About a month ago, when it was becoming clear what was happening with COVID-19, I called my sister (who happens to be my F-flat co-founder). I had a slew of suggestions, loose ideas, and questions concerning how we could best help during this pandemic. Sarah, as it turns out, was already on the case — she had already begun to amass free resources that we could disseminate through this web site.
#blessed
This hashtag, a favorite of our father, feels very apt. Perhaps you are unaware, but I work mainly as a freelancer for my day job. And, while a lot of freelancers have lost work and struggled during this period of social distancing, I have found that my work has not been affected. Neither I nor my sister, who works full-time in music education, rely on this site for our daily expenses. We’re def hashtag blessed fam (did I do that right?). There are tons of freelance workers right now who have to rely solely on savings. And, there are those who have just started their businesses and now find their doors shuttered before they could they could even get enough money to pay their heating bill. It’s also apt in that I’m blessed to have a co-founder who thinks the same way as I do. Immediately, we both sought a way to use F-flat to help during this crisis.
Sarah and I used to not get along so well. And, when we were setting up F-flat Books as an LLC, our accountant had us hash out a lot of pesky details as to what we’d do when we got into a big fight and wanted to go our separate ways. He insisted that this was more likely to happen with siblings. That, apparently, whole empires have crumbled from family members presumptuous enough to think that they could remain civil while running a business together.
Well, I have news for you, somehow running a business together has actually made us closer. And, we’re rather like minded when it comes to the future of F-flat books.
With that like-mindedness in mind, I think I can speak for both of us when I say we are here for you. We want to do what we can to help in what way we can. And, while this message may seem somewhat obvious from our recent shift in focus to free resources, I wanted to state it myself. Sarah has become the face of F-flat Books, so her views are fairly well known. But, you can rest assured they reflect the views of her co-founder. I am happy to donate what time and resources I can to help out this community… which I strangely feel a part of, even though my areas of expertise have nothing to do with music.
We’ve even started taking everything a step further by creating a new website devoted to Music Service Learning, a free resource which will (so long as I’m the one developing and hosting it) remain free. This crisis made us realize that there is a need for this sort of service beyond pandemics. We really believe it can be a major help to the music community. And, hopefully, the next time (God forbid) something like this happens, we’ll be even better prepared to serve you.
And, if you’re wondering how we can afford to offer a free service, you can thank Marci Major, Adam Gumble, and the fine folks at West Chester University. As far as developing and hosting the new site for free… well, I was never a very good businessman anyway. I’m probably worse at that than music.
So, this is my small message to you:
A really great project here folks. Thanks for doing this.
Thank you, Andy!
It’s our pleasure, Andy!
Privileged to be part of what you’re doing!