Here's a brief overview of some of the projects and resources from recent months - you can click on the images and links to find out more.
For Music Teacher Magazine I continue to produce resources for teachers of Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 music in schools. I recently completed the World Tour series which in its year-long journey explored the music of the Caribbean, South America, China, the Middle East, West Africa, Europe and the British Isles. Alongside that, my Developing Wider Listening series is now in its third year and as well as resources on all the major periods of 'classical' music there are now double resources on film music and musical theatre. The latest part of this series is a look at pop music in the 20th century - a resource on the 1950s is out now and four more on the remaining decades of the century will follow.
Two supplements for Rhinegold Education's materials to support OCR A Level Music are out now.
The 2023 supplement covers Mozart's Quintet in Eb and four songs from Billie Holiday: The Complete Decca Recordings and can be found here.
The 2024 supplement covers Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.4 (1st movement) and four songs from Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley and this can be found here.
Since early summer I've switched my focus to making video resources, and have recently completed a huge project entitled The Complete Guide To Songwriting for the popular music teachers' support platform topmusic.co, which is based in Australia and reaches out to instrumental teachers all over the world. This comprehensive course comprises eleven modules and extensive support materials. It was really fun to put together and we launched it with a livestream last week, which you can see here. For more information on how to access it and all of the other fantastic content on the site, click here or watch the livestream. The video below is a trailer for the course.
I've also been working with the National College and have recently made two webinars for them - one aimed at teaching assistants working in music settings and the other on 'stretch and challenge' in secondary music curriculums. You can find more here.
Meanwhile, Discovering Music Theory continues to thrive and I've heard that it has been translated into a number of languages and also into braille, which is fabulous news. I'm off down under for an examining tour very soon so no doubt there will be some info and photos on my usual social media channels. Thanks for reading!