The Collaborative Process - an Introduction and Dance for marimba and composer

Well it is so on now. That gangly cracker over at Wilsonmarimba.blogspot.com and myself have decided to get our joint blog venture / publicity stunt a rolling. The goal of this is for myself and Chris Wilson, Masterimbist, to engage in discussion of the typically musical variety. We will be asking each other questions, answering them, and maybe engage in long distance "just friends" spooning afterwards while we watch the sun rise. I would also encourage the readership to submit questions for us to answer from our respective perspectives.

Chris has set the guidelines up as such:

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I feel I should make some guidelines. I am not opposed to reader comments or discussion. However, I have no problems with completely deleting inappropriate comments. The point of many of my blogs is to inform younger readers, so the last thing I want is for their opinions to be warped by the uneducated minds of an anonymous reader. If you’re thinking, “well, why should I care about your opinions?” then you can check my credentials on my website.

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My guidelines for commenting on this site will be a little more lax. I will not delete comments unless it is spam, obvious trolling, or completely irrelevant. I'm assuming there are not many young readers lurking around my blog (or many readers in general) so feel free to go nuts in the comments. And as far as why you should care about my opinion? Hell if I know, you are the one reading this blog. I do my best to back up my ideas as I go along, but I realize that my education is no indication of the validity of my opinion (athough it may mean it is a more informed opinion).

So in short: Keep it professional on Wilson's Site, he has sponsors and VIPs reading his blog ready to drop a 5 gallon money hat and a solid gold 7 octave marimba (or however big they get) marimba on him at any moment. I don't, and as a composer, I doubt I ever will have sponsors to worry about (Brian Van Winkle uses exclusively CARTA manuscript paper... see? sounds silly). Also, I want this to be a place where musicians and others feel free to be completely unprofessional, free from the serious world of music.

Anyways, that does it for my intro. Go over to Wilson's blog to check out the answer he gave to the first question I sent him. I will try and answer his first questions (yes multiple... it was like a 15 parter, I may have to break it up to keep this dialogue going longer) tomorrow or saturday, but I am in the middle of the closing week of playing in a pit orchestra for Little Women the musical and have to finish some DMA apps so if I don't get to them until sunday/monday, deal with.

Also, Chris wants suggestions for a better name. I think this works.