Here at Clear Music, we pride ourselves on being more than your average sheet music shop. On our brochure we describe our work as “Publisher Agency Services”

but what does this actually mean?
 
Well, what sets us apart is the depth of knowledge we have gained from many years working in music publishing. This means that musicians come to us for completely neutral advice on many, many different questions, from budgeting and programming to practical performance issues. What we are going to focus on in today’s blog post is the information gap from websites.
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Websites and online stores can be great for having a browse, but what do you do if they offer incomplete information on a product? For example, one common question we get for choral scores is, does this score contain a keyboard underlay for rehearsal purposes. Now that’s definitely something you want to know before you go ahead and place an order for 150 copies. Or what about strings numbers in orchestral sets, how do you know if you will need to order extra string parts or not? Or a very frequent one for us, “There are three editions of this work, what are the differences?”

The trouble with many of these websites is that not only will they not give you this information, but there is no person you can contact to find it out. If you’re very lucky there may be an email address, but getting a speedy reply is unlikely. Without this, the only way to find answers to your questions is to order the music and see for yourself!
 
Or is it the only way?

At Clear Music, because we are working direct with the publisher, this means that we can often get in touch with the editors of the editions and get very detailed replies to questions. We get all sorts of questions about published editions all the time, and we do our best to get as detailed an answer as possible so that all our clients are confident that the editions they order suit their needs. This can save many, many hours of frustrating searching and stabbing in the dark.
 
So next time you have a question about a published edition, why not send us an email and we will do our best to find the answers for you. 

On our Clear Music brochures, we describe ourselves as “specialist suppliers to the classical performing community.” We are pretty special, because we have a range of unique services that we can provide to our clients in Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia. This includes special archive reprints of conductor’s scores, sourcing hard-to-find repertoire and providing detailed advice and analysis to performing ensembles all around the country.
 
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What surprises a lot of people though is that we aren’t just “specialists” to be called on in those few situations mentioned above. A lot of our clients use us to source ALL of their repertoire. Absolutely anything that they need we source for them, whether that be educational materials and beginner tutor books, standard repertoire or even music textbooks.

A few weeks ago we met a singer who walked into our Glebe HQ for the first time. She was after a hardback copy of The Marriage of Figaro, a piece we almost always keep in stock because it is such a staple of the repertoire. As we were talking, our new singer friend mentioned that she had tried to order Figaro from an overseas website, and had been met with nothing but disaster!
 
Our friend had ordered from overseas before, and was hoping to add in this Figaro order to an existing one to save on postage. So she ordered one copy of The Marriage of Figaro, in a hardback edition for $75 as well as a copy of The Barber of Seville for $95 with $40 postage in January. The music arrived about a month later, but it was a paperback edition, not a hardback!
 
After waiting a few weeks for a reply, the website finally told her to post the score back to them (at a postage cost to her of $73.93, almost as much as the score in the first place!) and they would refund her money (but not the postage charges!). After a few emails back and forth, they finally agreed to a refund of the postage charges as well. In March!
 

One of the best things about Clear Music is that we absorb all international shipping costs on our orders. This means that the prices we quote are very close to the overseas price. Recently we had an inquiry about a real staple of the repertoire – a full score of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 published by Bärenreiter - and we did a comparison of shipping costs and delivery time with a very popular overseas website to see the difference.

Did you know that, at least once a month, Clear Music is involved in rescue operations? We’ve been called in countless times to help orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles when things have gone horribly wrong. What could go wrong you ask? Well….
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We’ve had situations where people have ordered from an overseas website, and the WRONG work has arrived. That’s right, the programme has been set, the rehearsals booked in, the musicians are all ready and the wrong score and parts have arrived. Not even remotely the same work that you expected to receive!

A little variation on the above…..we’ve had situations where people have ordered a particular arrangement of a work with a specific reduced orchestration, and the wrong version has arrived…..so unless you can get those Wagner Tubas and a whole battery of percussion ready to go in an instant, things are looking pretty dire!

There have been times when people have ordered from overseas and the music just hasn’t turned up at all. Non-arrival can and does happen!! Keep in mind, you’ve PAID for shipping and credit card processing fees on top of the cost of the music, so this is a double whammy!
 
Then there are all the other little unforeseen problems that can pop up - suppliers running out of stock so you only receive two copies of the 45 ordered, the parts are in the parcel but no score, the score is in the parcel but no parts, the full score is from publisher A and the parts from publisher B….it goes on and on…..

Thankfully we’ve been able to perform miracles from time to time, literally at the last minute, to ensure that a rehearsal or performance can go ahead – asking the overseas publisher to email us the correct pdf files of the right work, or of the missing parts, for example. Or phoning the overseas publisher on a Friday evening and having the parts couriered to us to arrive Monday morning! But all this is only AFTER the problem has occurred in the first place, and people have come to us as a last resort.

At Clear Music, we are dealing directly with over 400 publishers. This means that we can supply you with accurate information and advice right from the beginning.  Many ensembles are now coming to us first to source their music. Not only is it usually quicker and cheaper, including free airfreight, but we work to give reliable, detailed and accurate help, so you can get the full picture. How refreshing to deal with real live musicians rather than a website!
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And we’re right here on your doorstep, and actively working to support you and the wider Australian music community - something else you can’t get from across the ocean!
 
We like to work with ensembles right from the initial stages of planning a programme. They contact us first, and we perform a free analysis of all the options available for a particular work. When this happens, nobody has to worry about last minute rescues.
 
So next time you’re planning a performance, treat Clear Music as your first port of call!

In our last blog post, (which you can read here) we talked about the real value of free, downloaded music. We've had a fantastic response to this so far and it has been wonderful to have so many musicians start talking about this issue. 

One question that came up in our discussions proved to be very interesting. We were chatting to a friend of ours, and they said, "I know you can get copies of some things for free off the net, but where did those copies come from?"

The answer seems obvious at first - usually someone owned a hard copy, scanned it and uploaded it. These are generally old and sometimes dubious editions that are out of copyright (but not always! a story for another time....) 

Where did that hard copy come from though? Well at some point in time, a publisher saw enough value in the music of a composer to invest in the music by funding and organising its typesetting, printing, distribution, promotion and many, MANY other things.

And how is a venture like that made possible? Only through the support of musicians seeing enough value in the music to invest in the purchase of it so they can perform it in the first place.

So even music that on face value may seem free and easy to get can be traced back to a publisher at some point. By removing the relationship between performers and publishers, a vital link in the chain is falling away.

Publishers rely on the support of musicians in the same way that musicians rely on the support of their audiences. Publishers in turn use this support to continue THEIR vital support of composers.

How Free is Free Downloaded Music? 

Recently a conductor asked us for a quote for a particular Mozart symphony. After looking at the quote he said the orchestra had decided to ‘save money and get the symphony for free’ off the internet. It can be tricky balancing an ensemble's budget, but we thought it was very interesting that he mentioned he could get the symphony "for free" from the internet. In a later conversation he mentioned that it had taken him almost 20 hours of work to fix up the discrepancies between the full score and the set of parts, and even inconsistencies amongst the different parts themselves.


20 hours of work fixing a "free" score...what is that 20 hours of work actually worth? Working 20 hours at a casual job at the local bottle shop pays at least $23 an hour, so 20 hours work is $460. Not to mention all the printing and binding costs as well!


The price of that same symphony from us, the very finest edition from Bärenreiter Urtext, with full score, wind set and 5.4.3.2.1 strings, including FREE air courier delivery from overseas, arriving here six days later is......$226.00

And that score and set of parts is then in the orchestra’s library for many years to come!!

Free music = $460 in fixing time

Finest quality published edition = $226

A difference of $234

So how free is free?

In the past, editors would take earlier music and heavily edit it with their own additions. Usually this reflected the editor's personal tastes and often bore little resemblance to the composer's intentions. Many of these old editions are from the nineteenth century and are now out of copyright, which is why they are sometimes available free online. Free sheet music, sounds great doesn't it!

Like most things though, you get what you pay for. And paying nothing for music means you'll often get nothing like the composer's work. As musicians we spend years developing our technique, paying for lessons with good teachers and investing a lot of money into quality instruments so that we can perform at our best. Surely this dedication to our art should extend to the actual music we play from.

How devastating then to discover that all that time and money and passion have been wasted on a faulty musical text, complete with wrong notes, wrong dynamics, wrong articulations and wrong instrumentation! At Clear Music we can give advice on the best edition for your needs, so that you can get on with making the best music you can.