Enterprising Ideas continued

The chilli plants are doing well, but we wont have a crop for a while. So I've got no home produce for pickling either, as yet.

So, time for some more thoughts on future money making opportunities. Here are some based on my musical interests.

#3 Piano Tuner - One of the little jobs around the house on my list was to get the piano tuned. So I phoned up the nice man who did it last time and he came round. An hour later the piano was again well-tempered and I handed over my fee. "Lovely pianos, those Yamahas.", he said. "It tuned up very nicely." Hmm. Maybe I could do that myself - I've got the gear...

Many years ago, while I was a student I bought myself a piano. I couldn't afford a good one so I got a bit of a wreck. It worked OK, but I discovered it was tuned a tone flat (and pretty out of tune at that too). So I decided to retune it. Not a great idea. It took me hours, ad the piano wouldn't stay in tune (which was why it was a tone flat to start with!) so I got plenty of practice at trying to keep it tuned. But, now I come to think of it, I never did get it really in tune, so I don't think I was very good at it, which is why I pay someone elese to come and tune our piano now.

#4 Music Editor/Publisher - The Abbot Consort gets a lot of the music it performs from the Choral Public Domain Library. A great resource - over 7800 scores of music from over 1100 composers. One of the tools people use to create the scores is the free Lilypond music notation tool. A few months ago, I thought I'd try and do some myself. There's a piece I've wanted to perform for some time (Josquin de Prez - Missa L'homee Arme), so I thought I'd produce an edition of my favourite bit of it. It took me about an hour per page. I wonder if anybody would pay me to do this? I suspect not.

#5 Musical Instrument Maker - Ever since I became interested in Early Music, I've had a hankering to get (or build) some early instruments. But they are a bit expensive. The Early Music Shop has a great catalogue. But wait a minute... What are my carpentry skills like? Pretty rubbish. I can just about assemble flat-packs. I think this one will just stay a pipe-dream (or should that be crumhorn-dream?)