Wondering what’s been going on with the site lately? James gives you the latest update. This covers a wide range of topics—the effects of COVID on the music education industry, composing & arranging, James’ personal story of recent events, and a new focus for Rudimental University. You can watch the video or read the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everybody. This is James Christian with RudimentalUniversity.com. And this video is entitled: “A New Focus (or What Happened to The Percussion Circle?)”

The Percussion Circle No Longer Being Made

Well, if you have followed this channel, you know that the videos more recently have corresponded with an online publication called The Percussion Circle magazine. And unfortunately, that magazine is currently not being released anymore.

And I’ll go into more on that in a little while. But basically, it was an online magazine that started in 2020. And every issue covered eight different percussion instruments. And each article was meant specifically for high-school level students and percussion instructors for a high-school level. And so every article would cover a different instrument.

So, say, on the snare drums, it might cover flams on one issue. And for marimba, it might cover permutations. And so each of those skills would have different exercises for them. One would be easy for someone who was pretty new to the instrument, one would be a more intermediate level, and another would be more advanced. And so that way, no matter where your level was, there was something in it for you to work on.

And that was, again, intended more for a high-school-level audience. But I would think even college-level and professional-level players would find things of interest as well.

And there were a lot of articles on different topics, and we got a lot of really great people to help contribute content to those—Larry Lawless, and Todd Ukena, and MacKenzie Webb. We even pulled some keyboard exercises from one of Beethoven’s students, Carl Czerny. And we had just a lot of cool stuff.

So if you haven’t seen The Percussion Circle, the issues are still online—free to read and free to practice from. So the link will be in the description on how to access those. [Click here to read.] But lots of great stuff there if that’s something you’re interested in.

Broadening the Rudimental University’s Focus

But as far as the new focus of the channel, since the publication had to end, I personally have been focusing a lot more on composing and arranging, and that’s kind of where I’m at right now.

So I don’t want the channel to focus solely on just percussion exclusively anymore. I’m going to branch it out to talk about all sorts of things about music, especially on the composing
and arranging side of things. I think that will make a broader, more interesting channel for musicians of all sorts.

And I’ll still have some videos occasionally that still focus on specifically percussion things. But this will just make a more interesting, well-rounded channel. So if you enjoy composing and music and all that, definitely subscribe to this channel and let any friends that are composers know that as well.

The Story of The Percussion Circle: A COVID Tragedy

So let me tell you the fun, but sad, story of The Percussion Circle magazine. It was the fall of 2019. I had been planning to create this publication for some time, and I had saved up a bit of money to get the whole thing started off. And it was intended to be a magazine that would go out to every high school in the country.

And like I said, every issue would have those different focuses to really help percussionists across the country (and also instructors). I got so many questions from band directors who were suddenly having to teach percussion, and they were like, “How do we do this!? I don’t know what to teach.” Or: “My percussionists in concert band are just bored and not knowing what to do, so I need something for them to work on.” So it was intended to fit that need and just provide a really helpful service for teachers and percussionists alike.

So anyway, in 2019, I went to working part time. I worked with a school teaching their drum line and tech-ing their battery—and for winter drum line and all that. And I was really focusing on getting this publication ready for the fall of 2020.

And I had some big-name companies who were interested in advertising with it. And I was in the process of building that whole thing up over the spring of 2020 in the beginning— early like January, February.

And, of course, we know what happened in March of 2020—COVID came, and all the schools shut down.

And sadly, it really affected music instrument manufacturers and writers—all of that. A lot of the bands didn’t do marching band the fall of 2020. Or if they did, they just did something very limited. And so a lot of instrument companies weren’t selling. And a lot of composers and arrangers weren’t getting the same commissions they normally did. And I even wrote an article about it in 2021—just how COVID had really affected the music education industry.

And anyway, it was weird. There were some companies—I’m not going to say all the names of everybody—but there were some companies that have been around for, like, 75 years that are just staples of American music. And so I was calling, trying to talk with people to see how COVID was affecting them. And one time I happened to get a manager, and he was the only person in the building in the warehouse. And he said, “Yeah, we’re not allowed to sell anything.”

Or actually in New York, they were allowed to sell things that had already been made, but they couldn’t make any new products. And I know in California, they had warehouses full of instruments that had been made, and there had been orders for them. And they weren’t even allowed to sell that. And so there were just a lot of different restrictions around the country that really put a financial strain on these companies and the people who worked for them.

Unfortunately, that meant that their advertising budgets— they didn’t have a lot of revenue coming in. So they had to pull advertising from things that weren’t real “sure things.” Because the magazine is a new thing. And when you’re feeling good about your future income, then you’re more likely to experiment and try new things. And when money is tight, then you go with the tried-and-true things.

So we still got a few excellent sponsors who did help out, but it wasn’t enough to make print copies that were going around to the whole country. A lot of schools were closed down, so students weren’t even there to be receiving those copies.

And so anyway, we tried it for a digital version and put out four issues. And it just it just wasn’t going to—we just couldn’t get the numbers. And the companies just didn’t have the revenue to be able to afford something like that at that time.

Yeah, when I was doing the magazine, I had at least, at different points, five different people working in different capacities with the social media, and editing, and just different things. I was trying to build up a whole team, and it was really coming together in early 2020 and had good prospects. I still had all the way until the summer to be building all that up. And so I was trying to get the whole group together and build a great team and create a really awesome resource. And unfortunately, that just didn’t all come together the way I would have hoped at the time.

James’ Recent Journey

But I learned a lot from that, and I think I’ve got some better things that’ll work—stronger business-wise, and it’ll be cool resources that people will really like.

And so the whole thing had to shut down. And so I got really busy. I had to go back to working a 9:00-to-5:00 job and got back into teaching, which I’ve really enjoyed, and I have always enjoyed teaching, I actually taught a year at a classical school, which was really interesting. I learned a lot about that. And now I’m back into teaching—I actually switched to elementary music, and I’m enjoying that because that gives me a little more time than when you’re teaching older grades with marching band. So I don’t have any after-school rehearsals, or Friday football games, or Saturday contests, or any of that. So that’s that’s really helped free up some time.

So I’ve got some other really cool things planned for the future. I haven’t given up on providing great educational resources, so I’m going to keep at that. And like I said, I’m focusing more on composing and arranging now, so I’m going to do something that will branch out to musicians of all sorts now.

I came up with a new composition technique that I’ll be sharing in the future. As far as I know, no one else has used this before. I’ve searched high and low and have not found any other composer that’s known for using this. That doesn’t mean no one else has. I’m sure someone has thought of this idea before, but as far as I know, no one else has publicized it.

The New Focus

And for now I’m going to keep the Rudimental University Press, for the—I mean, it’s still publishing books and cadences and things like that. So definitely check that out. But Rudimental University—there are rudiments of music. And so when you’re learning about composing and arranging and anything else with music, you still gotta know the rudiments of that. So, I think it’s still—we’ll still keep the channel the same name and just branch out on what that is. We may change at some point in the future. But for now, it’s a good name, and people know it and like it. So we’ll stick with that.

So anyway, like I said, there’s a lot of cool things coming up, so I’m going to try to get content out at least once a week. In the past, videos took quite a while, because I did a lot of editing on them and had all the fancy things with the different graphics and sheet music and all that kind of stuff. So I’ll still do some of those kinds of things, but I’m going to try to do more where I just talk— where I can just make a video quickly and very minimal editing and get it out. That way you get more frequent content and stuff that will be helpful.

So with this new focus, if there are specific topics about music in general that you’re interested in, or percussion, or composing, or anything like that—definitely let me know, and I’d love to see what people are interested in. But for now, I have quite a few things planned that I will be putting out in the near future, and I hope you enjoy.

And definitely subscribe to the channel and be on the lookout for new things. I think you’ll like what you see.

So thanks so much for watching today, and I will see you next time. Bye!