For artists coming to Monocacy Creek House Concerts
Latest news
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Here is Richard's hand crafted AVET (audio video equipment tower).
The items on the shelves include an Amazon Dot to turn on room speakers and control some lights, a Yeti microphone to allow us to do live streaming (sometime in the future) to Concert Window and earn more money for our artists, a camcorder with a remote controlled device to aim it, a dashcam to support the video portion of Concert Window, a Zoom recorder and a transmitter to our room speakers. As Richard says often, "Spare no expense." What he really means is "acquire all the gadgets you can." With the permission of our artists, we will soon be recording our concerts (both video and audio). These recordings are for our own use and enjoyment and we are willing to sign any agreement that says we won't broadcast or distribute them anywhere public. If we enter into the live streaming effort, this will also be only with the permission of the artists and subscription money from the streamed concerts is paid directly to the artists. |
Overview
If you feel that you need an excuse to justify visiting Martin Guitar, their facility is very close to us. Just sayin'.
Thanks to Judi Space and her mailing list, we now have nearly 400 subscribers on our list. Martha is pressing her friends from Mo’s drum class, the PA Sinfonia, LVH and Toastmasters to join.
Our first concert was in July 2017 and the second in October. We have a commitment from well-known local musician, Craig Thatcher (along with Nike van Wyk) for the April 22,2018 concert. We will be looking and listening at NERFA in November to book more musicians for later in the spring and in the fall.
The running average attendance is 35 donating guests. Attendance nearly doubled between the first and second concert. Already 37 guests have signed up for the third concert and, as of this writing, the concert is nearly two months away!
We heard only one concern expressed more than once. "Are you really going to make us wait until spring for the next concert?" We counted it four separate times on the latest audio recording.
Our plan is to follow Judi and Mike’s schedule of two concerts in the spring and two in the fall (at least until we retire, if that ever happens.) Artists should try booking well in advance.
You could be touring and passing through or you might have our home as a destination. In either case, you will be well taken care of. Better yet, if you call the Lehigh Valley home, you will find our home most welcoming.
We are located between the boroughs of Bath and Nazareth, PA. Lehigh Valley cities Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton are at most 20 minutes away. You can get to us from Philadelphia to the south in about 90 minutes. New York to the east is about two hours away. For these you can take I 476 or I 78 respectively.
If you need a place to stay for the night (or even a day or two), we can put you up. We have both a guest suite and a “mother-in-law” apartment available within our home. Both have access to separate laundry centers, right there. If you stay with us, you will not be roughing it.
We would love to have you dine with us. Let us know in advance if you have dietary desires: vegetarian, vegan, kosher, gluten free... You name it and we will try to make you happy.
You should be able to cover popular songs. We are fans of singer-songwriters. We like (and perhaps you do too) a mix of old and new, and even sing-alongs. Performing a cover can involve licensing and rights management. As members of the International Folk Alliance we subscribe to their service for this. They’ve negotiated an agreement with ASCAP and BMI (not SESAC, however). It covers private performances at house concerts. You can sing Beatles' or Elvis' songs to your heart's content. We are covered by this agreement with the PROs and we are careful to comply with the rules to be considered a "house concert".
We take great care to make performances work. We have over four dozen chairs picked for audience comfort plus our regular furniture. At 8 square feet per chair, we should be able to seat 55 audience members with room to spare and 65 in a pinch.
We have a theater lighting system from Stage Ape (“because it’s a jungle out there.”) We also have a super tricked-out sound system. Judi passed on to us the two large Mackie speakers she and Mike were using for their concerts. To this we added three wired microphones, two wireless microphones, a four channel mixer, a stereo amplifier and hookup to our house sound system. You can hear it nearly anywhere in our house. Headphones allow those with more sound system and performance requirements knowledge than we have to tune the whole thing.
With the artists permission we record their performances. We use a Zoom Handy H1 recorder to make a quality, high fidelity lossless recording. Recording directly from the mixer is also possible. Copies of these belong to you, the artist, to do with as you please. Do I need to say more than "<Your name> Live from Monocacy Creek House Concerts <date>"
Because one of us (Richard) doesn’t know when to stop with the gadgets, there will likely soon be video recording available for music you own and perform. And we plan to support live streaming video to Windows Concerts for added performer revenue.
Oh, and by the way, we have a concert baby grand piano that you can play or it can play itself, a guitar and a banjo (the last two of these probably need tuning) and, of course, drums.
Thanks to Judi Space and her mailing list, we now have nearly 400 subscribers on our list. Martha is pressing her friends from Mo’s drum class, the PA Sinfonia, LVH and Toastmasters to join.
Our first concert was in July 2017 and the second in October. We have a commitment from well-known local musician, Craig Thatcher (along with Nike van Wyk) for the April 22,2018 concert. We will be looking and listening at NERFA in November to book more musicians for later in the spring and in the fall.
The running average attendance is 35 donating guests. Attendance nearly doubled between the first and second concert. Already 37 guests have signed up for the third concert and, as of this writing, the concert is nearly two months away!
We heard only one concern expressed more than once. "Are you really going to make us wait until spring for the next concert?" We counted it four separate times on the latest audio recording.
Our plan is to follow Judi and Mike’s schedule of two concerts in the spring and two in the fall (at least until we retire, if that ever happens.) Artists should try booking well in advance.
You could be touring and passing through or you might have our home as a destination. In either case, you will be well taken care of. Better yet, if you call the Lehigh Valley home, you will find our home most welcoming.
We are located between the boroughs of Bath and Nazareth, PA. Lehigh Valley cities Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton are at most 20 minutes away. You can get to us from Philadelphia to the south in about 90 minutes. New York to the east is about two hours away. For these you can take I 476 or I 78 respectively.
If you need a place to stay for the night (or even a day or two), we can put you up. We have both a guest suite and a “mother-in-law” apartment available within our home. Both have access to separate laundry centers, right there. If you stay with us, you will not be roughing it.
We would love to have you dine with us. Let us know in advance if you have dietary desires: vegetarian, vegan, kosher, gluten free... You name it and we will try to make you happy.
You should be able to cover popular songs. We are fans of singer-songwriters. We like (and perhaps you do too) a mix of old and new, and even sing-alongs. Performing a cover can involve licensing and rights management. As members of the International Folk Alliance we subscribe to their service for this. They’ve negotiated an agreement with ASCAP and BMI (not SESAC, however). It covers private performances at house concerts. You can sing Beatles' or Elvis' songs to your heart's content. We are covered by this agreement with the PROs and we are careful to comply with the rules to be considered a "house concert".
- Performance is in a private home
- Performance is by invitation only*
- *the intent of the “invitation only” regulation is that a person cannot just come without some connection to the presenter or artist (i.e. a “wide circle of family and friends”) The details of that compliance might include but not be limited to 1) not publicly displaying your address 2) “by invitation only” or “call for invitation” on all information accessible to the public (i.e. website, flyers)
We take great care to make performances work. We have over four dozen chairs picked for audience comfort plus our regular furniture. At 8 square feet per chair, we should be able to seat 55 audience members with room to spare and 65 in a pinch.
We have a theater lighting system from Stage Ape (“because it’s a jungle out there.”) We also have a super tricked-out sound system. Judi passed on to us the two large Mackie speakers she and Mike were using for their concerts. To this we added three wired microphones, two wireless microphones, a four channel mixer, a stereo amplifier and hookup to our house sound system. You can hear it nearly anywhere in our house. Headphones allow those with more sound system and performance requirements knowledge than we have to tune the whole thing.
With the artists permission we record their performances. We use a Zoom Handy H1 recorder to make a quality, high fidelity lossless recording. Recording directly from the mixer is also possible. Copies of these belong to you, the artist, to do with as you please. Do I need to say more than "<Your name> Live from Monocacy Creek House Concerts <date>"
Because one of us (Richard) doesn’t know when to stop with the gadgets, there will likely soon be video recording available for music you own and perform. And we plan to support live streaming video to Windows Concerts for added performer revenue.
Oh, and by the way, we have a concert baby grand piano that you can play or it can play itself, a guitar and a banjo (the last two of these probably need tuning) and, of course, drums.
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