General

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 October and April – 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 Tuesday 21 September 2010 and I will let you know by the end of the month if you’ve been scheduled, and for when.

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:

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.

If you ever find yourself down at the bottom of the screen on Helping You Harmonise, you may notice that a Search box has arrived. This is a sign of the site reaching a certain maturity – there is enough stuff here now that it can take a while to navigate around it using the date and category links.

Of course, people who arrive looking for something in particular will probably have gone straight to whatever it was that their external search engine suggested might meet their needs. The on-site search is more likely to be useful to people who have been here before and half-remember something they want to check back on.

Helping You Harmonise is 1 year old today! On 26 November 2008 I made my inaugural blog entry, having spent the previous couple of weeks busy uploading my arrangements catalogue before the site went live. Since then, I have posted 88,300 words of blog material – which is more than I wrote for my entire first book, and nearly as much as for my second.

Having been an avid but sporadic reader of other people’s blogs for some years (i.e. I binge-read several months’ worth of posts in an afternoon rather than keeping track of each as they go), I find it interesting to speculate on people’s motivations for blogging. Sometimes there’s a sense of someone doing it because they feel they ought to – as part of a promotional strategy, for instance – and these are the ones I enjoy reading least. They also tend to fizzle out quite quickly. I think it’s very hard to write regularly if the motivation is extrinsic rather than intrinsic.

More often, and more successfully, blogs reflect a passion or a desire.

If you came here via the front page, you may have observed a notice announcing a set of new themed workshops I’ll be offering from the New Year. More details can be found on the menu to the left, under the ‘helping performers’ label. I’ll still be available to do bespoke coaching of course, but I’ve developed the new offerings as a way to help ensembles become more strategic in how they plan their skills development.

Tomorrow is my last day at Birmingham Conservatoire. I have decided that it’s time to step outside the academic calendar which has shaped the rhythm of my life since the age of five, and join the real world. I’ve done ten years at the Conservatoire, and it’s been a fun gig, but sooner or later you need a change.

The decision has been a long time brewing – though, the bit that took thought wasn’t whether to move on from my current role, but what to move on to, and when.

Me and my Magnum OpusWell, the new book has arrived! The project was first sketched out in December 2002, when I was part-way through writing my first book, and I started in on it in earnest in October 2003 after The British Barbershopper had been packed off to Ashgate for publishing. The first year consisted of bibliographical groundwork, and then I started visiting choirs in rehearsal in September 2004. I put together a book proposal over summer 2005, and finally got the contract agreed with Ashgate in spring 2007.

At that time, I also made an application to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research leave to write the book up. That would have given me 8 months to write 90,000 words - 4 months funded externally, and 4 months provided by my own institution. Did you know that it is possible to have a funding application rated as 'highest priority for funding' and still turned down? Fortunately, Birmingham Conservatoire still honoured the 4 months they had offered as part of the funding bid, so I compressed my schedule and knuckled down to writing from December 2007-March 2008.