It’s a bit like the old quip about out of work waiters being actors, a lot of musicians seem to end up becoming part-time or full-time web developers.

I’m not sure what the connection is there. Playing a musical instrument doesn’t often have anything to do even with computing (think guitarists and flutists). Sure electronic (MIDI) keyboards can involve computers, but again many musicians only do live performances, and just gig using several keyboards. In fact gigging with a computer sequencing setup involving computers, needs special consideration if it isn’t going to be a (technical) disaster.

None the less, many musicians adopted web design as their secondary (or primary)  income.

Actually I think it might be because a web designers hours can be quite flexible and web design can be quite laid back, can’t it No doubt musicians also wanted to promote themselves and their gigs and records to potential Internet fan clubs. So it makes sense to sell that skill as a side effect.

But when the “web bubble” burst and then the desktop revolution came (Microsoft even bundled Frontpage Lite with Windows) cracks started to appear.

Video is fast becoming the second job stereotype for musicians. Certainly for any computer sequencer using musician, it is a natural extension.

The arrangement of bars and the audio timeline, arrangement like copy and paste, and “layers” like tracks, all translate well to video production.

We’ll look more at these parallels later.

Happy Film’ing

Peter.