Yes, I’ve been pretty quiet lately, I’ll admit it. I’ve been busy taking stock and planning the future. Things in the leisure music world have changed greatly in recent years – as, indeed, they have changed in most other spheres of leisure as well. I’m told that the younger generations just ‘don’t do’ clubs and societies anymore. Meetings of like minded people are taking place over the ether, not in village and church halls or even cosy pubs. So the music clubs that our age groups formed and attended and ran and enjoyed are getting fewer and further between. The shops that used to supply our instruments and our teachers and our sheet music have been replaced by online stores that send instruments by courier and downloads of instant digital music for us to print ourselves. Books are something you read from a screen. Help and tuition is hard to find, but increasingly common on YouTube and such-like. People even play in groups linked over the Internet, each with their own little picture as part of a musical mosaic on screen. Dan Jones’ FaceBook films show that he even plays guitar quartets with himself!
How astounded I would have been as a youngster to have this alien world described to me. Yet my young relations probably find my ‘old’ way of doing things equally alien. They listen with patient disbelief as I describe Gestetner duplicators, type-setting music laboriously with Letraset and buying quaint wedge-shaped pens and Indian ink for writing music by hand. Why, I still have a pen with a nib which draws five parallel lines to make a stave!
The result of all my stock-taking and cogitation is that I realise I must either join the 21st Century or call it a day. Our web designers, Albany Web, are planning to migrate this site onto a new platform in a few months time, and so I’m putting my on-line house in order in readiness. As the weeks pass, I’ll be letting you know as I gradually make my albums available on iTunes, Amazon Music etc. My sheet music (of my own compositions and arrangements of popular repertoire) will become available on Score Exchange and SheetMusicPlus. I’m even going to brave the world of Kindle Publishing with my tuition books.
So that explains the quietness here. But, like the peaceful swan, there’s a lot going on out of sight. I’m really excited, and I hope the results will prove exciting to you as well!
