I used to run my monthly newsletter, Ryan’s Music Mail, via very old-school methods – signups via a simple form and emails from my Mac’s Mail. So many pitfalls however, including the ever increasing list of people in my Address Book. There must be a better way?! On one rest night in Argentina at the end of last year, I came across MailChimp and was entirely impressed with all of the features. It is extra safe for subscriber’s information, extra easy for them to unsubscribe or update their information, signups are completely automated, statistics are incredible including full integration with Google Analytics (YES!), it basically runs itself and on top of that it creates beautiful HTML emails. This is brilliant and means I can focus more on what really matters, creating some music.
Sign up here to Ryan’s Music Mail.
If you’re not subscribed yet click on the link above and keep in touch with all of my music, projects, favourite resources and latest news. I should mention that the MailChimp monkey is the friendliest monkey I’ve ever met – ah never mind, you wouldn’t understand … seriously!
Schools have just started again and that means my orchestras have also. Sensational! I have been reminded, however, of the huge amount of preparation required to get them underway. Repertoire, auditions, photocopying, sweet-talking, begging, music sorting, rehearsal setup and pack down, chasing up students, score preparation, rehearsal camps – by the time I hit the podium ready to do some real work I’m more ready for a nap than a rehearsal. Still though, every time the tuning A sounds and a hush filters across the ensemble, I, amongst the exhilaration, seem to remember exactly why we are there, why we love it and why all of this perspiration is all of a sudden completely and utterly worth it.
Hi everybody, the following list of 14 music books (pictured above) are free to a good home. I have picked them up over the years (all second-hand-bookshop-type condition) and despite carting them to one end of the country and back (don’t ask why), I simply have not used them. Here are the titles:
- The well-tempered String Quartet – Bruno Aulich & Ernst Heimeran
- A Short Guide to Long Play – Martyn Goff
- The Symphony – Ralph Hill (ed.)
- Invertible Counterpoint and Canon – C. H. Kitson
- A Dictionary of Music – R. Illing
- Stories of Famous Operas – Harold Vincent Milligan
- Chamber Music – Alec Robertson (ed.)
- Sounds and Signs: Aspects of Musical Notation – Hugo Cole
- The Complete Opera Book: The Stories of the Operas, together with 410 of the Leading Airs and Motives in Musical Notation – Gustav Kobbe
- The Class Music Teacher – Charles Proctor
- Music in the Medieval World – Albert Seay
- Music in the Renaissance – Howard M. Brown
- A Music Guide for Schools – Priestley and Grayson
- Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time – Nicolas Slonimsky
I am in Auckland and you would need to pick them up. Send me an email or comment if you are interested.
