You probably know that I am writing a lot these days. The cool thing with long writings is that you have to tidy up your thoughts and make them (at least look) coherent. It involves digging into my past and understanding whatever positions I could have taken in the last 15 years to properly connect the dots between my ideas. And this is the point where I am supposed to give you the lecture about me changing over the years and being a better person and artist. Guess what? I’m not going to give you this lecture at all.

When I released Introducing Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont for free in July last year, I already knew a free strategy wouldn’t last forever, even if I secretly hoped people would be generous enough to allow me to make the second album free too. Although everyone praised the release, my secret dream didn’t happen, so back to the plan A. The free strategy had a primary goal: gaining traction in a complicated market. But recording an album, as romantic as it seems, always ends up in the same way: paying the bills.

These next two weeks, I will be off the grid. The recording is coming very fast, I launched the fundraising campaign this week-end, I now need to lock myself into the practice room and focus on what’s important: the music.

I launched at the beginning of this year the #LvBFact hashtag: Everyday at 4pm GMT I tweet about Ludwig van Beethoven. Having a Beethoven album on its way, I’ve read quite a lot about the composer over the last months and I wanted to share the information with more people than the people I speak to everyday.

Not so long ago, I was a struggling artist. I was depressed because my career wasn’t taking off, I was feeling like a dog abandoned on the highway of success before a summer vacation. However, I had everything in my power to be successful: a solid experience, ideas, guts and people believing in and supporting me. What did prevent me to be happy and successful? Keep reading to discover it!

Since my youth, I have a passion for studio equipment, recording and editing techniques. knew a lot about the brands, their different products, the software (yes, I’m young enough not to have lived the glorious era of tape recorders) and if I don’t really up to date with that now, I’ve been much more interested in exploring the possibilities offered by the tools and how this can serve the music I play and the recording I want to produce.

Soaking or not soaking, that is the question. Some pianists use to soak their arms into hot water before playing. Does it have any tangible benefit? Is it just a whim? I tried for you and here is my report. Obviously I found the technique very interesting and the experience positive. Let’s see why.

Time flies when you have a an album on its way… We all know how much every new experience can change the way you see (or think about) things. If I still believe in these thoughts written a few months ago, this recording sessions for my first album really modified my perception of studio work.

You certainly noticed a proliferation of companies calling themselves artistic agencies or record labels. Lots of emails from these companies flattering me and offering me management or a recording contract went through my inbox. When I opened the first email, I was excited to get an offer and I went on reading it carefully, thinking a manager was interested in my projects. In fact what I read was one of the most unfair offer on the market.

One year ago, one of my readers asked me how I feel about competitions and if I could write something about this hot topic. I really had to think about it (one year!) and find the right time to publish this. But, wait, aren’t we in the middle of a series of posts dedicated to Janáček? Yes, absolutely, but you’ll soon understand the connection. As you can notice in my biography, I didn’t “win” any prize in any competition. Not that I never attended one, I did join one but I decided right after that I will never do it again. But don’t worry, I won’t bother you here with the traditional music-competitions-are-evil. Things are not that simple.