More Pittsburgh Weddings!

This post is a little overdue, but I'd like to write about a fantastic wedding I played for my friends Kelly Burk and Andrew Rowland, who got married on 10/15/2011.  The ceremony was at the lovely Park Presbyterian Church in Beaver, PA.  We had a string quartet serenade Kelly and her dad with Cannon in D as they walked down the isle, and Vivaldi's beautiful 'Largo' from The Four Seasons was played as Kelly and Andy lit their unity candle.  The recessional music was Handel's 'Hornpipe' from The Water Music Suite. Thanks for playing, Melissa, Matt and Mike! 

The ceremony was perfect, and it is obvious that there is so much love between Kelly and Andy.  As always, crying and trying to play was a challenge, but totally worth it ;) Thanks for the honor of having Miss Musique perform at your wedding, Kelly and Andy! 

3 For 3!

This past weekend was our biggest success story so far.  We had THREE events on Saturday!! One of our events was at the GORGEOUS Oakmont Country Club, for the wedding of Cara Spisak and Dan Smiczek.  Our violin and cello duet played a breathtaking ceremony, with "Clair de Lune" as the bride's processional.  It was perfect!  Thanks, Becky and Paula for being fantastic!!


Another fabulous event was a wedding ceremony in beautiful Raccoon Township. We had a string trio performing, and Juan, JJ and Mike were flawless. The groom, Buddy Smeltz, very creatively requested "Yellow" by Coldplay for the recessional, and it was a GREAT idea!  It sounded beautiful and everyone loved it!  Congrats Buddy!


Looking forward to the event next weekend!!  More details to come; stay tuned!

Expansion to Philadelphia!

I'm proud to announce the official expansion of Miss Musique to the Philadelphia area!  Most of the expansion work had to be done in the Miss Musique website.  This meant redoing the SEO so that the website could be recognized in Philly, and adding a bunch of keywords specific to the Philadelphia market.  We also added two pages of SPAM to the website!  I was stunned to learn that this was something the site needed, but apparently it's not for anybody to read, just for the search engines to pick up. So if you see two pages of what looks to be junk information, (hopefully only the spam pages will look like this!) just ignore it and proceed onto the good stuff!

Now that we're located in Philly, I'm looking for more musicians to add to my roster.  Philadelphia is a BIG market that will offer lots of performance opportunities, so if anybody knows a musician who is interested, please send them this way!  Miss Musique will also be embarking on new advertising campaigns for the Eastern side of the state; check back soon for updates!

Moving Forward

Business has been great recently!  Summers are generally more performances than planning, but I'm fortunate in that both have been keeping me really busy.   Most recently, I did a performance for my childhood friend, Katrina Asciolla's (now Katrina Hunt's) wedding.  It was such a beautiful ceremony!  You can see a video of it here: Katrina's Wedding.  I'm in there somewhere in the middle ;)  It was so special to be able to play for a longtime friend, but crying and trying to see music is a challenge!  Congrats Katrina and Tim!!


Things are piling up for the fall, and October is shaping up to be a really busy month for Miss Musique, so book us now! Stay tuned for more information on awesome upcoming events. 

66th Anniversary

I'd like to share my experience from an awesome event I was asked to play last week. I got a call from Les Concierges on a Wednesday afternoon, asking me to play for an anniversary dinner in a couple's apartment on Friday. Of course background dinner music is very standard for me, so I gave them the usual shpeel about pricing, performance practice, dress code, etc. However, upon further investigation into this event, I discovered that I was being asked to be the main attraction for an hour following dinner.  This was a much different situation than I had anticipated.   They were asking me to perform a full SOLO RECITAL, and had requested the Bruch Concerto in G minor!  This presented a problem, since I had already agreed to it, and gave them a standard price--not to mention the event was two days away.   


As it turned out, the anniversary party was for a couple, let's call them John and Joan, who were celebrating their 66th year of marriage.  Their daughter wanted to do something special for them as they were both over 90 years old and couldn't leave their apartment.  Both of them loved classical music, but they didn't have a piano in their apartment, so they needed the performer to be a soloist. John's favorite piece of all time was the Bruch Concerto, and his daughter requested I play it as a surprise for him.


I was in quite a pickle since I had two days to prepare, and solo violin music is REALLY hard!  (Plus, the Bruch Violin Concerto is meant to be performed with orchestral accompaniment!)  And who was I to deny this 90 year old couple of an hour of entertainment with their favorite piece of music?!?  So long story short, I pulled it off.


When I arrived at John and Joan's apartment, they were so surprised and excited to see me there.  I would perform a piece, and then tell them about the significance of the piece to me, and why I chose to perform it for them.  (They were crying after Salut D'Amour!)  I talked to them about my career as a violinist, how I got started, and how I purchased my current instrument.  I could tell how much they were enjoying it! 


The hour actually flew by, and I was having so much fun that I thought I could have gone on for another 3 hours!  When I finished, everyone thanked me for a beautiful performance and asked when I could come back!  Their daughter told me I was the perfect person to play for her parents :)


I honestly felt bad for charging them, because making people that happy should be free!  John and Joan probably won't have a chance to see another live musician like that day, but I was really glad to be able to be a part of such a special occasion!  I have the best job :)

Google Analytics

I would like to use this post to talk about ridiculousity of Google Analytics.  I have found myself mesmerized by this website for an unspeakable amount of time.  For those of you who are as clueless about website design as I am, this website can be completely overwhelming.  It basically allows me to analyze every aspect of my site from the visitor's perspective.  My favorite thing to do is to see how many new people have visited, and what the most popular pages are for that segment.  And I'm really happy to report that the pages I worked on the hardest are usually the most visited!


I can safely say that by all accounts, standpoints and reports, the Miss Musique website is very popular :) 

Onward and Upward

I realize I haven't updated in a while, but that's only because I've been so busy with the day-to-day challenges of running the business!  (Honestly, Excel has been giving me the biggest headache!)  Most days I find myself chained to my computer from 8-5!  That schedule does NOT leave me with enough practice time.  Maybe I'll use my lunch break to practice my scales :) 

So far, I've been having a LOT of fun talking to my clients and helping them plan the perfect music for their events.  It's really fulfilling to hear them say how our music made their event so much more fantastic! Lot's of phone calls to make tomorrow...

Busy!

Wow, running a business is a lot of work.

Success!

So far, Miss Musique has been a complete success.  I've been super busy trying to keep up with work and trying to learn how to use Excel!  I've been accomplishing little milestones like business cards, bank accounts, payment policies etc. and everything has really been coming together.  I foresee that next year at this time I will be hiring!  I've been able to make a few girls really happy so far and that has been the most fulfilling part of the job.  Anywho, you guys can help by spreading the word about Miss Musique to anyone you know!! :)

LAUNCHED

After a lot of blood sweat and tears, my website has finally been launched!  Check it out at http://missmusique.com/ :) There is still a lot to be done, but I'm so happy with the way it turned out. We are still going to add more photos and bits of color here and there so it doesn't look so pasty.  We are also looking into invoicing with Paypal, and sharing music files.  Now I'm getting excited for the really fun part--running the business!

Time Crunch

We're a few days behind schedule and now I'm in a bit of a pickle.  I'm doing an email blast this weekend through The Knot to god-knows-how-many brides, and my website is still not 100%.  It's close; we're at 90%.  But that last 10% involves some REALLY important things!  E.g. a payment function, downloadable sound clip folders and a musician video upload function!  I have faith that it will all come together but with only one day left it's hard to sit back and relax!

The good news is that it's REALLY coming together, and once everything is finished it will be gorgeous.  But then the real work begins...

T-1 Week

The countdown begins.  The fully functional website should be launched in one week from today!  I'm so excited, and I think it looks AMAZING so far.  Check it out: www.missmusique.com.  Pretty sweet, right??  You can ALSO send me an email at info@missmusique.com.  That email address is now fully functional and VERY much open for business!  As if that isn't enough, you can find my profile on The Knot here: Miss Musique TheKnot Profile.  Aaaand you can follow me on Twitter: @M1ssMusique  I know, I'm everywhere :)

Videos Are Done!!!

Here are some video clips I'll be using on the website. Enjoy!

 

 

And here's a photo I really love....

Almost There!!!!

Today was a big step in the right direction. I finished recording all of the videos AND received two discs of photos in the mail from Alisa!

The videos were my biggest obstacle so far, but thanks to the talents and generosity of my friends it went off without a hitch.  *Hoping I didn't speak too soon!* We did a string quartet, harp solo, and violin and piano.  My friend Colin did the audio and video recording. He was the brains behind the operation and without him I would have been in some hot water. I also was fortunate to have some very talented musicians performing. Thanks Molly Baer, Rebecca Macleod, Ana Isabel Zorro, Miti Wisuthumporn, Vanessa Young, and Dan Curtis!!! They did an awesome job and I bet the videos are going to be KICK-ASS.  The string quartet did Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Vanessa played a Bach Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, and I played Saint-Saens The Swan.  I should have the edited videos by Sunday!!

The photos from the string quartet shoot and the flute & harp duo shoot look AMAZING.  I'm so excited for them.  Man, I have some pretty friends!  Now the problem will be deciding which ones to use. Anywho, I'm exhausted after a really long day.  I think that's enough for now. 

Pretty Logo!

Yay, my logo made it onto my Blog!  Elizabeth configured it just for this purpose and it looks awesome, thanks Elizabeth!

I had a SERIOUS case of writers block while writing my content last evening.  It took me something like 4 hours to get out 4 paragraphs!  (Granted I was chatting on the phone for some of the time but still...)  I didn't realize I would have this hard of a time getting this stuff on paper.  Honestly, I thought this would be the easy part.  I found that anything and everything I wrote sounded lame and boring--not the kind of stuff that I want on my website!  I'm going to tune it up today (pun intended, haha) and hopefully I will make some more progress. 


Crossing my fingers about the videos as well!!!

Getting Closer...

I finished all of the photography this week!  It was quite a production, but Alisa Garin made it so easy and fun :)  I can't wait to see the finished photos of the string quartet and of the flute and harp duo!  Now I'm working on getting the videos in line.  I knew this was going to be the biggest challenge, so I'm hoping I have them all done before the site goes live...

I just started writing the content, and researching SEO practices, and there is SO much to know.  I had no idea it was so involved!  There is a lot that I can't do anything about (like reprogram algorithms lol) so I'm learning about other strategies that I, as a webmaster haha, can do myself.  Unfortunately this stuff is REALLY dry reading, so it is very easily putting me to sleep at 1:30 am!

Photos Galore!

I had my head shots taken last night, and oh man, was that an experience.  I had them done by Alisa Garin and she was FANTASTIC.  We had so much fun!  I was really nervous that I would look awkward and she made me feel COMPLETELY comfortable.  I got to see some of the shots she took and even though I thought I looked really weird, the way they came out was stupendous!  I had on four different outfits, and used bunch of different poses with my violin which made for great variety.  (Thanks to Rebecca MacLeod for the use of her red and white printed dress!)  We were there for two hours and got some really amazing work done; thanks Alisa!!

Tonight we are shooting a string quartet at Carnegie Music Hall.  These will be distributed throughout my website.  Thankfully I have some very beautiful and generous friends who have donated their time. Thanks Jenn, Becky, Emily and Laura!!!

Having a Hard Head Pays Off...

Much to my dismay, I was doing some research last night and discovered quite a few competitors that I formerly didn't know I had.  I guess that comes with the territory...  Now the idea is to work even harder to make my business more appealing than the competitor!

I've been tossing around a bunch of marketing ideas, including a listing on The Knot, have found that reaching customers might be a lot harder than I thought.  I also started a marketing plan that has forced me to look at a few aspects of my business that I didn't even know were there!  E.g. direct and indirect costs?? So I have to plan out my marketing strategies?  Who knew...?

On the bright side, I'm making the final revisions on my logo, and I think it looks AWESOME.  I'm so excited to see it in action!

Problems...

Things are taking a LOT longer than I thought they would.  I was anticipating having everything finished by this week, and I'm not sure I've even hit the 50% mark yet!  There is so much left to do: content writing, photos, videos...and that's just the big stuff.  


It's been over a week since any progress has been made, and I feel like I'm losing steam.  The tick is clocking, and my time here in Pittsburgh is running out.  I don't have that much time to get myself established before I am gone and once I leave, it will be so much harder.  I just have to hope that things will start coming together really quickly...

Progress!

So it's been a while since I've last updated, and LOTS of new things have happened.  Right now I'm working on finalizing my logo design, and picking a website layout.  This territory is very new to me, so I feel like I'm wandering around in the dark a lot.  But thankfully my web design team is fantastic, and I've received a lot of great support from my friends and family, so nevertheless I have a lot of confidence :)

I Blog?

This is my first attempt at a blog!  I thought this would be a good way to record my experience as I open my new business, Miss Musique.  Today I made big progress: I found a fabulous web design company!  They gave me some great ideas and were very encouraging :)
Anywho, that's enough for now; I figure I'll start off small..