Latest / 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast / Looking Back on 2023 and What's Ahead for 2024

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Looking Back on 2023 and What's Ahead for 2024 · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:30
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's because we live here less than a half an hour, 45 minutes away from Kennedy, and a couple of days ago we watched the Falcon 9 rocket take off, and so there's a big launch, tons of energy.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: We have to escape Earth's gravity.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: It takes a lot of momentum to lift off and that's kind of where we are at the first of the year.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But once you're in space, it's an endless string of micro corrections.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: A little puff of rocket burst here, a little burn here.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: This booster, this rocket, this little, just little.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: All to stay on course.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: What is happening?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Everybody?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: And welcome back to another episode of the 52 Q's podcast, your weekly insight into all things production and library music.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Whether you're simply curious about the sync industry or learning to write better cues, or maybe you're ready to pitch to publishers, I promise you you're in the right place.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: My name is Dave Croft and it is so good to be with you today.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And if you find this video helpful, then why don't you give it a thumbs up here on YouTube or a five star review in your podcast app?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And please be sure to subscribe, because I put out content about production and library music every week.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Today's episode wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of our member subscribers here at 52 Q's, who not only keep the community alive and thriving, but as members they get access to extra features like workshops, live streams, office hours, cue breakdowns, zoom feedback sessions, hundreds of hours of video archives and opportunities to submit to real music libraries.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So maybe you're feeling stuck, or maybe you're finally ready to take your sync career to the next level.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: If this sounds like you, then head over to 52Qscom.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: It's free to join and membership starts at only four bucks a month.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: We'd love to have you, okay.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: So here we are at the end of the year.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Well, specifically that kind of middle time between Christmas and New Years where you're starting to get a lot of lists and a lot of best of or worst of, and I kind of want to do that a little bit here on this episode.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Mostly, I want to take stock of the year, take a breath before the next year, because there's a lot of, there's a lot of really good energy at the beginning of the year, whether they're resolutions or commitments or whatever you're thinking.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's a time for a fresh start, and the name January comes from the Greek God Janus, and Janus is a two-faced God from Greek mythology, with a face looking backwards and a face looking forward, and so that's that's what this episode's really about Looking back on 2023 and looking forward to 2024 here on the YouTube channel and in the podcast, as well as in the 52Q's community.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So for me, and for me as a person, as a composer, and kind of where the next stage of my career is going, so as a composer, 2023, I dubbed the year of balance.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I like putting year of something you know it might be back to center, or the week of, or the year of getting better.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Those are kind of the last couple of years and it's a theme that I try to carry through through the entire year.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: So if 2023 was the year of balance, what is 2024?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to be honest, I don't know yet.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: It's my hope that by the end of this episode I'll have figured this out by kind of taking stock of the year, looking back on how things were and looking forward.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It's my hope in real time that I can get that sorted out, and then in my notes it says the year of blank.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: It's nothing there yet.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: But 2023 was my year of balance.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: How did I do?
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Well, in some ways I did great, but in other ways not so much.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I noticed and I talked about this last week I noticed that some things got a little out of balance, especially in the first quarter, the first three months of the year, as I was pushing into my year of taxi and we'll talk about that here in a second and that got kind of out of balance for me.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: But it's not that it's out of balance, it's more like the balance is shifting for me as I move into the second part of my career as a production music composer and what that evolution looks like.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And, as you know, I'm now looking at the back.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: You know, third of my life, I'm entering into act three of my life, and acts threes are usually where the big finale happens, the big climax happens, and the characters either get what they want and then defeat their villains, or maybe they don't, and it's a tragedy.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I hope it's not a tragedy.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Either way, though, 2024 represents kind of the next act, the third act of a film, the next act, the third act of who I'm going to be as a person, as a composer, as a husband, and so things got a little bit out of balance.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: But let's talk some numbers.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: First, I wrote 72 cues this past year and, like I talked about last year, I keep a running kind of playlist over in my SoundCloud page Just because it helps me keep track of what I've written.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: I listen to these all the time and I really enjoy kind of going back and looking and, oh man, I remember where I was, where I was in my headspace or whatever when I wrote that, and looking back here and I can kind of see the projects and it's really, it's really interesting and fascinating.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And so 72 cues, which is still, you know, a little bit over one a week, but I'm half of what my normal pace would be.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: But I think that's because, even though I wrote 72 cues, I also had a hand in publishing 168 cues, most of which came through our briefing room and the briefing room is a feature of the family subscription over at 52 cues and I'm not here to sell it, it's not the point of this, I'm not here to sell it but just to kind of celebrate it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: 166 cues ranging from Spanish guitar cues, high true crime, tension cues, pga cues, epic Christmas covers and one of these epic Christmas covers was featured last weekend on the NFL on CBS Yep, the NFL today.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Actually one of these Christmas.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So a huge, huge shout out to Jens and big congratulations.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Had midseason refresh.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: We had an eclectic Christmas search for level 77 music and these albums were published and we had such a big response that we made two albums quirky Christmas volume one and quirky Christmas volume two.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: A huge shout out to Jason over at level 77.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: We're already gearing up for the next one, and so that's really exciting and that is where I am finding myself here lately as I pushing into publishing and I talked about this briefly last last week and my kind of what's next birthday episode.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: It just feels natural and it feels right.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: It's totally organic and I'm going with it and it makes sense because it's just a natural extension of me as a teacher and me as a mentor helping other people reach their goals.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what teaching is all about.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: It's about helping somebody reach the thing that they are shooting for, whether it's learning to write music, whether it's, you know, learning to rebuild motorcycle engines or whatever.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: That's what teachers do.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: They help people achieve a goal that they've set out for themselves, and so publishers help composers do that, and so being able to leverage who I am as a teacher and a mentor into helping composers in the community find homes for their music beyond.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Just.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Here's how you write cues.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Go write some cues, go pitch them.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I hope it works out.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: No, what we're doing at 52 cues is beyond that and it's all happened completely organically, which tells me that this is mine to do and this is what the universe has in store for me, and these are the plans that the universe has for me.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to walk in that until it doesn't feel right anymore, until it rubs against my for lack of a better word not to get too woo-woo-wee, but until it rubs against my spirit about it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: But this is all just grown out of what the community is and who I am.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: It just makes sense.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And so, yes, I've written 72 cues but published 168.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: That's 168 cues that I have with, you know, probably 30, 40 different composers, that's.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: There might be more.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Those are what I could track from doing my napkin math in my disco account and across my Google Drive and all of that.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to, I'm just going to walk through this, I'm going to say, ok, universe, I'm hearing you, this is, this is what you have me doing and it makes sense, and I'm going to do it Now.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier my year of taxi and this is where things started to get a little out of balance and I've talked about this on the podcast and I don't want to, you know, kind of relitigate all of this.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I bet it's litigate but I don't want to rehash all of it.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: But you know, I started out wanting to do a grand experiment, which was write one cue per week and pitch it up to taxi and track those cues and the process of those cues all the way throughout the year.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And just so the goal was, you know, back in back last year, when I made an episode just like this and said this is what we're doing, my goal was that I could stay right here on an episode, just like today, and tell you those stats.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: But about 17 weeks in I realized that I was a putting that on the front burner, which meant that I didn't have room on my stove to do the things that that clients and the community and my students needed from me.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Because I had committed to this thing, I told you, told you, told the internet, right here on YouTube, I'm going to write a cue per week, put it out there for taxi and track it all.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: And I had to ask myself well, why am I doing this?
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And it's not right for me, it's not mine to do if it comes at the cost of sacrificing relationship capital over here.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: And that's what was happening.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I was dropping the ball in other projects.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Now it was born out of wanting motivation to write every week which I really respond to.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: It's what 52 cues is.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: It's one of the foundational tenants just write at least one cue per week.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: The other foundation is feedback right Feedback, peer review and mentorship.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That's that's that's what 52 cues is all about.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So in that sense it did happen.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: But I was writing to taxi briefs and realizing that I wasn't writing to briefs I already had and to publishers I already had.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: And at 17 at around, at week 17,.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I had to.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I had to pull the cord because it wasn't worth torching relationships for that.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: It was disappointing and I understand I was disappointed.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: You know, kind of in myself, because I never want to say something and then not deliver.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I know one of one of my challenges, one of my weaknesses, if you will, is over promising and under delivering.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: That usually comes out of wanting to give so much, which sounds like you know, a job interview.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: You know what's your greatest weakness?
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I love too much.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: It's not like that.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: It's more a case of my vocational eyes being much bigger than my stomach.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: And so I say, yep, I want to do all that, that, that, that, that and that.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And then I don't actually do the math on OK, what, what, what?
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: What type of investment of time are you going to be able to do to this?
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Can you actually do those things and maintain a healthy work life balance at the end of the day?
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, rather no, I couldn't and I didn't.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And I called up Michael Alaska and told him I said, hey, this is what's happening, this is what I want to do, you know, and, and and also you know, I kind of We've poked at some things that that I got some pushback on and that, the end of the day, it just wasn't the smartest thing for me to keep pushing into that and, and all that said, I wasn't getting any traction with the cues that were getting forwarded.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: You know, had some disagreements with some things that that were returned, and yeah, it just it just started creating internal friction and so I just I just stopped.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: It was healthier for me to just stop Disappointing, yes, but the healthy thing to do and I like to think the the emotionally mature and professionally mature thing to do is to see something mid process and say this isn't working, let's course correct.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I don't have to wait until week 52 to course correct and just say, hey, man, the last forty weeks was a huge, huge mistake.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: No, so that's what happened.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: That's what happened with the year year of taxi and still still love the folks over at taxi.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I did not renew my subscription because I can't.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I can't work towards maintaining new relationships, right, I'm still working on the relationships I already have and I am spending my energy in In building up those relationships.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And I think it was in that space, in stepping back from writing, writing, writing, writing, writing that allowed for an opportunity to get into publishing.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: The briefing room came out of that and I've been much happier publishing 168 cues and writing 72 cues than I would have been writing 168 cues and only publishing 72 cues.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you, yeah, it's interesting how that works.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Some other things going on over at the 52Q's community I did Q Breakdowns.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: We do Q Breakdowns every single week and I have 52 of those Q Breakdowns.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: This is past week I did a breakdown of a classical disco Q, so really really proud of those.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Also, we had 12 monthly workshops, including a return of Mr Marlin Gibbons.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: We had a lot of fantastic guests joining us.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Shannon did a music theory workshop, dean Cropane joined us.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I did a workshop on writing trailer cues.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: We had Jason Moss with Bulletproof Bear do some Q&A and Q reviews.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: We had the Anthony Clint Jr join us and he gave us Q reviews on hip hop cues.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I did a workshop on drum set programming.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: We had Josh Siegel who is an editor out in LA and he did a Q review for us.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: We had real crafter folks join us.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: We had Christina Horn give us an Ableton workshop and we did a breakdown on just read the bleep and brief right and that's what started out the year and really proud of those.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Of course we have the whole other year of archives and we did a lot of organization over there.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So really happy with those workshops.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: We've got a ton more workshops.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: We've got workshops booked all the way through June I believe, including creating, creating your own patches, your own synth patches, writing hip hop cues using subtractive arranging, releasing music on Spotify, apple and Apple music and more and more, more workshops not on here, including some more composer guests which are going to come do a Q&A and Q review.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: So, really happy with what's gone on over at 52 cues.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: And, like I said, the briefing room has absolutely, absolutely blown up.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: We've launched the production music Almanac over at 52 cues, which is our living breathing ebook, and really happy about that.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: We publish new articles about once a month and so so yeah, that's that's gone over.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: We introduced the neighbor subscription tier at just about four bucks a month if you pay annually, including our live streams and the archives of our live streams.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So tons of changes and tons of updates and just quality of life improvements over at 52 cues.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And then, finally, I wanted to talk about here on the YouTube channel and just show you some analytics here.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: And we're up to a 3,957 subscribers, which isn't a ton in terms of, you know, the grand YouTube algorithm or whatever, but I know that if you're subscribed to this channel then you enjoy production music, library music or maybe just music production in general, and I know I feel like you're my people if you're subscribed.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: You know we don't do a ton of super algorithm baiting content, but I will say, sadly, if it bleeds, it leads.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Some of my biggest videos of the year was my biggest non-short podcast episodes Episode was the who Needs Spitfires Abby Road.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: First Violins, which was a super ranty episode, and then my Doll Wars episode from last April 2022.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: What's the best doll?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: That still continues to get traction.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I think it's really funny.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: The average watch time is about 13 minutes and some folks just read the title and then hit the YouTube comments and tell me that how dare you?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you clearly didn't watch the video.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Also, folks are interested in Serato sample and chopping up samples.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Lots of shorts got a lot of love.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: My Shaku Hachi video, which I made like right after I got my Shaku Hachi U, and that still continues to get views and cleaning up noisy audio.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: And so why am I showing you this?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Well, just so you know, I made about $275 this year over the course of the year, which isn't nothing.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It's not nothing.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: That will pay about half of my power bill, you know.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Yep, that's what happens when you live in Florida, but I appreciate that.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that I do minimize my ad revenue on the channel.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I personally hate, hate, hate midroll ads.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Those are the ads where you're watching and then YouTube just interrupts by the, which, by the way, as far as I know, creators can control that.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: As a content creator, I can control in my monetization settings where ads get placed at the beginning or in the middle, and I hate midroll ads and I disable them on all of my features, all of my videos, but I personally hate midroll ads and so I turn them off.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: So the only ad revenue that this is coming from is from the ads that pop up before.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: All right, we have about.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: We've increased about almost 1500 subscribers, which is fantastic, 150,000 views, which is great.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not chasing the algorithm.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not looking to build a ton of audience, you know.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: I just want the people who find me, I want them to get what we're doing here and hopefully they they are into me and into production, music and into kind of how my super teachery, lecturing, professorial approach to delivering content here on YouTube.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So that's as far as I'm concerned.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: That's 3957 friends and I'm really glad to have every single one of you.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: So that's what's going on over at YouTube.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, or I should say at the end of the year, was it a year of balance.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: As long as I am OK to course correct, I feel like I can always return to balance, because I believe that living a life of balance is a constant that requires constant adjustment.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: It's not something that you just say it's balanced and then walk away, because there are too many variables, too many things outside of your control which could easily throw off balance.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And returning to balance is as simple as making a course correction and that, for me, that's just.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: That's just life.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: That's not being a production music composer, that's just life.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: That's marriage, that's relationship with food, that's relationship with your job or whatever.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: You know, if you, if you've been overeating, then tomorrow you can course correct.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Just make a change.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Make that change Right, let's make a change.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And so returning to balance and maintaining that balance in a constant state of small adjustments is, for me, what keeps me in balance, and in that sense, 2023 was a year of balance.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: As I'm saying this, I'm getting in my mind the picture of spacecraft, and maybe it's because we live here, less than a half an hour, 45 minutes away from Kennedy, and a couple of days ago we watched the Falcon 9 rocket take off from our front porch.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: We can see the rocket shoot from Cape Kennedy Right, and there it is, rocket, yep, hello, rocket.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And we could see the boosters come down and all that stuff.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And so there's a big launch, tons of energy, right, big explosions, tons of.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: We're breaking sound barriers because we have to escape Earth's gravity.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: It takes a lot of momentum to lift off and that's kind of where we are at the first of the year.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: But once you're in space, it's an endless string of micro corrections.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: A little puff of rocket burst here, a little burn here.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: This booster, this rocket, this little, just little, all to stay on course.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Solar wind kicks up.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: You got it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: You got a course correct.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: You know you get some space debris or whatever.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: That starts the spacecraft rolling.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Then you have to course correct, not by wildly overcorrecting, but a little, these little tiny thrusts to keep you on course.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And these little thrusts add up over time.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: That's what, man, that's what life is for me, that's what my career has been.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: So what's coming up?
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: What's next?
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: What kind of resolutions am I making?
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Well, one in 52 cues.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: There are some really exciting things happening.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: But what I'm not doing, compared to what we did last year last year we had this roadmap is like look at all these features.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Because in year two of the community we were so excited to add a bunch of things that we wanted to add in year one, but we were getting the community off the ground and everything, and so we added things like the briefing room and the Almanac and, you know, putting the live streams and the archives and all of these things, and even then we weren't able to hit everything that we wanted to release and it sure as heck, it certainly took much longer.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: This is me over promising and under delivering.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: I know it's my kryptonite and I'm working on it.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Just small course corrections, but what's coming up Well, one of the things I'm super proud of is the upcoming Expedition 52, which is a year long composer quest and it's divided up into four stages and if you've been watching or listening to the podcast, you will have heard the little promo for this.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: But it's essentially a separate composer quest that is focused on, yes, writing every week, but also responding and giving feedback.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Because here's the little inside secret Can you give feedback for somebody?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: If you listen to somebody's cue and you give thoughtful critique and feedback on that cue, you are gaining more, educationally speaking and pedagogically speaking, you are receiving more than the person that you are leaving feedback for.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: It's this weird Jedi mind trick that happens when you leave feedback.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: You create connections in your mind.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Critical listening, critical thinking, problem-solving all of these things happen when you leave feedback for someone.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So, yes, expedition 52.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: You have to write a cue, a new cue, every single week, you have to post it over in our weekly feedback and the journey I'm using you know me, I love me some metaphors, and so the metaphor for the entire year is wrapped around mountain climbing, mountain climbing expedition.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: And so there are four stages.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: There is the Base Camp stage, the Ice Fall stage, the Ridge, and then the Summit.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And the Base Camp is all about laying your foundation, and every single week there is a little blurb which walks you through essentially the process of climbing a mountain and using that as a large 52-week metaphor for the creative process, for the career process.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: It's about motivation, it's about encouragement, and so, like, week one is arrival and acclimatization.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Week two, equipment check.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Week three, food and supply stocking, right.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: So obviously we're not gonna be talking about, you know, actual, like protein bars, but feeding your creativity and gathering influences and references, and so that's what the entire year is based around and so really excited about that.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: If this is something that sounds interesting to you, then you can join us.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: If you're a member of the 52Qs community, just scroll down to Composer Quests on the left hand menu and click on Expedition 52 and you can join.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Or you can go to Expedition52.com we would love to have you.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: There are weekly radio check-ins, which are little 15-minute check-ins where I come on and say, hey, how are we doing?
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: There are also weekly briefs and what more, like writing prompts, and so if you don't know how, if you don't know what to write, then we'll give you a little writing prompt.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: It's completely optional.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Members of the OG Facebook group will recognize this because this is very much what we did for the longest time over at 52Q's Facebook group and I kind of missed that, and so this is a way to kind of reintroduce that.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: It is different from our normal feedback threads, which are still going to be happening.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Just basically, tell us what you're writing, and so we'll still continue with our weekly motivational quotes.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: We'll continue to do that.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: But if you are wanting kind of a year-long journey and like committing to yourself, I'm going to write for one Q a week.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to post it and, like I said, you have to leave feedback.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: You have to write a Q production, music, q, instrumental between a minute and 30 and three minutes.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: You have to post it and you have to leave feedback.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: And for those that do, there will be prizes along the way at the end of each of our stages.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: So at the end of base camp there will be prizes.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: They're going to be in the form of discounts or giveaways.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: And for folks who reach the summit at the end of week 52, and they have posted a Q, they've written a new Q, they've posted a Q and left feedback Every week for 52 weeks will be guests here on the 52 Q's podcast and also receive some.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: We're still ironing out what this is going to be, but we're looking at like pens, like basically Expedition 52 kind of summit pens and other swag and those types of things.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: But that's what's happening.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited about Expedition 52.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It's really it's keeping the spirit of the original Facebook group and lots of folks already joining it is it's not free to join.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: There is a buy-in, but the buy-in is a dollar a week.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: It's $52 for the entire year and we have lots of folks already joining us, really looking forward to it, and it starts next week and we will keep membership open for the first couple of weeks of January.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Once membership is closed, the expedition is going up the mountain and if there's enough interest, we might start a new team mid-year.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: But the idea is that you're jumping in now and you're joining the expedition Once us Sherpas and me and Shannon we're calling ourselves Sherpas and the members are called climbers, and so once the Sherpas leave base camp, then we're out the door, and so you've got to join in, and it's a dollar to join in.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Well, because it helps offset the cost of some of the giveaways that we're going to be doing, and I mean, to be honest, it kind of gives you a little skin in the game.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, only a dollar a week, but if it was just free, then you jump in, jump out.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: That's not going to necessarily be free, but if you're like I'm paying for this, I'm going to pay attention to what I pay for, and so that's why we're doing it, and so would love to have you Expedition52.com the year long, ultimate year long composer quest, and I'm going to be joining Yep, I'm going to be joining, I'm going to be doing the thing that I'm asking you to do, which is write one queue per week, posting it and leaving feedback for other people.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Another thing I'm super excited about is our mastermind has totally blown up this year.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: We've had so much interest for our winter mastermind that we have now.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: We have two sections and they're both full.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: If you're interested in the 52 queues mastermind, the next section opens up in July, is that right?
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: January, february, march, april, may, june yes, july, the first week of July, but really looking forward to that and our mastermind.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: We have weekly discussion topics and we have weekly meetings and really looking forward to that, really looking forward to the 52 queues mastermind.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: As far as new features, there's no new features coming to the 52 queues community, although we will finally be bringing the publisher spotlight to the forefront and this is a feature that we ambitiously promised this year.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I promise you it's coming quarter one, four-shore, and this is weekly rundowns and kind of a dossier of publishers that take unsolicited submissions, talking about who they are, who they might be best for.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: It's not gonna be just a music library report, kind of just giant list of libraries that you could spam.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: That's not the point.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: The idea is here's a publisher, here's what they're about.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: They take unsolicited submissions.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Here's our contact information and here's who should pitch to them and why and or why not.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Like this is what they're about.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: So that's the publisher spotlight that is coming up in quarter one.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: One of the really cool things about that is we introduced it as a family subscription feature last year, but we've made the decision and it will be a friend level subscription Cause.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: One of the things we're kind of shifting around is as we're rolling down our Patreon and I've talked about this before.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: How the Patreon we're just kind of winding it down.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: It was dividing our focus a little bit and I do wanna say a huge thanks to all the Patreon patrons who have, many of which have been with me from the beginning, just faithfully giving their actual real life money to make sure that all of this continues to happen.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: So I wanna just take a moment and say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: It is not lost on me, but Patreon was started when we're still in the Facebook days and for the last couple of years we've been really dividing our focus between growing things on the community and then there was this kind of Patreon thing dangling off to the side.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: We experimented with crossing those beams a little bit and offering a Patreon subscription tier.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: That was essentially a backdoor into the 52Qs community.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: That, just to be honest, it created more points of friction and so this year we're solely focusing on the 52Qs community built on the Mighty Network platform.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: We are sundowning the Patreon as of today.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I've already turned off all of the payments and everything, and so I hope to see if you're a Patreon patron, I hope to see you over in our new neighbor subscription tier, which is $4.99 a month or $4 if you subscribe for the whole year and you get the live streams that you've always had, as well as the production music Almanac.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: So really excited to offer that neighbor tier.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: But the Friends tier now rolls in the publisher spotlight along with our career and industry workshops, our weekly Q breakdowns, the upcoming publisher spotlight and the friend zone chatroom, the friend only chatroom and wall and community.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Then we have our family, which gets the family room, the weekly feedback and critiques, the briefing room and yeah, I mean those are the big things.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And so how we're thinking about dividing things up is if you're curious about the industry and you're wanting to kind of start learning about the industry and you wanna kind of see it done, then the friend or the neighbor subscription is probably right for you.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Just kind of curious, wanna take a more kind of observer approach.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: If you are ready to really push into educating yourself, then the friend subscription is for you, which is why it's the workshops, the publisher spotlight, the Q breakdowns.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: It's much more educational resources, whereas the family is much more about interactive mentoring, and so that's how we're kind of tearing it out.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: And so in doing that, the publisher spotlight just made sense to live under the friend subscribers subscription tier.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Now we're not raising any of the prices of the family or friends.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: The neighbors is brand news but we're not raising the prices for 2023.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: At the end of 2024 or going into 2025, we will take stock of that and see where we are, see what our costs are and where the cost of value and all of that is.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: But the prices which increased last year, last April, and they've been the same all of 2023 and they will stay the same all of 2024.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: So our subscription prices will not be going up.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: And so we'd love to have you over here.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: This isn't a commercial for this, but I just wanna tell you kind of where we're at.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more and hear not just from me but also from Mrs 52Qs Shannon, if you wanna know more about the future of 52Qs and what's coming up and more details on some of the workshops and everything that we've got coming up, then you definitely wanna check out the January 15th Town Hall.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: We do kind of a State of the Union Town Hall every year and that will be January 15th at 4 pm Eastern and you will be able to RSVP to that.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I believe next week that event will be going up.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's up in the community quite yet, but that Town Hall put it on your calendar 4 pm Eastern on January 15th.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: You will be able to check that out.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: And so that's kind of what's going on in the community.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: What's coming up for 2024 here on the YouTube channel and on the podcast?
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of more of the same In that I'm continuing to focus more on motivation, encouragement, creativity, career development.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: It's my sincere hope that this channel provides motivation and inspiration and encouragement.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: That's my hope.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: It's who I am as a person.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I try to be positive and I try to put positivity out into the universe, because I believe by putting that out then I receive it back right.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Reaping and sowing karma, cause and effect, whatever you wanna call it, right, right, and so putting positivity out, I believe, returns back to me, and so that's what this channel is going to keep focusing on.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: There will be the episodes about you know something more specific.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into super ranty stuff.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I know it's going to generate clicks, but that's not gonna be my focus.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be more on how can I help you build your career, how can I motivate you, how can I inspire you, how can I whether you ever joined the 52Qs community or not how can I be a source of mentoring energy into your own career's journey, whether you're in high school or whether you're retired and looking at what's next.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I just I hope that I can play a small role on that.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: We also have a ton of guests.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I've recorded a lot of interviews already that will be coming out and, in addition to featuring publishers and libraries, I focusing on wanting to bring in more composers Hearing from their journey.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I've been talking to Ann Catherine Dern.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: She's going to be returning at some point.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I've already worked up an interview with Timothy Anthony Edwards, yela, ditmar, ryan Harlan from Reason, john Audio is gonna be joining us and we're going to continue to feature 52Qs members, including a return of Jeff Hargrove and a former golf professional, shane Jensen, who's going to be joining us and talking about how golf and being a professional athlete what does that have to do with being a composer?
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And the creative aspect.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Also focusing on a few more live podcasts and live YouTube events and the Q&A lives which we will be doing twice a year or every other quarter, and then the other quarters we are going to be doing Ready for Sink Live.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Now, if you've been following the channel, you've probably noticed that there's been some things that have shifting.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: These are more just little boosters making course corrections along the way, whether they're working at thumbnails or whatever, and so about halfway through the year actually it's probably about two thirds of the way through the year I made the shift and pulled out the weekly Q reviews that I used to embed in this podcast episode, but I felt like they were getting kind of shifted to the end of the video and not a lot of folks like I could look at my analytics and I could see them kind of like well, here's where people are tuning out, which is totally fine.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: It's totally fine.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: The idea was to produce them as their own episode, so having their own videos, but those aren't getting a ton of traction.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: I'm really proud of those, and I love featuring 52Q's community members here on the channel.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I love doing it, but now that we've done it for a few months, this might not be the best home for that, and so instead, what we're going to do is we are going to do a live episode, specifically twice a year, a Ready for Sink live, which is a live Q review.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: It brings together two of the things that I think are super important to the community.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: One is feedback, in this case, me kind of giving feedback and also folks in the chat in the live chat being able to give feedback and featuring Q's written by members of the community and providing a live interactive experience.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I think those are really, really important.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: It's why we have interactive Zoom sessions, it's why the Expedition 52 has a live component, because live interaction is really really important, and I recognize that as a channel runner, as a YouTube content creator.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: There are so many places that you can find videos about how to use logic or how to work Rx or any of those things, which is why I'm thinking, ok, what can I do different?
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: That speaks from my heart and who I am as a person, as a teacher, as a composer and a mentor.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: So having a live component is part of that, is part of that.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: And so the Q&A lives love those.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: And we're going to be shifting the Ready for Sink to a live event one to two hours, we'll take however many, and we're going to post a thread over in the 52 Q's community and people can post their Q's for review and we'll do a live event.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: We'll post it here in the podcast and so hopefully that will better serve the folks who are submitting their Q's and create a little bit more interactivity and it will be a little bit more well received.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Again, little booster, course corrections, and that's totally OK.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Likewise, the, the throttle thoughts.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I'll be doing them as I am inspired to do them.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I started like, ok, now, every second Saturday of every harvest festival, I started like scheduling it out and it started getting getting heavy instead of course correcting and saying, nope, let's not make a whole system out of it.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Dave Shannon, I know you're watching and then I can hear you going.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: I told you so, but the throttle thoughts will come out when they come out, and so I will be.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: However, during the podcast I will be featuring my Q from my Expedition 52.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Because one of the some of the feedback I have gotten from from folks in the community is they miss hearing my music in the podcast, and so I won't be doing a full Q breakdown.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: That Q breakdown will live over for the, for the friends folks over at 52 Q's, I will be featuring that and just kind of checking in, kind of like what we were doing with the, with the, the taxi, the year of taxi check in.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: But because the Expedition 52 isn't tied to a specific, it's like like taxi, I can write anything.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I will be writing Q's that I owe my publishers.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm going to be writing and if you're, if that's you and you want to join Expedition 52, you're free to do that as well.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: So that's what's coming up.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Do I have any resolutions?
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, in fact I'm going to take a sip from my 52 Q's branded mug, because now it's time of it.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: What is 2024 going to be my year of?
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: The word that keeps coming back is resolve, the year of resolve.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Now that I've said that word a couple of times.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: It feels it feels funny.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to I'm going to look this up Resolve to settle or find a solution, decide firmly on a course of action, firm determination to do something.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I just popped open my my dictionary app here on my computer.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: We're coming into our third year in the business 52 Q's community and I feel like something's coming.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I feel like 2024 is going to be a really, really good year for us and I'm excited, and I'm excited to have you join us.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Whether you're here on the YouTube channel listening to the podcast, or maybe you're a family subscriber or friends or neighbors or whatever, I'm looking forward to this journey with you and I hope you join me.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: And on December 31st, 2024, when we look back on the year of resolve how did we do?
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Let's find out together, and I hope, I hope you'll be there with me.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: But thank you, thank you for joining me.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: What about?
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: What about you?
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: How is, how was your 2023?
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Did you hit all of your goals?
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Did you make a year of statement for yourself, and how did you do with that?
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Please let me know in the comments.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: And I also want to say a huge thank you to all of the folks who wished me happy birthday.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I realized and I told Shannon, you know, there's a byproduct of announcing on the internet that it's my birthday right In that there were so many well wishes and thank you.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much to everybody who reached out.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: It really, it really meant a lot.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: And the other thing I learned was wow, so many folks are like my age or even older.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: So a lot of folks are like welcome to the club.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I'm like well you're, you're 50.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God, you're 60?
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I mean so realizing that that I'm actually kind of on the younger side of a lot of folks out there.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: So that was encouraging as well.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: But I'd love to hear from you in the comments, please.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I do read all of those and please take a moment to comment.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Also subscribe, but why don't you hit that subscription?
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: It really will let you know when I when I put things out.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I put things out every week, including a Sunday on December 31st.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I do wish you a happy new year and I look forward to seeing you next year.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Hopefully I will see you next week when we start the new year, and I'm going to be going through what you should be looking for in a mentor or a teacher.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I know here at the beginning of the year, a lot of folks are looking to to make resolutions and they're like, okay, we are, I'm going to resolve to do this.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: And so for many of you, part of that is education and leaning into education, and maybe it might be connecting with a mentor.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: It might be it might be signing up for some classes or whatever.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to go over the things that I look for when I am connecting with a teacher or a mentor.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: That's what we're going to be talking about next week.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: And then, finally, a huge word of thanks to the family, friends, neighbors and patron subscribers of 52 cues, who who keep all of this going.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: You notice we don't put any embedded ads for like mattresses, meal plans, plugins, ear buds or anything, because there are people out there in the world who give their actual, real life money to keep all of this happening.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Know that I love and appreciate all of you.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: And one final time, a huge thank you to all of the Patreon patrons who have given their money all these years.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: I know that you were part of the early, early success of what we were doing here, and when I say it wouldn't be possible without you, I absolutely mean that, whether it was a dollar a month or whether it was beyond that, thank you, thank you so much.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: So that's going to do it for me today.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I hope you've had a good week, I hope you had a good December, I hope you've had a wonderful 2023.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: And I look forward to seeing you in 2024.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: And just remember, friends, that I know, trust and believe that the universe has amazing plans just for you.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: Until next time, peace.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: The 52Q's podcast is copyright 2023 at 18 Studios.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: All Rights Reserved.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: The music played on the podcast is copyright of their respective owners and is used with permission and for educational purposes only.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: For more information and including joining the community and submitting your cue for consideration on the podcast, head over to 52Qscom.