Why Harmony Central?

Why Harmony Central?

And all this "make better music" stuff?

by Dendy Jarrett

Harmony Central was started in 1995 in a garage by a guy who loved music. With the advent of the Internet, he and his friends wanted to bring musicians together in a virtual community—and it worked. Since then, musicians have had a place to come together and discuss ideas, philosophies, gear, gear usage, as well as read useful Expert Reviews and articles, such as those featured in this issue of Make Better Music.

But we’d be dishonest if we didn’t acknowledge that, at times, the site experience has been less than dismal. OK, maybe that's putting it mildly. But we’ve been working on improvements (slowly and steadily).

Since the site was acquired by the new owner last year, we’ve worked very hard to bring you a better place to hang out with other musicians—as attested to by the recent improvements.

Why Harmony Central? Sure, there are many other ways to communicate on the inter-webz: Facebook, Pintrest, Reddit, and even other forums. But what the community likes about Harmony Central is, not surprisingly, the community. You can’t have a group of passionate musicians hanging out for over 20 years and not have a sense of community.

The other big attraction is that Harmony Central has become a repository for music information—a veritable university of knowledge. All twenty years of thoughts and ideas still exist. That can also be a challenge; it's a ton of data to parse when you're looking for something and it causes the squirrels in the squirrel cage to pull triple duty. So, why don’t we remove some of the data? There is simply too much good information mixed with all the other information, and unfortunately, if you remove information, it produces broken search returns and in turn punishes HC with folks like Google.

So, why don’t we build a better “mothership”? There is no software platform available today that can handle the amount of traffic HC gets in a day. All HC veterans know that two previous platform changes resulted in disasters, and to build our own platform from scratch would be expensive and run the risk of losing member data or information. Our current version of vBulletin is full of custom code that overrides built-in limitations, and we are continually revising it every time a company like Apple or Microsoft makes operating system or browser changes. But we're up for the challenge. And we should point out that all of us at HC are musicians and participants in the forums as well. We experience what you experience. We want what you want.

Personally, what I like about Harmony Central is that you can start a topic, have people participate, and then go back two weeks, two months or even two years from now, find it and catch up. Try that on Facebook or any other sites designed for short attention spans.

Music is a universal language. It is the tie that binds us. It crosses all other language and communication barriers and evokes emotions like nothing else. Music has been proven to heal the sick and sooth the soul. So we think it is important.

But the major reason for why "Harmony Central?"  is our core mission: To get more people involved in music, and inspire those who already are to make better music.

We can think of no better reason.

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PS:  Help us bring harmony to Harmony Central by providing you a better place to visit. Take a moment to answer these 5 Simple Questions.

PPS: To discuss Why Harmony Central ?

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Dendy Jarrett is the Publisher and Director of Harmony Central. He has been heavily involved at the executive level in many aspects of the drum and percussion industry for over 25 years and has been a professional player since he was 16. His articles and product reviews have been featured in InTune Monthly, Gig Magazine, DRUM! and Modern Drummer Magazines.