Hello, Newgrounds! You seem well. Tom's recent news posts have been digital smorgasbords. And I notice the Tablet Giveaway has been giving out some impressive prize money (thanks to some generous sponsors). There were a few years when it seemed Newgrounds as a platform was going through hard times. Now, at least to an outsider like myself, it certainly appears to be enjoying a resurgence in vibrancy and community. It's wonderful to see.

Here's an update on what I've been up to lately:

Keys To Giving: www.bentibbetts.net/KeysToGiving

I would say probably the biggest project of the last two months was "Keys To Giving".

"Keys to Giving" was a benefit concert at Trinity Church of Austin to raise money for Thrift-ish, which is a local charity that gives free clothes to people who need them. We brought together about twenty musicians and put on a giant concert on December 6th.

I spent a lot of time in November preparing for this event by organizing rehearsals, writing arrangements for people, coordinating the logistics, and in general doing my best to ensure that the concert was as much of a success as it could be.

And I would say that it definitely was a success. Through the night, I'm told that we raised over a thousand dollars for Thrift-ish.

"Keys to Giving" will be posted online pretty soon. We are working on getting that video ready. In the meantime, I have the arrangements and some of the audio from the concert on my website. And many thanks again to all of the talented local musicians who volunteered their time.

Music for Reed Organ: www.bentibbetts.net/ReedOrgan

Another very large project in the last two months was "Music For Reed Organ", my collaboration with my friend Keith Allegretti.

Earlier this year, Keith managed to procure this antique reed organ from the 1800s, which you operate by pumping with your feet. Ever since he got it, we've been chatting and brainstorming about how we might write music for it and use it to create novel soundscapes.

After a couple of months of meeting intermittently to talk about it, we managed to put together this album of original music recorded with this antique instrument. And with the help of our friend Bethany Ammon, a local mezzo-soprano, we were able to add a new dimension to the album. It is available for free on Keith's YouTube channel.

The Nightmares Of Odette: www.bentibbetts.net/Odette

I contributed two pieces of mine to "Music For Reed Organ". The first was an arrangement of my previous composition, "When Love Beckons to You," which Bethany Ammon sang beautifully. The other was an original solo called "The Nightmares of Odette."

That last piece represented a special challenge because, in addition to recording my performance on the organ, I decided to use artificial intelligence to generate a number of creepy animations to accompany the music.

This was a lot like what I did with one of my previous projects, "Birth of a Gorgon."

The result was unsettling and sometimes pretty beautiful, although I would definitely caution that it's not suitable for children.

The Audio Store: www.bentibbetts.net/AudioStore

I uploaded a new track to the audio store in December. This brought the total number of new releases to the store this year to 12, which was my goal. (I wanted to have an average of one new release per month.)

The tracks that I've been releasing on the store are intended to be used for film, games, and media in general. They don't tend to feature large spikes in volume; the mood of each particular track tends to stay somewhat consistent and static; and there's a definite tendency in these tracks to recede into the background.

I still plan to write and release music that is designed to be used that way. However, I think I might have more luck producing quality content by trying to write music that's interesting first.

Who's to say I couldn't write a sonata or a symphony and then simply release sections of it on the audio store, redesigned so as to be more conducive to background music?

It seems to me that if I just wrote and composed organically--and then thought after the fact about how I might rearrange this music into something that could be useful on the store--that might produce better music in the end. I'm not sure, but I'm playing around with that idea. I might shift my strategy on that project in 2023.

Thoughts For The New Year

This leads me to some of my plans and hopes for the next year. There are a couple of things I hope to gradually change and improve.

I'd like to write more music for media, and I think maybe the best way to do that--to find excuses for doing that--will be to participate in game jams, and possibly to work with Austin Public again in some capacity.

I also hope to scale back the number of gigs that I take on, including UIL related events, and teach more instead. Teaching is something that could maybe grow as a business in a way that gigging cannot.

When it comes to gigs, I'm either there playing the piano or I'm not; but when it comes to teaching, I could just barely imagine hiring an assistant down the road to help me prepare for lessons, create lesson materials, create opportunities for students to perform and record music.

Teaching is something that could grow more as a business, and having that epiphany recently has led me to adjust my priorities slightly. It seems to me that if something can scale, it can help more people and do more good. Teaching seems like an opportunity for me to do that.

Doing this concert for charity has reminded me that there are opportunities to help people that I could take advantage of more often. I'd like to do more of that in the coming year. Maybe I could give some percentage of every lesson fee to a charity that I admire, or I could host more benefit concerts. I'm not sure, but I know that I want that to be a bigger part of my life. It's important to me. So those are some of my thoughts about the near-term future.

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And on that note: happy New Year! I hope you all are staying warm and doing well.

Best wishes,

Ben