Failure is the Key to Success

Imagine you take over a company making widgets. The typical market price for widgets is £50. You have many customers who buy a widget every few months at your selling price of £40. The problem is it is costing you £65 to make your widgets. After a business review, you decide to increase your selling price to £65, you give your customer base a couple of weeks to cancel their regular purchase or accept the price rise.

The obvious outcome, is that your customers will take their business elsewhere, rather than paying over the market price for your goods.

Continue reading » Update on the future of Central Bedfordshire Music Service

Tags:Bedfordshire Music Service,Dunstable Music School,music centre,music school

It’s now looking like the plan is to close the music centres, probably at the end of the summer term.

Jo and I hope to find out more on Tuesday evening; we have been invited to attend a meeting as parent stakeholders.

I have put up a new website, http://www.dunstablemusiccentre.co.uk, with the intention of keeping all interested parties as up to date with information as possible.

Tags:Bedfordshire Music Service,Dunstable Music School,music centre,music school

Back in November, Central Bedfordshire Council announced plans to cut funding to the Bedfordshire Music Service. Bedfordshire Music is the principal provider of instrumental education and musical enrichment opportunities in the county of Bedfordshire.

Their Overview and Scrutiny Committee met on 23rd November 2010 and recommended that any decision about the service should be deferred until after the Henley Review had published its report – due in February 2011.

On 7th December 2010, the Executive Committee met and it was reported at the time that the committee had accepted the the recommendations of the Scrutiny Committee. The main recommendations were:
• to await the report of the Henley Review, which was expected in early January, before making any decisions about funding for the Music Service, and
• to disaggregate the Service – i.e. to split it up between Bedford Borough (which is currently not proposing any cuts) and Central Bedfordshire.

After looking at the minutes of that meeting, http://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/modgov/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=3370&T=1, there is no mention of waiting for the Henley Review, only the disaggregation.

Continue reading » The destruction of Bedfordshire Music Service

Tags:Bedfordshire Music Service,Dunstable Music School,music centre,music school

No, not that one…we’ve been here before (Introducing the family). Anyway it’s over two years since I introduced my family of recorders and it has expanded considerably since then, courtesy of Ebay. I now have a couple of Moeck Tuju trebles, several Moeck Tuju descants and a Moeck Rottenburg tenor. Back in September I added another size to my recorder family. I now have a little garkleine. This is only about 6 inches long and feels tiny when trying to play it.

My new found enjoyment of playing the recorder convinced me to try taking ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) exams in recorder. I set my sights low to start with and started collecting the music for Grade 1 Descant. At first it seemed difficult, but after a bit of practice, I realised it was within my ability. I took the exam at the beginning of July (on my birthday of all days) and to say that I was nervous was an understatement. I must have got something right as I passed with merit.

Continue reading » Expanding the family

Tags:recorder

The Sunday following our trip to Classical Spectacular, we headed up to The Stables in Wavendon, Milton Keynes to see Emily Smith in concert.

I hadn’t really heard of Emily Smith before September. The brochure from The Stables arrived and I was looking through it to see who was on and the write up caught my eye. I typed in the link to her website and then listened to the tracks on the jukebox, I was hooked. We ordered her latest album ‘Too Long Away‘ and then became annoyed as it looked like the date she was playing was the same as the Classical Spectacular, typical! It was a couple of weeks before I realised my mistake, they were Saturday and Sunday, and ordered tickets for The Stables. She was playing Stage 2 at The Stables, which was going to be a new experience for us.

Continue reading » Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan

Tags:Emily Smith,Jamie McClennan

Better late than never! I will finally get round to finishing and posting this!

Last Saturday A couple of weekends ago, we went down to the Royal Albert Hall in London to see the Classical Spectacular concert. We got the tickets back in April as it always sells out very quickly. It seemed a long way off at the time.

Anyway, on Saturday we went to the Music Centre as normal for the first two sessions and left at break time to take the instruments home. Then we drove over the Hemel Hempstead to catch the train. It takes about 25-30 minutes, which is similar to the time it would take to get to Luton Parkway station, however Hemel is much quieter and there is a huge carpark, so parking is never an issue. After buying our tickets, we only had to wait about 5 minutes for the next train to Euston; we were able to get seats without problem. The train was quick and clean, only stopping at Watford Junction on the way to Euston.

Continue reading » Classical Spectacular