1/20/11 - We have a new Edition of Music. The Title is "A Guitar for All Seasons" and you can read about it at the link. Some very nice pieces including a great arrangement of Sleeper's Awake. Nice day today, but I have had a stomach virus for 4 days. Ack. More good weather should be here soon though, and I'm looking forward to getting out on my bike. Boy, that picture at the right looks mighty appealing.
12/20/10 It's not the difficulty of a piece which makes it great, it's how many times you want to play it.
12/19/10 I have a new Video of Heartland Air on Youtube
which also gives you a bit of a tour of MT Lemmon. I think the two
together are a nice fit. Be sure to also check out our other music videos.
11/07/10 Working on more books and projects, and still riding. Nice day on Monday, Warm and Sunny. They are extending the Bike Path system here and soon the Santa Cruz path and the Rillito River Path will be joined up making a clean twenty mile long bicycle highway. I was down on the Santa Cruz trail on Sunday and Saw this Road Runner. Beep Beep.
10/01/10 Well it's here, the long awaited second volume of Christmas music. An International Christmas for Guitar This is a terrific collection of music which is great for performance or pleasure. When I did a seven year run at a resort, I needed a source of good, interesting christmas music. Here you will find carols as early as the fifth century and from many countries.
The weather here has been quite warm. September has been one of the hottest months in history. Good reason to get up early and get out on the road. Tucson is really a bicycle town. The bike lanes and paths are a great reason for moving here. The other reason if you like riding is MT Lemmon. What a magnificent climb.
9/25/10 You can use this link to see many photos of the ride up MT Lemmon. The pictures came out surprisingly well for an inexpensive digital camera. MT Lemmon
8/25/10 Here is a new pic of the climb up Lemmon from Windy Point. I'm always amazed when I make it up there and then look back, seems like such a long way. I will have more pics up here of the climb and scenery soon.
8/8/10 Road the new bike up MT Lemmon to Windy Point again today. It's at about 6500 feet. Tucson is about 2500. Ride is not as difficult now and I can climb a bit faster. Only 26 people passed me today on the 14 mile climb, and I passed 4. I'm now wasted of course from the 53 mile round trip. Nice day but cold on the way down. The other day I saw a good size road runner cross the road. Coyotes abound. Mt Lemmon was crawling with cyclists. I have never seen so many riders at one place before. I think I will go read the new Hiaasen book titled "Star Island." What a great funny writer he is. Then it's on to the 3rd book by Larrson, "The Girl who kicked the Hornets Nest."
8/2/10 It's here, "The Baroque Gig Book" Book/CD is now available.
8/1/10 I'm putting the final touches on the new edition "The Baroque Gig Book." It should be up on the our site and availble in a few days and we should have some sound files from the Book/CD up also. The book has some classics plus some great pieces which have never been published.
I went 14 miles up the mountain again today. I need to get a lite digital camera to take along with me so I can put up some pics. 56 people passed me on the hill, it was crawling with cyclists. I had a decent pace but there are so many racing clubs in this area, oh, and there were people running up the mountain, and I mean running. There were two young guys... I couldn't believe the pace they were maintaining. And that was up around the 14 mile mark. It was a total of about 53 miles for me, and my legs are wiped.
7/27/10 Got up early and had a nice 34 mile ride. I climbed a few hills, saw a Coyote, several quail and a Roadrunner. Very cool looking. I forgot to mention in my last post that there were several runners on the road up MT Lemmon. Simply amazing. Tons of runners and riders in the area. I am going to try to record the Pachelbel today, then I have only one more piece to record for this next book, the Bach Allegro in D. Should be a very nice edition
7/25/10 Well, summer is here over most of the US. Here it's been pretty hot for most of July, over 100 in the heat of the day. I go out riding by bike early, when the sun comes up generally, unless I oversleep. I don't know how much I have talked about this, but I have asthma. For the first 30 years of my life it was just about non-existent. At some point in my 30s I really got sick with it. I have always had nasal problems, congestion and sneezing, but the asthma was really awful because I couldn't ride. So for years and years I have put up with this, sometimes it got better, but it never really went away. Doctors will tell you that asthma is not curable, like most things people get, you medicate it, which I don't like doing. I was doing moderatly good in the east, but when I moved to AZ, the asthma got really bad. I had problems just walking around the block. I had to take a break and sit and I would be gasping for breath. Argh, and double argh. I have always been a fan of Homeopathy, but I have had mixed results. I have never stopped looking for a remedy though (there are tons of them), and recently, just a few months ago, I hit on one which really works. I'm not going to say the asthma is all gone, but I'm making steady progress. I'm riding and getting stronger, which brings me to today. I did another partial climb of MT Lemmon. Today I did 11 miles of climbing and then turned around and came home. It was a 50 mile ride. I will add a bit over time, and then I will again climb the entire mountain like I did a couple of months ago. I was doing pretty well on the climb, it wasn't my breathing which is amazing, it was my legs. I am now getting back into shape now that I can breathe. Tucson is really a biking town. I have to confess that I was passed by over 50 people today on the climb, and I passed 6. There were well over 100 cyclists on the mountain today and it was great to see all of them. There are some terrific riders here, and if you are thinking I'm very very slow, these guys are 30 to 40 years younger than me, most of them on racing teams and in incredible shape. I will be getting stronger though. Listen to me, I'm not a Doctor, but if you have an illness, please consider looking into homeopathy. You can find MDs who work with it, and there are also non MD practitioners. It's not easy to find the right remedy, but boy oh boy, when you do, it's a life changer. My asthma in the last few months has been steadily receding. I'm not on any medications and I can breathe. For an amateur, I am a pretty strong rider, even if 50 people did pass me on the climb. :-) I have been doing 30 miles a day with climbing, and I also didn't take a rest day before I did the climb today. Oh well, I will try again next week and be rested. Maybe I can keep the passers down to 40. There is a link to the climb later in the blog. I'm taking tomorrow off though. :-)
I'm working on finishing up this "Baroque Gig Book for Guitar." I have two more pieces to record, and then the book will be available. It will be a nice mixture of some things which have already been published (not by me so you can count on some great fingerings) and some new things which will be worth the price of the edition. This is a great, if not a bit challenging book of pieces, but I think you will have a ton of fun with it. Then I'm going to be writing some things and putting out an edition of original pieces. There will be waltzes and a nice variety of pieces. It's been a while since I have written music, and it will be nice to get back to it. This book will have the best arrangement of the First Prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier that I have heard. It was done by a friend of mine, plus a Handel Gigue which was never published, a presto by Pescotti, Bergamasca similar to Respighi's, some nice Bach, a Weiss Fantasia, and many great pieces to see you through a set of Baroque pieces.
6/14/10 Turning warm here, I have to get out early in the morning to get a nice ride in. I don't mind the heat so much but the sun can be pretty intense if you are out on a bike. The riding is going pretty well. I have been exploring and extending my rides. This was a bit premature, but I climbed MT Lemmon on my Bike. Tucson's elevation is about 2500 feet. The road up MT Lemmon climbs to about 8050, though the mountain is over 9000 Ft. It was about a 12 mile ride from our house to the mountain, and then a 21 mile climb which rose about 5500 feet. I have to tell you I was exhausted. I was wiped out for days after the ride. After the first ten miles, it was mostly will power. The View was very nice of course, but as I don't like heights, I couldn't really stand to look very much. There are bears and mountain lions up there, and that idea sort of bothered me. It is usually about 30 degrees cooler up there near the top, and the ride down was pretty chilly. I will have to be in better shape the next time I attack. I only climbed part way up once, about 8 miles, and then later I did most of the whole climb. The one problem is the only way I know to get there right now has a stretch of a very busy road. There is a wide bike lane but I don't like all the cars, and there are a couple of exits on the road and you have to be pretty careful. Other than that, I like the climb, I just have to be in better shape to do the whole thing. Otherwise, I have been doing about 25 miles a day, mostly on the bike path. There are a ton of riders here. I hear Lance Armstrong trained on MT Lemmon. I believe it. It is the longest climb I have ever done.
We have a new Duet book out for mandolin and guitar. The title is Music of Spain and South America for Mandolin & Guitar Duet Book/CD This is different than most of the other books we have for mandolin as these are duets with both parts written out. There is both TAB and Notation for the mandolin, and only Notation for the guitar. The guitar parts are well fingered. The difficulty is mixed, with some easier pieces and others which are fairly challenging. I'm working on a book of Baroque pieces for guitar, and as always, it's taking me longer than I thought it would to get them ready to record. You can hear some samples of the music at: SoundClick You can see all our available books at our display at our web Page. We have several new books for Lute, Guitar, Flute, Mandolin, Cello and Violin. Oh and we have two new Flatpicking guitar books also. Flatpicking Medieval Music for Guitar Book/CD and Flatpicking Celtic Music for Guitar Book/CD, or for Classical Guitarists, Renaissance Lute Music for Guitar Book/CD.
This is an interesting town. You can navigate it easily on a bicycle. I think I can get just about anywhere because of the bike lanes and parallel roads. The ride to the base of MT Lemmon is an oddity as there is only one busy road linking the city to the base. You can see great Great Map of tucson with the bike trails, lanes an streets for cyclists at this site. This is a PDF file, and it's only a couple of megs so even someone with dialup can check it out. Tucson is one of five Gold Cities designatied by the League of American Wheelmen. I need to get an inexpensive digital camera so I can take some pics. I saw a coyote on the bike path just yesterday. I wish I would have had one then.
Generally it's getting hot here in the afternoons. From 100 to 110 and this is only June. As long as I get out early, it's fine for rides.
I know there has been a lot of news about the new immigration law in AZ. I don't really understand all of it, but I have a friend who lives in Mexico. He can't understand the problem. This is why. He has to register every year in Mexico for a significant cost and prove he has enough money to live there for a year. He also has to hire a translator to go there and help him with the forms and to speak to the officials, even though he knows a fair amount of Spanish. He told me that if I wanted to play the lute in a Mexican restaurant in his town, I would have to go to the officials and register, I would have to prove I had enough money to live there and I would also have to prove that there was no one in his town that could do the job, in other words, that there were no other lute players in the town. This is a more expensive process than the yearly registration to live there. If someone in the next town wanted to hire me to play the lute for another night, I would have to go through the same process all over again. He told me they get stopped all the time by both the army and the police, they have to get out of the car, have it searched and show their papers. So he doesn't understand the big deal about the law in AZ. I think there are parts of it which are unfair, and that it can be abused. But some of it seems reasonable. It's really a complicated issue but what he doesn't understand is the huge difference between the laws of Mexico and the US, and the outrage of the Mexican president over our laws. I didn't know any of this, but it's interesting to know the differences between the two countries. Personally, I like living in the US.
3/12/10 It's going to be up to 80 this week, not bad for March. I will really get some riding in.
We have a new edition out this week, Renaissance Lute Music for Guitar Book/CD. It's a great collection of music with many pieces you probably don't have the music for. If you are a fan of Renaissance lute music, this is a collection not to be missed.
1/20/10 Well, it's nearing the end of January here and I think winter is almost over. We have a cool weather for the next week, but then hopefully it's going to warm up into the 70s. I'm currently working on a book of lute music for guitar. I believe most of the pieces have not been published before, so it should be an interesting edition. Alekandra and I are also almost ready to record a duet book for mandolin and guitar. Most of the pieces will be Spanish or South American. I think it's going to be a pretty nice edition.
I did have an interesting week teaching. I had a student come all the way from Finland to spend an intensive week learning all that I could teach to him in that time. It was a twenty two hour flight from Finland, and the weather was very nice here which was a plus. We played guitar, worked and walked. We ate most meals together and it turned out to be a really nice, if not exhausting, week for both of us.
I think I will go for a ride today and get out and about. We have a nice bike path here only a couple of miles from where we live. The city of tucson is set up as a grid, so it's very easy to find your way around. If you want to find North, you just look for the Catalina mountains, which now have some snow on them. No snow here though, just a bunch of rain which I guess we need. Hopefully it will stay sunny today so I can get out.
Aleksandra has a concert tonight with the Balalaika Orchestra of Tucson of which she is now a member. It should be fun, and I will be going to watch her play.
Please consider joining our us on Facebook. Now I'm trying to come up with some interesting discussions on music and playing, the more people we have there, the more interesting it's going to be. I'm trying :-) to come up with interesting topics, but would be very interested in your ideas. There you can post responses and also create new topics.
9/15/2009 So much has happened in the last couple of months, it will take some time to update everything. First I will touch on the main points. We sold our house in North Carolina, we have bought and moved into a house in Tucson Arizona. Boxes, boxes, boxes. Working on getting everything organized, especially the recording room as we have some things to record. More on that later. We have a new book for Mandolin and Guitar "Christmas Duets for Mandolin & Guitar." This book is notation only for both instruments, and has 15 Great duets with introductions and variations. We also have a Book of folksongs for Guitar which will be out very soon because it's at the printer as I type this. I spoke with ADG and they said it would be a couple of weeks perhaps, so you can be looking for that soon on our site. We also have a new Cello & Guitar book, which is Duets for Cello & Guitar Vol III with some terrific pieces in it.
I don't think I could have done the move with out Aleksandra's organizational skills. She is truly amazing when it comes to packing and organizing everything. And thank you Sharla for coming from AZ to help us. Because of financial considerations, we decided to drive a Penske truck, towing our car on a trailer. It wasn't too bad and the route had very few turns. I think it was 85 to Interstate 20 and stay on 20 until somewhere either in TX or just after, where you pick up Interstate 10. The only really busy part (stop and go) was bypassing Atlanta, that was quite a drag. But because we left on Friday morning, there was almost no roadwork and the traffic wasn't too bad. Because we gained three hours going west, we managed to get to Tucson in three days. The only exciting times were looking for fuel for the truck especially in Texas where the stops had many miles between them. The low point was Midland Texas, which has to be one of the ugliest places we drove through. Perhaps the city is nice, but along the highway, it's abandoned oil wells, trucks, cars, houses, RVs and anything you could possible think of. El Paso on the other hand was an attractive city. Tucson is beautiful and we have a view of the Catalina Mountains here.
Selling the house and buying this one was very very stressful. Something should be done to make this easier on buyers and sellers. For example, in NY or MD, at the closing when you give them the money, you get the key to the house. In AZ and NC, you pay your money and then you have to wait until the house is recorded to get the key, to insure your property or do anything, so if the closing is on Friday, and they don't get around to recording the house (which happens often) you just have to wait through the weekend and if you have plans to move, it's just too bad. The seller also doesn't get paid until the house records, and it can also be a day after that. How can one do business this way. We didn't get into this house until the next day sometime, and we didn't even know if it would be then. We had all our things in a truck and we were just waiting around. We didn't get paid for the house we sold for four days after the sale, and that is no reflection on the buyers who are great people. It was the bank and the lawyers.
Oh, Aleksandra has been making these handmade Medieval/Renaissance Purses which are perfect for so many things. They are perfect for picks, strings, gold coins, precious jewels or magic stones. Take a peek at them. The pictures speak for themselves, they are beautiful. Aleksandra will also be teaching mandolin here in AZ so she will be busy.
I know there is a lot on the media these days about health insurance, and I do agree that it's very expensive. We had Blue Cross in NC which covered the accident that Aleksandra had when the car hit her and shattered her femur. She was three weeks in the hospital and I'm glad we had the insurance. Now that we moved to AZ, we have to re-apply for insurance from... tada.... Blue Cross of AZ which is different than Blue Cross of NC. To get the insurance Aleksandra had to sign a waiver which said they Blue Cross of AZ will not cover anything having to do with failure of the operation on her leg or anything related to this accident which should happen for LIFE!!! Not for one or two years, any associated problems/visits having to do with this accident are excluded forever. Anyone who thinks the insurance companies are doing a great job, I'm curious what you think about this. I couldn't believe it.
Tucson is beautiful. There are many independent stores, great restaurants and it is one of Five Gold Rated city for bicycles in the US. There are bike lanes on just about every busy road, and parallel to the busy roads are other roads which are very lightly travelled. Most of the roads to North/South and East/West so it's easy to find your way around the city. After three years in Durham, NC I still had to ask Aleks where to go, but here I'm having no trouble. We are about a mile from just about anything you could want, but it's still a very quiet neighborhood we live in. Every time I go out I'm amazed by the mountains. This is the nicest placed I have ever lived, and I love the heat. People here complain when it's 110 degrees F outside, but I will take that any day compared to 20 degrees F. I find at dusk I can run easily even when it's 90 degrees F, and there are some great paved bike trails here. It's a terrific place to live.
7/02/09 "The Magic Lute" a new edition for lute in French Tablature is available for Renaissance Lute. You can have it either as a Book/CD or as just a CD. Music of Turlough Carolan, music from the Skene Manuscript, and many others. On the page for the book we have a link to some SoundClick Files. There is also a new edition for guitar coming out which is not available until ADG Productions has it ready. I sent them everything they need to complete it, and I think it should be ready in a couple of months. I will have information up on the site as soon as I have it. There are some great tunes in this Book/CD including Amazing Grace, Scarborough Faire, Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair, Three Ravens, Greensleeves, Inca Melodies and some great pieces you may not be familiar with. The title of the book is "Folksongs for Guitar from Near and Far." It will have both Notation and Tablature for guitar in a second section to avoid page turns. Otherwise we are just doing the sell the house/buy the house dance and are hoping that we can get this done fairly soon. I can't wait until I can again just sit and play and write music and not worry about the freaking house.
It seems to me there is a lot of intelligence out there, but not a lot of wisdom. I called to change a doctor's appointment for someone, and they wanted to know everything including the social security numbers of the family. I said to them "I just want to change the time of an appointment." There are things that make me crazy. The "self serve checkout" at the grocery store and very few lines with checkout people. Hardware stores where there is no one to help you (I prefer the small local places) and I went looking for running shoes the other day (you will know that I don't shop much) and I was speechless to find that there was no one to help you. You had to find the shoes and the right size yourself. I'm sure there are many other things that make me crazy but I can't think of them right now. More later.
Oh, we have a little booklet that I haven't listed yet titled "Secrets About Music." Some of the secrets are on the web page, but these are things that have helped me keep playing and have fun over the years, and they are really a new way of looking at things. I believe you will have some "ah ha" moments when you read it. You can sample the secrets on the page. The booklet is 28 pages and I'm thinking of selling it for $5.95 and that inludes postage.
5/26/09 It's here. "Ancient Airs of the Scottish Renaissance for Mandolin" We now have this terrific book available. The pieces are from the Skene Manuscript. The Titles are really wonderful. "Flowres of the Forrest," "Kilt Thy Coat Maggie," "My Mistress Blush is Bonnie" and "To Dance About the Balkeis Dubb" just to name a few. I mean, where else will you get titles like this. I love this about Renaissance pieces, and these tunes are certainly from the Renaissance. But they do have a different feel than much of the Renaissance music you hear. There is a certain type of sound to these pieces which you will not find anywhere. I"m also getting close to finishing up a book titles "Folksongs for Guitar from Near and Far." There are going to be a number of easily recognizeable pieces, but also some of these wonderful pieces from the Skene Manuscript. It's such a wonderful source of great music. Ancient Music from the Skene Manuscript. Hear some Pieces on SoundClick
5/14/09 OK, so I don't write every day. We are busy recording a new project for mandolin, and I'm working hard on one for guitar. The mandolin Book/CD will be done first. We have 15 of the 23 pieces already recorded, so this will be soon. The title is "Ancient Airs of the Scottish Renaissance for Mandolin" and we are drawing most of the material from the Skene Manuscript. This project is Awesome. The tunes are different and really lovely. The guitar Book/CD I'm working on is "Folksongs for Guitar from Near and Far. There are quite a few which are familiar as well as some you won't know. The familiar ones are "Black is the Color," "Simple Gifts," "Three Ravens," "Barbara Allen," "Amazing Grace," and "Shady Grove." Other than that there is a great Macedonian song, a Greek, and several Scottish tunes which are really enchatning. Other than that, still trying to sell the house and move to Arizona. I have a feeling the gas prices will peak when it's time to move, as that is what happened every time so far. Weather here is warm (in the 80s) but not warm enough for us. When we first moved to NC I found some of the days a touch warm for me, but not anymore. I ran the other day and when I got back, it was 86. I thought that was just fine with me. So maybe I will have to get used to warmer weather in Arizona, but if that is the case, it's fine with me. Warm is good. If you have a house in Tucson you would like to trade for one in Durham, NC just let us know. We should have the Mandolin Book and a video and sampel tunes up soon, the guitar book will be a little longer, and then we will have to look for a new project to do. :-)
There are a number of Youtube Videos up for you to watch if you like. I have a few friends who enjoy travel, and we have used many of their photos to provide a small preview of the area. I have been very busy with making new editions, and in the last few months have completed a number of them and I have listed them below. All of these were pretty interesting and rewarding. The latest of the group is the Bach Partitas. These have always been a challange for me, but with time and careful fingerings, I think I have a set of pieces which are pretty playable. The Balkan things are of course fantastic. I just love this music. I wish there were more great pieces in 7/8 times.
JS Bach Partita BWV 997
Book/CD 3/11/09 
6/14/08 11/1/2008
There is a small book I'm working on titled "The Book of Music Secrets." Some of these are on the www page and they reflect many of the dilemmas and confusions about music. Some of them are very very basic and for me they have been a revolution and are part of the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing, how I'm doing it and still doing it. I think it really clarifies the goals and ways to get there for musicians. We will be offering it up for sale soon at a low price. It is really full of gems for anyone learning or continuing to play an instrument. If you have an interest in getting it sooner than it's on the page, just drop me a note at guitarandlute@earthlink.net.
