General

Quick apology to regular blog readers for the absence of yesterday's post. I am just recovering from a 48-hour loss of internet connection. All is fixed now, but I'm all booked up over the weekend so will not be posting again until Monday.

Thanks for your patience, and have a nice weekend!

Quick reminder to those who have been participating in June’s singing practice experiment: please let me have your feedback on how it has gone for you.

What you need to send in are three things:

1. A list of days you did/did not actually do the practice routine
2. Your notes from the end of each week on how you found it as you went through
3. Your final notes on the overall experience

Having said that, if you don’t have all of those, just send in what you do have.

This is an up-dated version of the post I wrote last time I was inviting new arrangement requests. The main changes are the dates and some additional info about logistics

Having cleared my backlog of bespoke arrangements, I am now inviting requests for new ones. I’ll be looking for about 12 to do between May and October – so, if I get up to 12 requests, I’ll do all of them, but if I get more I’ll have to pick which ones to do. This post is, firstly, to talk about the logistics of the process, and secondly to explain how I’ll make the choices if that becomes necessary.

So, first the key dates:

Please get your requests to me by Thursday 21 April 2011 and I will let you know by the end of the month if you’ve been scheduled, and for when. At that point I will ask for a deposit to secure the arrangement slot, and if you don't get back to me within 2 weeks I'll offer it to someone else.

If you’ve already been in touch trying to get ahead of the game, you’ll need to send me your request again as I have no way of knowing if you’re still interested unless you tell me you are!

When you make a request, please include the following information:

You may have noticed that I have a new addition to my range of services: the Helping Arrangers section. This brings together things that were already happening on an ad hoc basis (the Mutual Mentoring Scheme for Arrangers and blog articles about arranging), with the new offering of personalised advice/tuition.

Here’s a bit of background to this addition.

Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas to anyone who pops by over the festive seaon, and to let you know I may be a bit slower in publishing comments and responding to queries over the next few days. Like everyone else, I'll be taking some time to spend with family during the next few days, which will entail rather less time slaving over a hot computer than usual. But normal service will resume in the New Year, so you won't have to be patient for long.

Wishing all my visitors the very best for the holiday season, and looking forward to sharing more musical adventures with you in 2011. Keep warm!

Celebrating the back-to-school season with two opportunities for barbershop arrangers:

I just found out that I was on the radio this afternoon! It was a repeat of the programme I did a couple of years back on key characteristics and synaesthesia, and it is available on Listen Again for the time being (I would guess for a week, as that seems standard).

As you’ll see from the notice on the front page, I am not taking any new orders for bespoke arrangements for the time being. It’s not that I’ll be slowing down in my arranging activity – it’s just that I’m booked up now until September, and that’s enough for the time being.

It was towards the end of last summer that I decided to regulate the flow of arrangement commissions by scheduling two per month. I had been hammering hard at it for some months already, and the requests started to come in faster than I could cope with them. It wasn’t just that I wanted to do other things with my every waking minute (I rather like going out and working with real live singers as well, for example), it was that I was starting to feel almost bloated with the amount of music I was absorbing in the process.

So, having booked up the two slots per month this far ahead, I have decided to stop accepting commissions until nearer the time I will be able to fulfil them. This is for both pragmatic and artistic reasons.