summer but I think I'm going to kick the can down the road another couple years when I can budget more for it, there's a 22tb desktop drive on sale I've been getting targeted ads for the past couple weeks that the $/tb makes this a super reasonable stopgap. Just with how much filming & recording 2025 has had, my normal storage drives are filling up alarmingly quickly, just need something I can offload a couple tb to every couple months of projects I don't need consistent access to anymore. Also need an additional cheap speaker amp & to look into if this arylic LP10 is getting any good reviews as a way to get a couple 'dumb' stereos to be cast-able over wifi because bluetooth still suuuuucks in 2025. RIP my $35 chromecast audio pucks from like 2012, why is the cheapest option now 150 (wiim pro, I'm not in apple ecosystem so I can't use cheaper airplay models whomp whomp).

(I leave off the things that to me are obvious, like practicing piano or emailing/scheduling with people, that's sort of a given for every day)

Feel free to let me know what you're working on. When I was streaming for a while on twitch last year before tour, I did it as a method of accountability for myself (have to work on building the patches for the set or practicing the songs while streaming), and really enjoyed having that outlet of parallel working with other folks. So, if having an accountabilibuddy and jotting down your workflow for the week would benefit you as well, hop on!

What'cha Workin' On? 5/19 - 5/25

RIchard M Blumenthal — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:58:47 +0000

I'm still a 'Paper Planner & Post It' kind of person, so usually on Sunday nights I take my "Next Week's Projects" list and make a loose map for the week. I also have a 'to be scheduled' list of tasks that don't have a day assigned yet, those get filled in as space opens up in the sched. As I get behind or new work comes up, I begin building a new "Next Week's Projects" list that will get scheduled on Sunday for the following week.

This Week

music.forem - hello post
Social media upload & scheduling - Code Echo - Osprey live playthrough
Google business catchup -(I run social media for a realtor) adding more products & updates to their business profile.
Session writing - Graham D, instrumental metal thing (2 days)
Lesson planning & teaching - (check in with students, I know at least 1 needs to push back a day due to illness)
Setup/Organization Tasks - Pokemon Pocket TCG OST transcription sessions. 2 songs left!
Transcriptions - aforementioned pokemon tunes (2 songs)
Engraving/Music Preparation Services - Connor S, writing out choir parts from MIDI for recording with a live ensemble in July.
Transcription Cleanup - Sleep Token - Damocles & Code Echo - Osprey. Bounce pdfs for upload to gumroad.
Video Editing - CoastalDives project assembly and align footage. Make list of insert shots/sheet music screenshots needed.
Tech - Setup/troubleshoot capture card for a t3i I want to be able to use for streaming - dedicated cat cam of course.
To Be Scheduled - Some Notes 2021 video I never uploaded, import new drum MIDI insert shot & updated 2025 mix made last week, recut for vertical layout.

By having things in writing and a semi-defined workload for each day, this has been a better set up mentally for freelancing the last couple years for me than in ages past - being able to still hit a point where I feel 'done' for the day is super important so I can get outside, spend time with partner, dog, cats, friends, rather than just feeling like there's always more hustling to do.

(I'm leaving off things like 'scoop cat boxes' or various house/gardening tasks and other ILLUSTRIOUS ACTIVITIES, y'all don't need or want a 1:1 copy of what's in my day planner).

Feel free to let me know what you're working on When I was streaming for a while on twitch last year before tour, I did it as a method of accountability for myself (have to work on building the patches for the set or practicing the songs while streaming), and really enjoyed having that outlet of parallel working with other folks. So, if having an accountabilibuddy and jotting down your workflow for the week would benefit you as well, hop on!

Hello & What Is Up

RIchard M Blumenthal — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:23:55 +0000

Hello, I am RIchard/Blumen. I am a collaborative pianist/accompanist (just 'pianist' is fine), currently living the meme in Ohio. After a decade working at various universities across the South & Midwest US, I am no longer working full time for an academic school of music (long story from 2 years ago), and am in the process of scaling up a number of other avenues of workflow & income that I have acquired over the years. While I still do a fair amount of live gigs in the classical sphere as a collab pianist, generally that work is now more project-based and involves traveling and short amounts of intensive rehearsing & performing of wild and wonderful modern music. So when I am home practicing and preparing for said projects, my day-to-day involves numerous other peripheral music services as freelance work:

Session piano writing, recording, mixing
Transcription & arrangement
Remote & live piano teaching
Remote & live theory/aural skills tutoring
Score preparation/music engraving services
Video editing (I am always behind in my editing backlog)
Personal composition
Backing tracks/practice tracks for musical theater folks

I've worked for opera & musical theater companies, been staff pianist for niche conferences like NASA & ITEC (nasa is a saxophone org lol), recorded for bands in everything from lofi beats to death metal, released several of my own albums of mostly drums/bass/piano (niche mathrock fusion stuff with few marketable attributes and even fewer fans), and also am part of a more accessible & successful progressive metal band with some amazing albums and tours across the US and canada that I have been truly lucky to be a part of, especially coming from my background of little to no business savvy.

While the circumstances of me jumping back into the mostly-freelancing world weren't optimal, I am grateful that I had already been branching out from pure classical academia some 10-15 years ago, so in my current setup I can cast nets for work both far and wide. Also eternally grateful for my partner Allison, who is both a better musician than I and more intelligent as well (she pivoted to tech during covid and now works as a front end developer for a great organization in ohio).

Rather than have yet another social platform that I feel obligated to share my output on, I hope to use this space for some unpacking of different pockets of musical work & life. Frustrations, successes, analysis, reviews(?), who knows. At one point I had a gdoc of script ideas for if I ever got into making longer form videos, but let's be honest, I'd rather organize and type out thoughts than film them, so this might be the place.

🎹,😺,🌸
blumen