averagejoe

I put this up on TH and got some nice feedback, so I thought I'd solicit some here as well. We just did a website for our quintet...wanted something cheap and easy for us to maintain on our own. A friend created the site for us and trained me for about an hour on how to use the software for changes/updates. It isn't fancy, but hopefully information is clear and easy to find. Let me know if you see anything I can tweak to make it better:

Midtown Brass Quintet

Thanks in advance!

Paul Poovey

brem

I already answered on TH ;) he heee

asc1969

The site looks great as far as I'm concerned. Have you thought of possibly adding an "Appearances" link so people would know when/where you might be playing? Other than that it looks/sounds great.

rowuk

Paul,
nice looking site, great playing!

Your excerpts page has everything for geeks and some types of church gigs.

If you want some corporate/restaurant/party jobs, you need to find some "standards". The Penny Lane cut is way too virtuosic for most casual listeners that you find in business! We have had good luck with demos of a fanfare like L'Orfeo from Monteverdi or the MGM fanfare, some moderate jazz like Jive for 5(Nagle) or the Canadian Brass Just a Closer Walk and a march or two. The corporate booker is looking for "entertainment" to augment the event, not an event to augment the quintets performance. The pieces for events should be 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 minutes long.
Advertise music with corporate themes (heat/energy/light with You are the Sunshine of my Life" for instance), Clothing industry with "King Cotton" by Sousa. You all have the chops, the opportunities need to be made.
Great job!

averagejoe

Thanks, all --

Brem -- I'm still working on the nav bar alignment. I can get them aligned, but I can't figure out why, on some pages, the link buttons are spread out a little bit, while on others, they are closer together. I may just have to deal with it and move on.

asc1969 -- We originally did have a "calendar" page, but we're not busy enough yet to keep it extremely full. Wouldn't look good for people to see it almost empty! We opted for a "news" page instead. That way we can keep people informed of events (and other stuff too) without adding the expectation of seeing a full calendar.

Robin -- We do have an extensive repertoire of pops/jazz stuff, and we will be recording/posting them down the line...everything from Elvis to Etta James to Natalie Cole...even Britney Spears! We've also got lots of standards...Irving Berlin, Carlos Jobim, Sinatra, etc... Right now, it is wedding season, so our priority is to get a representative sample of that material done.

Interesting that you feel that way about Penny Lane...it is one of our most requested numbers (as are "When I'm 64" and "Obla-di Obla-da")...can't go wrong with ANY Beatles tune!


Thanks, everyone! Keep 'em coming --

Paul

brem

average joe: I've never honestly been able to do a clean job with Microsoft FrontPage. I've always been more successful when I wrote my own xhtml and css. But that requires a bit more involvment and knowledge of how things work...

averagejoe

I hear you, Brem -- I'm a LONG way off from heading in that direction, but maybe one day! BTW, I just bit the bullet and re-did all of the buttons. Except for the front page (for obvious reasons), the nav bars and page headings are now aligned! Thanks again!

Paul

brem

average joe: I know this sounds like a huge deal, but have you tried using a blog platform for your website? Even though you might now want to hold an actual blog, this piece of software is always getting improvement by developers and you can actually do quite a bit without knowing much...

Wordpress is what I used for my blog: brem experience [fr]

It's minimalist, but there are plenty of examples where people made awesome websites with either Wordpress or another CMS (Content Management System).

brem

Example with Matthew Good's website/blog: matthewgood.org

Of course, you can use any template and modify it to suit your taste.

tromj

Site looks great. And you guys sound even better!