Jack Cooper - Guelph, ON Musician

I’ve decided to revamp my jack-cooper.com web site.  I debated whether or not to keep this site active, as I haven’t performed regularly for a few years and haven’t recorded anything for about eight years.  Yet I thought there might still be some worth in trying to document my past and present activities as an individual who has worn several hats in the music ‘business’:  Performer, recording artist, presenter and publisher of music.

I am still excited by music.  I love the process involved in songwriting, even though it is not something I do in a committed enough fashion to rely on as an avocation.  I recently described my writing process to someone.  Something really, really pisses me off and I obsess about it (which is not unusual in my border collie brain).  If I still am obsessing about it five days later, I should probably write it down.

I love the creation process, I love the mechanics of someone working it out, both creatively and as a business.  Oh yeah, I launched a company over a year ago called BerLen music.  I started with the premise that there likely exists some kind of market for customized sheet music and songbooks by artists to offer their fans.  And that the production process is much easier now than it was before computerized publishing tools and the advent of on-demand printing.  And that their exists a subset of fans who want more technical info about an artist’s creation process other than who their two or three biggest infuluences are.

So I workshopped over a year or so building the toolset to produce customized notation.  I also spent a few pennies on legal fees to set up shop, which leaves me in a less than desirable financial position, like most new businesses.  But we’ve got one book out, a James Gordon anthology and it looks rather swell.  There are a few more books on the way for next summer.

I’ll be dropping thoughts here related to music, some not related to music–what the heck, it’s my dime, isn’t it?  We’ll see where things go from here.