Portland Music Foundation
The Portland Music Foundation has set itself the goal of organizing, supporting, nurturing and promoting the thriving music scene of Portland, Maine, USA. Started in 2006 by Adam Ayan of Gateway Mastering, the Portland Music Foundation wants to help aspiring musicians break into the local music community in a way that will have fans swarming to local venues, buying their CDs and singing their songs.
As a Grammy Award winning mastering engineer, Adam Ayan is certainly qualified to be chairman of the Portland Music Foundation. His client list includes well-known artists Nine Inch Nails, Rolling Stones, Faith Hill, Sarah McLachlan and Nirvana, as well as a number of local Portland artists. He has over thirty gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums to his credit. The other members of the board of directors are all currently working in various aspects of the Portland music community. They all serve the Portland Music Foundation on a voluntary basis to achieve their objective of promoting Portland’s talented musicians to the rest of the nation.
One of the courses offered to musicians by the Portland Music Foundation is “Orientation: Or, help, I’m stuck in my garage”. This 90 minute course will assist musicians to get out of their garages and get started as a professional band in three basic steps. Step one is recognizing when a band is good enough to play in public. A band may book a gig, but if they are not up to scratch, their budding reputation could be damaged. Once the gig has been played, the band needs to know how to assess whether the gig was successful or not, and if not, what went wrong. The second step is band promotion and media relations. Musicians will learn how to work with the press in the best way possible to gain exposure to potential fans. Step three is to gain recording experience, establishing what it is that people want to hear and when to start distributing recordings. Other courses that will be run by the Portland Music Foundation include “The 21st Century Press Kit”, “In the Studio” and “So you’re ready to play for other people”.
Without a doubt the Portland Music Foundation has what it takes to help aspiring musicians negotiate the intricacies of the multi-faceted and exciting business of the music industry. It is up to musicians to take full advantage of what is on offer and get their music out there where it can be appreciated.