G’day Rob, how are ya?
I read somewhere that you wrote the website yourself.
Are you a developer?
Hey not professionally, but I’ve dabbled in making websites since I was 12 years old. The QFG website is built on Wordpress but I coded the theme myself, so I could create all of this custom functionality for how the lessons are presented and organised.
Very happy with it. Also because I can add functionality quickly since I know how everything works.
I am at the moment also learning some extra stuff so I could, one day, maybe become a developer if I would be in need of a job.
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Just watched your YouTube video on having a job besides music. I really liked that one, how honest and real it was.
Getting into Software Dev by starting with website design / theming is not uncommon. Also had a similar start, similar age. However, never did have much of a musical career or would have been remotely good enough for that.
Just one thought on that: Some jobs may leave you more mental energy than others. And music is something you need quite a lot of that if you want to really get better (deliberate practice?). In that regard a Software Development job may not be the best choice. On the other hand, many IT people (especially those in web design / dev) also are musicians. Seems to be similar skillsets and dispositions that work for both music and programming / design.
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In my experience so far I’ve only managed to make some music if I worked part time. If I would do full time software development or something like that I don’t think I’d have the energy 
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Just passing by to say that the new website is really nice Rob, you did a really nice job
It’s a pleasure to navigate and the layout is really nice 
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Thanks man, the means a lot! I had a vision with this one
Hi! It’s funny, in the past I was a software developer. And then I started to learn arabic/turkish drum Darbuka. It was in 2004. Programming was my job, music - hobby.
Since then I quit my job and became a full time musician / drum circle facilitator / rhythm teacher.
But after 10 years I started to write some JavaScript code to build an application to visualize rhythm for my students. Now I am also coding one nice web-application to play whatever rhythms which you write in a text notation and then to practice with this in any chosen tempo.
So now music my job and my passion, but coding is my hobby.
If I have some question about word press – can you give me some tips? As I am producing online courses as well, I want to build my own platform rather than using Teachable or others.
Thanks, Rob, you are awesome!
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Hey yes! The best tip I can give you is to do this Udemy course: https://www.udemy.com/course/become-a-wordpress-developer-php-javascript/
I built this “online university” in this course, step by step. And at the end of the course I knew everything I needed to know to build the QFG website. It still took a lot of time and effort but these are the basics and also some more advanced techniques of building a custom Wordpress theme.
The other tip is “CSS grid”. Ver nice way to build layouts once you get that working. Much easier than before actually.
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perfect, thanks for this suggestion! just purchased this course
Is this web app something you only share with your students or is it also online?
By coincidence, I also thought about creating such a web app. Wanted it to also play back drum samples and take MIDI in and compare how well you played in time. But then a few hours in I noticed that there’s no way that audio in the browser is low-latency enough to make this work.
So a web app for visualizing rhythms and also for playing it in various tempos - should be no problem. Also sending MIDI to your pad device for light-guide will work. But getting this in sync with your actual playing - I think you’ll need a native desktop app for that.
I would have another tip: It’s very long ago (10+ years) that I did web agency stuff, but I was VERY happy with Drupal as a CMS. At least back then it was many times more powerful (as in customizable) than Wordpress - if you spend some time learning how views, forms etc. work. Then it’s basically a no-code development kit to make your own web apps. If you then also know enough HTML / CSS (and a little bit of PHP) to customize the templates- there you go!