Long Time Coming

[Mel]

The Sonny Rollins Omnibook Review

[Mel]

https://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.action?itemid=232485&subsiteid=1

[john]

“Waiting on a friend” far out. A bit above my pay grade for now. Sounds great. The Stones are the best.

[Andy A1S]

Maybe make it an annual rate? That way if someone downloads everything and doesn’t renew, it will be a reasonably fair deal for both parties.

I’ve subscribed to material from two teachers that way in the past (one flute, one sax – who will remain nameless, for now), and both were “all you can eat” deals, for an annual membership.

It’s easier to set that up than trying to restrict the amount of downloads somehow. It also meant people didn’t have to be in a hurry to get it all, so most of them probably didn’t try to download as much as they could on day one.

The reason I stopped subscribing wasn’t because I’d downloaded everything, it was because I didn’t feel they were really adding anything new that was of interest to me. If you keep adding new stuff, Johnny, there’s an incentive to renew for the next year.

What I would like to see is sheet music in MusicXML format, so it can be opened in MuseScore (which is free, from musescore.org) or Finale (which isn’t).

I use MuseScore a lot, often taking free MIDI tunes and finding the part I want to play. I can then rearrange it so it fits my screen better, to read while I’m practising, get it to play the tune to me if I can’t work it out from just the music (very useful!) and change the transposition for my other instruments, or change the key.

The sax teacher I used to subscribe to had a habit of making his PDF sheet music so that no more than a dozen bars fitted full width on the screen at once, which used to frustrate the hell out of me. If I’d had them as MusicXML or MuseScore files, it wouldn’t have been a problem, because I could have laid them out to show the whole tune at once, most of the time. Trying to scroll a computer screen with a mouse while playing a sax just doesn’t work.

[john]

still prefer Sonny Rollins take on it and if I do a lesson it will be his solo note-for-note cause it’s more melodic and suiting to the style.

@andy, some good points Andy…I think if someone wanted to pay annually that could be arranged but I’m not so concerned about people coming to do a “hit and run”. There will always be 1 or 2 of those and they’ll always figure out a way I guess.

But my main concern is to roll out content and have a site that doesn’t overwhelm a person, especially starting out. this should make for more productivity in the long run. I also want to focus on “quality” content as opposed to uploading something or anything just so it looks like there’s something new every few days…not good for either of us.

I’ve had a few people ask for the entire song catalog from my music section and sold it for a 20% discount and ya, it worked well for both of us, and if a bunch of sheet music with backing tracks is all a person is looking for.

But the thing about a successful membership site isn’t just about that…it’s the community aspect as well. we can share stuff and have more fun and better learning experiences. more so than the guy who downloads a ton of songs and lessons then goes and tries to figure everything out on his own. There’s no support there and I would bet these people won’t get through it all or be as successful as the people who are taking advantage of everything a good membership has to offer.

I have my thoughts on this and will continue on with it but as we get going I will of course re-analyze and listen to you guys that are following along because the bottom line is that it’s being done for your benefit.

Regarding the sheet music…yes, I just started using musescore which I am really enjoying, actually more so than sibelius.
so the xml format is an option that I could do. Just remind me if my next tune doesn’t have it I’ll go back and get it done.

….speaking of which, I can’t wait to get back to creating more music and fun lessons. I’ve spent the last 8-10 weeks setting up this other thing but we’re almost there! thanks for the interest and support guys.

[john]

Sxpoet introduced me to musescore. I’ve been playing “Tears In Heaven”, “Brown Eyed Girl”, “Another Saturday Night” “A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada” and other simple tunes. No backing tracks. Just me blowing. How about “The Original New Jole Blon” with King Curtis on tenor sax. It’s the “Sign Of The Times” (Harry Styles

[Andy A1S]

Well, getting hold of some sheet music and just trying to play through it is my usual approach, these days, but I’m open to new ideas 🙂 Lessons on technique, rather than just on playing particular tunes would be good.

I’ve got a lot of musuc form freemidi.org (as MIDI files imported into MuseScore), and haven’t even scratched the surface yet, so something other than just the sheet music would be more useful. Those files mostly contain a backing group – I use Edit->Instruments to hide the parts I’m not going to play. I’ve sometimes tried to play along with it on electronic instruments, but mostly I just play it solo.

Personally, I’m only aiming to entertain myself so the amount of progress I’m making is secondary to that. I’ve been neglecting my saxes in favour of brass, lately, because you can’t easily mute a sax, and I’m trying not to get lynched by the neighbours / horde of marauding villagers with the pitch forks and the flaming torches… Lessons on technique for playing a sax really quietly would be ideal 🙂

I’m gathering it might be quite expensive, by my meager standards, if you need to charge for it monthly though, Johnny. I’ll wait and see.

[john]

like I said to a few others who emailed me; nothing on this site is changing. the new up-coming premium level is another thing that won’t take anything away from the site as it has been for years.
so you still can buy my song tracks a la cart

[Jazz Cat]

ive successfully run member sites for 15+ years; what i’d do is

a) have say 5-7 new songs/pdfs each month rolled out from your library. remove the old ones each month
b) include one or more courses as bonus for those that sign up annual
c) whatever you do, dont offer it all or too much upfront or 90% will join then quit after a month or 2; they dont stay if they can download a bunch at first
d) have private members only ‘sax mastermind Q&A’ forum thread
e) have unique lessons they can only get by joining

[Andy A1S]

You may have a point about limiting the amount of downloads each month, Jazz Cat, but if I didn’t get to choose which 5-7 songs I could download, I’d get bored with that pretty quickly. If there was a limit on the number of downloads that come with membership each month, that wouldn’t be so bad, provided we got to choose which ones.

Sheet music is widely available though, much of it free, so basing it all on that might not be the way to go. Including courses would be good. I’m sure I could learn a lot more from Johnny, but as a teacher, not just as a provider of arrangements and sheet music. There isn’t really a shortage of that, or places to get it from.

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