Well, it’s two months since the release of my “Aestas” album and the time has flown. I’ve had a two-page spread in the Alloa Advertiser, had a track, “Rebirth of Venus”, played on Forth Valley Radio and been a guest on one of their shows.

One thing that I have discovered in promoting the album is the need for visuals to accompany the music if you want to promote it properly. Spotify want what they call canvases, which are short looping videos (3-8 seconds), to accompany the tracks; Meta (Facebook/Instagram) likes reels, which can be up to 90 seconds; while YouTube is best served with full videos or AVs (audio-visual sequences).

In order to supply the needs of social media, I have gone back to my AV days with PTE (Pictures-To-Exe) and am currently relearning animation with CTA (Crazy Talk Animator). In addition, Roberta’s camera club, Stirling and District Camera Club, for which we once chaired the AV group, have redeveloped an interest in AV and our sequence, “The Iconoclast”, went down very well when shown there last week. This AV uses “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia as the musical background rather than one of my own compositions. For those who are interested, the copyright for using such music in a non-profit making AV is covered by joining and purchasing the appropriate licences from the IAC (Institute of Amateur Cinematographers). We are both members of Leeds AV group which, since it now operates purely using Zoom, has extended its membership well outside Leeds.

I already have several videos to accompany my music on YouTube and a couple of reels on Facebook. Look out in the near future for more of the same plus a few canvases on Spotify.

On the music front, I am slowly getting back into composing and looking at improving and releasing a couple of older songs. “Through the Darkness” and “Rainbow’s End” are already on YouTube and SoundCloud and the latter, being primarily a children’s song, might be suitable for a release just before Christmas. I’m also working on a song called “Jukebox in My Head” for which Roberta wrote the lyrics. Watch this space!