Supporting Commentary  

Purpose and reasoning  

The purpose of my EPK is to gain a professional audience and make contacting me as easy and accessible as possible. An EPK is essential for this as it lays all my personal contact information at the forefront and by having a website under my own name makes me instantly findable. It is a simple way of laying out my specialised genres/styles and showcasing previous experience backed with reviews and testimonials of colleagues and/or consumers of my music. 

My EPK is designed with the purpose of drawing session interest and work predominantly. By highlighting my versatility through the variety of genres and projects I have been involved with this increases the likelihood of general session attention.  I aim to ensure the correct target audience of production company hiring teams, record label managers and individual artists looking for competent musicians. By using slightly bland formatting and a deliberate lack of vibrancy and colour I am able to send a clear message that my hire would and should be based out of competency over personality. To further consolidate this message the more detailed information and larger blocks of texts are purpose written to be a longer read as they are intended to be read by people who are seriously looking for session musicians to fulfil a job to an expected and agreed standard.  

On reflection of the content there are several areas for improvement and there are gaps that will naturally fill themselves in over the course of the next two years. Firstly, the quality of the photos is fairly poor as well as a lack of variety among them. There are a few reasons behind this, one being my small number of gigs and shows I have played with decent cameras photographer present. My best opportunity for this was unfortunately when i was hidden at the back of the stage behind a brass section so options for photos were naturally limited. Another limitation is simply the formatting and general web design as I have little to no practice outsife of the assignment. This is an area I will be consistently work at throughout my time at Leeds Conservatoire and post-graduation. By graduation I will ensure my knowledge of Web design will be far further along with the quality and variety of my EPK looking far more professional and at least industry standard. There is also generally speaking simply a lack of experiences session playing which will be simply resolved through multiple sessions I have booked for the coming weeks and months that my portfolio of songs will be vastly longer in a matter of 3-4 months.  

My deliberate choice of branding is fairly loose with photos of myself in a shirt at a more formal gig to try and give a more professional image and ethos. As a hopeful session player, I am aiming to give the impression that my value is found through my playing and what I can bring to a song musically rather than a specific image or brand. Therefore, in a way my “branding” is a deliberate lack of. This creates a neutral visual aesthetic and by detailing the wide range of projects I have previously involved with and let the diverse collection of genres speak for itself.   

The debate between the use and/or effectiveness of an EPK comparative to something like an Instagram, Facebook or Tik Tok profile. In the faster moving contemporay art space having quick and attention-grabbing social media advertisement is essential. The use of the EPK is only really for professional hiring agencies of record labels and production companies. Therefore, it is worth putting more professionally appealing information over bright colours and clickbait style titles. While the debate is often framed as the EPK versus Instagram/Facebook pages however in a modern context both are essential for different functions and need to therefore be curated and designed differently as their purposes are different. As a session player and member of several bands I have practical function for both. The EPK to draw a professional hiring cliental and the Instagram to promote a personal image/style/Aesthetic and any music released. Instagram is also perfect for promoting shows which can then be used as an opportunity to get more photos for the EPK as they are not only both essential for yourself but also for each other to be as good as possible. 

It is important to acknowledge and be continually aware of the Financial and legal elements involved in the production and ongoing maintenance of an EPK. The first most upfront cost of a website is the ownership of a domain name which while generally a low cost is something that continually runs while your EPK remains active online. Another more overt upront cost of the EPK can be the use of a website builder such as which operates under a subscription-based service. Which if continually used for the upkeep of an EPK will be another small constant running cost that can accumulate to a sizeable amount of money especially if profit margins are so thing. There is then the optional cost of hiring photographers, graphic designers and even stylists to achieve a certain aesthetic which if done successfully can be money well spent. However, this can be money spent better just trying to find an image that is recognisable and unique rather than simply having an exceptional EPK. While it is of course true that a good EPK will drive revenue by attracting interesting artist leading to potential work and it is to some extent worth investing a chunk of money for this. It may be more useful for this to be spend on wider branding and advertisement for shows/tours and the band or artist. I have also considered potential copyright infringements and have ensured all photos are close ups of only myself with any backgrounds being either in front of none branded public buildings or in my own flat. 

Across both my seminars and out of uni group work sessions in the Conservatoire library and at home we began ideation. By researching the EPKs and websites of musicians we admired to search for inspiration as far as formatting and general web design went. My main takeaway from this process was to aim for a more simplistic approach to the design laying out key information about yourself and your strengths over simply making a colourful website. However, this was not the case for the full group as some of them were not aiming for a session player aesthetic and more of a personality and stage act which drastically changes how they designed their EPK. To refine the inspiration from our research we then reflected on our goals and what we wished to achieve for our own image. We naturally all came to different conclusions and our EPKs branched wildly apart. I feel mine fell slightly more sparse than what would be considered the industry standard of a session player however this is simply due to lack of opportunity and experience. We discussed roadmaps for our personal and professional development by firstly having a full joint overhaul of social media improving the quality of profile photos ensuring all posts are fairly recent and of acceptable quality. Making dedicated highlight reels etc and linking bands and associated sites e.g Leeds Music and Drama Pages. As well as professional development in the sense of regulating planned consistent practice of our instruments to make sure we are able to deliver the “product” we are selling as effectively as possible. Moving forward we discussed what we aim for in the future in terms of our EPK. There was a consensus of simply bulking up the section of experience and generally increase the quality of their EPK holistically, with more sleek minimalist web design, high-definition photography and larger and more impressive gigs. This will naturally be a slow process with every gig being a small step forward in improving the EPK.