Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Celtic Music - Two New Lenses


Yesterday I decided to get basic work done on six Squidoo lenses I knew I'd eventually want to get published. So I began setting up each lens, adding YouTube videos and photos or album covers, deleting stuff Squidoo puts in the basic setup and adding what I felt I'd need. Other than selecting YouTube videos, which goes fairly quickly since I just look for a good quality one that's long enough and if possible one I know I'll like, it's fairly straightforward. So I was able to get all that done yesterday. I even had time to go on and complete the lens for the Boys of the Lough. Then I added it to my Celtic Music - Lenses. Before I could blog about it, it seemed like I ran out of steam - it was late by then.

Today I had intended to do one of the remaining five lenses I'd started, but I also chose to listen to the Poozies' album Changed Days, Different Roots. The lens I'd first thought of doing involved quite a few listings for CDs and MP3 downloads from Amazon, and I decided to check out how many CDs the Poozies have. They don't have nearly as many, and so I switched course and set up a lens for them.

Two of the founders of the Poozies are Patsy Seddon and Mary MacMaster, Scottish harpers who had started playing together as Sileas, and they had recorded several albums. I'd gotten interested in Sileas back in the '80s and saw them perform at the Old Songs Festival near Albany, NY during that time. I have three of their four albums. I decided to make a lens about both groups, so although the URL only has the name Poozies in it, both groups are in Celtic Music - The Poozies & Sileas.

While my initial thoughts were it would be easier to do a lens for a group that had five CDs, expanding it to include Sileas meant adding more CDs, another cover shot, and a video, plus writing text for two groups instead of one. Writing the text about the artists takes a bit more effort than just adding elements such as videos and the Amazon links for the CDs and MP3s. In the end, it seems like it was probably just as much work as doing the artist I'd originally thought of for today's lens. But I'm glad I did it because as is usual with doing these lenses, I listened to some good music and learned more about the artists.

So there's still five lenses to go that have been at least started. Then nice thing about Squidoo lenses is you can start one, but nobody else sees it until you publish it. While I hope to get those lenses finished fairly soon, you may have noticed I haven't said what artists or groups they're for.

No comments: