Rapid Response on New Year's Day

On New Year’s Day an organist was due to play for a service in northwest London at noon. At 9.36 a.m. he was sitting in a stationary, broken-down train outside Hastings, with little prospect of getting to his destination in time. So he sent an SOS to DepList from his mobile phone. Twenty minutes later he’d found a substitute able to deputise for him. He reported later that it was a very good organist too, well able to cope with the unusual liturgical demands of the church in question.

When DepList was launched back in 2000, mobile phones were by no means ubiquitous, and they certainly couldn’t send and receive emails — unless you owned a Blackberry. The concept of emailing from a train belonged to the remote future. DepList was a way of quickly contacting lots of people without having to telephone them individually, but you had to be sitting at a computer screen at home or at work to do this. Jobs took days or at best hours to fill, not minutes. In those early days, many members did not own a mobile phone and relied on landlines, answering machines and PC-based emails. Since then, advances in technology have worked very much in DepList’s favour without us having to do very much. DepList is far more useful now than when it first started. And it’s stories like this one that make it worth the effort of keeping DepList alive and relevant.

Associate Member Advertising

Our advert placing facilities for associate members have moved over to our Wordpress system, which we use for our non-nember advertising forms. This means that in future, all associate members will have to log in to our Members' Area before they can place an advertisement. The old forms will be disabled and the common password will no longer work. Each member will be able to create their own password to log in to the system.

Changes to DepList site

JotForm, the outfit that we have used for some years to create our contact forms, advertising forms, and all manner of other forms, has restructured its pricing plans recently. It is US-based, and it has imposed the kinds of charges that have become prohibitive for a non-commercial organisation like ours, what with Brexit and the falling value of the pound. We can continue to use JotForm for our existing contact forms, but we can no longer create new forms or receive more than 10 paid adverts per month without incurring high charges. Clearly, we need to change the way we do things! So just as we recently moved our servers from America back to Britain, where hosting is half the price, we're now going over to a Wordpress-based system for our forms. They don't look as pretty, they're a lot more trouble to create, and they don't have as many facilities as JotForm's forms, but at least we won't have to raise our advertising fees for the time being, even though we will no longer be offering free trial adverts for first-time users, as from today. After 16 years, I don't think DepList has to establish its credentials, and I reckon most people in the business have heard of us now so there is no need to make as much effort to get our name out there and attract sceptical customers. Your bookmarks will need updating as and when we replace our old forms with new ones. So far, all of our advertising forms have been replaced except those for Associate Members, which will stay as they are until such time as JotForm increases its restrictions yet further.

The Beauty of the Human Voice

Elisabeth Meister was for several years a DepList member during the early part of her career. Hear her on the beauty of the human voice. (You will need to sit through an advert before the video starts.)

Let's break our records

November saw 36 jobs advertised on DepList. That's more than one per day. Let's break our December records this Advent. We have more than enough members to go around, so any visitors to this site looking for well qualified and experienced singers, organists, pianists, conductors and choral directors, try placing an advert. If it's your first time of using DepList, there's no charge. If you've used us before, it only costs £2.00 and you'll have your money back if you don't fill the job.

Give Me News Please

One year since my last post. We need news. The reason I've not been posting articles is that my leisure time is much more limited these days, and definitely not that DepList is less busy than it was. Quite the reverse in fact. Last month alone saw 52 job adverts pass through, including a couple for Christmas Midnight Mass. A day without a job being advertised through DepList is a rarity indeed, and as Christmas approaches we will be busier than ever.

But we need news. Preferably good news. With images, videos or music. If there's something relevant that you think may interest our members, please use one of our Feedback or Contact buttons. And if you're a Member and you're featured in a gorgeous new choral video on YouTube, please tell me about it. If it's any good, I'll post it here.

David Trendell, RIP

I was shocked to learn of the recent death of David Trendell, one of DepList's long-standing members. Here is a notice from St Mary's Bourne Street. There are also obituaries in the Telegraph and the Guardian. He was known as an academic and a choral director, but when I first knew him in the early 1990s, it was his wonderful voice that impressed me most. He sang intuitively with, as far as I knew, little voice training and certainly no practice. He had no wish to make a career as singer, yet possessed the kind of voice that many budding opera singers would give anything to have. Looking back through my emails, I found this one from me to him in 2010, which summed up those impressions:

Dear David,

While casting around the Internet for some pleasant music to relieve the tedium of a particularly long spell-checking job on the computer, I stumbled across your contribution to a programme about Rachmaninov's Vespers on "Listen Again". It reminded me of the days when you would stagger into Our Lady of Victories, late, the morning after a very good night out. Your voice would always sound at its best on such occasions: really gravelly and sonorous. I used to comment that if you put your mind to it, you could have been the best Russian bass since Boris Christoff. A pleasure to hear your speaking voice on the radio. Let me know when you're next on the air.

Another DepList Triumph

On the first day of May, a message was sent to our members which made me very happy. It concerned an advertisement that a choral director had sent out on the previous day at 12.46 p.m. He urgently needed not one, but eight singers, for a funeral that was due to start at 2 p.m. Yes, you read that correctly. He was seeking eight singers for a service commencing in 75 minutes' time.

The adverts casually mentions: "... will tell you music when you're there".

So this is the follow-up message that the choral director kindly sent out on the next day. I've quoted it in full, and when I have a moment to spare I'll put it on our website's feedback page — in a gold frame I think.

Deplist, I salute you, you pulled it out of the bag! 

Remarkably, come 2pm (not a minute earlier, mind), we not only had eight singers, but they were actually of the correct parts.  

Many thanks to all those who rallied round, gave numbers, dropped everything and battled the tube strikes. 

There were 250 in the congregation, and many appreciative comments afterwards. I had to temper my exhilaration at actually having all the singers in order to appear suitably grovellish to my vicar. 

Marvellous stuff, thanks very much.

Special Offer and a Vote of Thanks

DepList is offering free use of its advertising facilities to non-members until the end of April.

This is by way of thanking all our advertisers for their custom during our busy Easter period. 

I'm frankly amazed that DepList continues to be as busy as it is, with a steady stream of jobs being advertised and a regular flow of new members applying to join. We've seen a few potential competitors start up and fall by the wayside over the years, yet we're still here. I'll never be rich on DepList's proceeds, but it gives me huge satisfaction to continue to run this service and see the jobs that come in and get filled. So thank you, everyone, and keep using DepList.

New Mass Setting at Westminster Cathedral

The Music Makers are delighted to announce the Liturgical Première of the 

Westminster Mass for Boys’ Voices

Music by Jeremy de Satgé

to be performed by the

Choristers of Westminster Cathedral Choir

Directed by Martin Baker

at the 5.30pm Mass on Tuesday, 14th January 2014.

You are warmly invited to attend the Mass.

For more information regarding the music please click HERE

-----------------------------
Jeremy de Satgé was a long-standing member of DepList. We were very sorry to learn that he died a few weeks after the event publicised above.

Non-Member Advertising — Change of Payment Procedure

Part of DepList's appeal for non-member advertisers is being able to post an emergency advertisement at very short notice. Invoicing and payment can be dealt with later. The most important thing is to find a dep quickly with minimum fuss. Until today, advertisers would fill in a form detailing their requirements, I would then forward it to members, and the job vacancy would be filled within minutes. At some point I would send the advertisers an invoice, and when the payments came in I would enter them in my "income ledger". This morning I looked through my database to check for outstanding invoices. I don't do this exercise very often and I got a shock. I expected more honesty from those in our line of business.

Regrettably, the payment part of the deal has, in far too many cases, not been honoured by advertisers.  My database is full of unpaid invoices! Perhaps advertisers think that for the sake of two quid, it's not worth all the hassle of payment. But I could easily say the same thing! Let us suppose I charge my time at £15/hour. To check for missing payments, confirm the omission in my bank records, double-check that I haven't made a filing or record-keeping error and then send a payment reminder takes time, and 10 minutes of such admin work soon pass by. Ten minutes of my time works out as £2.50, so there's little incentive to chase up the invoiced amount of £2, which, once PayPal's commission and HMRC's tax have been deducted leave me with about £1.39 to put in my pocket. If fee collection is such a hassle, why not just automate the whole thing and let the adverts go out free? Because then I'd have to raise the subscription fees beyond what most members would be prepared to pay. The whole idea behind external advertising is to generate more work for members and to help pay for the maintenance of this site. There's a huge amount of work involved in running this service, as well as financial outlays for software, domain name and server space, and it's disappointing that some people want to enjoy its benefits without being prepared to pay even a token amount for the privilege. There is only so much that I am willing to subsidise.

So from today I shall be accepting only pre-paid advertisements (with the exception of our free trial ad for first-time users). This will be less convenient for advertisers, and no doubt the number of adverts passing through will go down, but it can't be helped.  The solution for advertisers who want convenience is to join as Associate Members.

That Time of Year Again

New term, new beginnings. This time of the year always brings an influx of new applicants to join DepList, a good number of them premature. It is worth reminding potential applicants and sponsors that DepList's function is emphatically not to help people obtain work. That may happen to be an end-result or a byproduct of DepList, but it's not what it was designed or invented for. "So what's DepList for, then?" you ask. Answer: To help people book musicians. Competent ones, reliable ones and, above all, experienced ones. We already have plenty of members. Our numbers fluctuate, but we never have fewer than 250 in active membership. We don't need any more.

If you apply straight from college, we'll probably turn you down. Simple as that. Please, please wait until you can truly say that you have sung/played in a wide variety of venues and that you have acquired a lot of experience in your particular area of expertise. I would discourage anyone from applying until they are 23 or 24 years of age.

Post Script

Yesterday, fully ten days after our Memberkit software suffered a seemingly terminal malfunction, which brought down the whole of our Members' Area, it sprang to life again, as suddenly as it had died. Too late! Ten days' downtime is not acceptable for a busy website like this, and now that I have rebuilt the site with WordPress I shall be sticking with the new version. I have removed the Memberkit software from our server. It was an expensive experiment, which was the only solution three years ago, at a time when WordPress couldn't do what we wanted (or if it could, it was beyond my programming skills). Now, though, WordPress does what we want and more, a lot better and with much more ease than Memberkit, so there is no reason to go back. It is reassuring to know, though, that the problem did not stem from anything we did. I suspect that if and when WordPress chooses to go down, it will not take 10 days for its engineers to fix it.

Members' Area — Final Stage Complete

I should have added that our new Members' Area is now officially open.

New Announcements Page

From now on, all news and information of an administrative nature — i.e. anything that's of interest only to our Members — will be posted in the Members' Area of the website. This news page will be reserved for more general news.

Members' Area — First Stage Complete

Much of the Members' Area is now rebuilt. WordPress is delightfully easy to use, and the Directory plug-in works beautifully. Much easier than the previous software, and only one bug so far. I reported the bug on the support forum, and got an almost instant reply that the developers were already working on fixing the problem! Members are invited to create entries for the Directory as from now. You will find the new Members' Area here.

Transferring the Members' Area to WordPress

Our Members' Area is still down (see yesterday's post). This does not look good. Server problems don't usually last this long. We can't afford this sort of unprovoked malfunction. Our membership software (Memberkit) was always buggy and unfortunately the developers have long since lost interest and stopped developing it, or providing updates and support (let alone ironing out the bugs). I can only assume that one of our members did something while creating or updating their profile that coincided precisely with a server glitch or outage, which caused the system to crash and burn. It may even have been one of the many bugs that overwhelmed the whole system. I just don't know and I can't do anything to fix it. At the time of purchase, just over three years ago, the Memberkit software seemed ideal (if expensive). But the trouble was that there were not enough users. There was a rather sketchy and out-of-date User Guide, but apart from that, once the 90-day support ran out, I was on my own. The users' forum had too few participants to be of help, and one's questions remained unanswered and problems unresolved. The time has come to migrate to WordPress, with its much larger market share. According to Wikipedia at the time of writing, WordPress is used on 60 million web sites. I have already installed it on our server. And there are loads of tutorials and manuals out there to help me get started, and plug-ins for every conceivable application. Reconstruction work will start as soon as I can find time to build what we need. Our new Members' Area will undoubtedly have a quite different look and feel. Perhaps it will have even more functionality than what we had before. But there is every chance that it will be more reliable. Of course, this only affects members' listings on the website (headshots and biographies etc). Nothing else about DepList is affected, and messaging and advertising continue to function as normal.

Members' Area is Down

The Members' Area part of our website is not functioning. I don't know why. I hope it's just a temporary server problem which will sort itself out. It's certainly not the result of anything I've done, as I've made no changes to the website recently, and it was functioning perfectly well earlier this week. The Members' Area is quite separate from the rest of the website. It is interactive and therefore depends on a database. Our server is nominally in the USA, but of course it could be anywhere. The database for the Members' Area may be hosted on an entirely different server. I'm hoping the glitch is a temporary communication problem between the main server that hosts our static files and the database server that enables the dynamic Members' Area files to function.

Busy Night for DepList

My colleague Mhairi tells me that DepList managed to fill about 36 positions for Midnight Mass and Christmas morning services. That's just from adverts that passed through us, and is certainly an all-time record. It doesn't include the tens or even hundreds of positions that members were probably already booked for without there being any need to advertise them. I doubt there was anyone left on DepList who wasn't singing or playing somewhere in or around London on 24th and 25th December.

What Makes a Good Dep?

The answer is quite simple: someone who can deliver the goods at short notice and who displays a professional attitude at all times. And the reverse? Someone who is unprepared or ill-equipped for the job in hand, is uncooperative and lets his colleagues down.

Last week, Norman Lebrecht's blog gave us a marvellous story about a pair of pianists, Andrei Gavrilov and Alexander Ghindin. It has all the ingredients of a parable, save perhaps for a moral in the tale, which is hinted at below. These two Russian Bears are at the top of their game — though perhaps one of them is on his way down, if those behind-the-scenes rumours are to be believed. But if Gavrilov were to apply for DepList membership today, we'd turn him down, unless he could provide an acceptable excuse (like a sudden incapacitating illness) for what he did. Sasha Ghindin was the dep who saved the show, to which people had come from far and wide on a day when the thermometer was at 18 degrees below zero. Ghindin's verdict on his more famous colleague's behaviour? That he'd better watch out, because

Бог накажет за такие вещи! (God punishes for this kind of thing!)