Watts in Washington DC

Have just flown back today from the States. Exhausting but very exciting. We went to the MENC music week in Washington to promote the American versions of my books, and to also meet a few people and fact find. The few days were very enjoyable and a great success. We met so many nice people and learned a lot about how things work in their music education system. The books were very well received, especially Red Hot Recorder Method and the Red Hot Song Library. It looks as if I may be returning to do other events and workshops very soon. (!).

To review or not to review?

I felt moved to do a post on reviews in general.

Apparently the golden rule in show buisness is never to read your reviews. I have been lucky to have had a few good ones lately,but there is always a slight bit of negativity in them that must be seen by the reviewer to show their ability for critical thinking. The comments are generally about something that I have agonised about, and I feel frustrated that in true Harry Potter style a little paragraph cant magically appear under the review with the title "YES BUT!".

The negative points usually are about the fact that synthesised instruments are used on backing tracks. (YES BUT! do they think how long it would take an instrumentalist to record all these tracks perfectly, and how much it would cost for a top notch player to do this... there is more to all this than meets the eye....).

Then, in the same paragraph they say how wonderful it is to have two speeds of backing tracks.... ( add another few days with instrumentalist onto the recording time in a busy in house studio which is trying to produce quality backing tracks for every publication....

Actually what made me laugh, was a few months ago I had a review of a saxophone book from a very eminent prof. of the instrument. His negative comments were that he didn't like the tone made by the tenor sax player on the backing CD ( It was a book for alto sax), and that the player had unwisely decided not to use vibrato in his playing..... not sure he realised it was synthesised!.

Harmonica review

nice review. Click on it to enlarge.

Exciting times.

As a composer I am constantly working on something, but there are times when everything seems to come together and get exciting. I have just taken delivery of Red Hot two, finished proofing class act two, and just finished writing the second of the "Two at a time series".

To top this, things are hotting up for my trip with Kevin Mayhews to the big MENC conference for Music Education in Washington USA. Its been very exciting seeing the six foot banners which will go behind the stand to promote my books. There are new American mailers and instrument stickers. We even have RED HOT MUGS!!. How exciting is that!.

Here at last

Red Hot recorder 2 has arrived! Its always very exciting when the man arrives with the parcel.

I am very pleased with the finished product and hope it will be useful. There is plenty of opportunity for adding treble and tenor for ensemble playing, and some new additions like scales to an accompaniment and an "All made up" section for on the spot composition and improvisation. Its very hard to do a book two of anything, so I am hoping it pleases.