Lizzy,

Glad to know you're enjoying the 'previews'. I can promise that there are more worthy tracks in the set (21 in totla), but alas only 24 hours in every day!

LadyChen, Thanks... And thanks for enjoying the more 'evil' side of me (?) in Perniciosus!

I'm currently working on some short-ish works for 4 hands (quatre mains) for piano (2 players, 1 piano)... Would there be interest to share my work as it goes in? :S It might turn into a blog-ish thread, but if there's interest, perhaps I would go about it... :-/

Yes!!! I would love to be updated on your 4 hands pieces (in addition to anything else you compose). I am looking forward to hearing additional recordings from the 21 pieces too.

Nikolas, got my copy in the mail and it looks great! As I was playing through the pieces my wife commented that the art matched the music - or was it the other way around? Which came first?

I was also happy with the invoice in Greek and the foreign stamps on the envelope! Life's little pleasures...

I looked for the other thread in the ABF forum. I guess the powers-that-be took it down. Too bad...

Sam

Sam,

Thanks for reporting your thoughts and first impressions.

The sequence of happenings with this set are as follows:

* first came the one named 'Just a Quicky'. Frustrated with a student who wouldn't study, I gave her this short assignment.
* Then I thought that I could shape out quick little 'doodles' like that for intermediate students, with a more contemporary approach. No more Czerny or Beyer or the such (not that it ever crossed my mind that I could replace such works...).
* Later on the student I mentioned earlier quit the lessons for a single lesson and as a result 'Failing Alkistis' came to existence. Her name is Alkistis and she keeps having lessons with me after all, but at that time I felt that I was failing her and she was failing herself.
* Everything else was composer and I started looking for a story teller to write a story on the music set. I did mention that the sequence of the works was not set, there were no titles and nothing else to give any guidance to anyone. That fell through COMPLETELY!
* So I decided to provide titles to the pieces on my own... In a whacky sense the titles worked quite well, so I started looking for a sketch artist instead.
* After looking at A LOT of artists who applied for the job, I came back to Piero Pierini, who I had met a month ago (before putting an ad that I was looking for an artist). We agreed with Piero.

Piero had in his hands most of the titles (I think 3 were missing, because I was unable to find any more suitable titles), the score in a draft version, with some empty spaces, where the illustrations would be, and some mechanical recordings from a computer.

He was wonderful! He did an excellent job on all 21 illustrations and I do think that the work would not be the same without his art! We had NO dissagreements on what felt right and what not. I requested only 2 things for two works (Failing Alkists and 5 Blue), and the rest were his own creations and ideas. A few illustrations had to be reworked slightly because there was too much black in his illustrations and a few size issues, but other than that nothing else was wrong.

In other words: Oh boy did he deliver! I am very lucky to have found him and I do hope to work with him in the near future.

Sorry for the long story, but I'm a fan of speaking my mind out loud, plus I feel that being autistic about my own art, doesn't help!

_________________________________

Invoice in Greek: Yes... I have to put that inside... I guessed it would appeal to a few... Then again it's all Greek to you, right?

_________________________________

Yup, thread dissappeared. I'm not still 100% certain on what happened exactly, but as I keep saying on various threads, this IS the home of Frank and I do need to respect his wishes.

Thanks again Sam

I got my copy on Monday. The book is just as beautiful as I thought it would be, but unfortunately I've been too busy this week to set at the piano -- though I couldn't resist a quick go at Ditsotred Romance, which was lots of fun.

Thanks, Nikolas!

I got mine too! Loved the Greek stamps on the envelope, which are beautiful before even opening the package. I was pleasantly surprised with the edition and illustrations as well!

tomorrow..

i don't buy many things 'new', but am really happy to support, i have just the sisters who will love it when I am thru.

I'll have to revisit this tomorrow when I'm a little less tired.. i keep ordering 3 books.

thanks apple*

Even if you ordered 3 copies, I'm sure that some human would be taking care of your order, and as such they would notice the 3 orders and would check with you...

and I'm glad that the copies have arrived to the rest of the people!

EDIT: We won't be able to ship out anything on this Thursday or Friday, because of the Musikmesse. If anyone is to make an order I would suggest they do it over the weekend and we will compensate by adding express shipping to any order without the extra charge!

I'll try again this morning. I must have been tired. You know Nikolas.. I lived in Salonika for over a year. My Greek wasn't the best (I could read it better than I could speak it) but I could easily find my way around and order food and converse about philosophy.

Ευχαριστώ

Παρακαλώ!

(you're welcome...).

It's quite interesting that you lived in Greece, even if it was for a year... How come?

well.. on advice, i applied for and received a grant to organize original biblical manuscripts in a corrected chronological order (after college). I have a background in ancient Greek and Latin and I think I was the only person who applied for this grant.

The manuscripts were on Mount Atmos - and i was supposed to be a male.. they tried shipping them to Salonika but there was a huge earthquake and i lost the grant. - the work was tedious and there were no lights because of the earthquake .

so I worked on a farmette - weeding and picking peppers and eggplants (i actually liked it quite a bit and as an au pair for an American family.. the parents taught at an academy for foreigners).. since I was already there..

pretty fun for a year. I missed my fam and returned home.

(My dad taught Latin and Greek).

Received my copy last week! I've been enjoying playing the pieces, and my husband has been enjoying looking at the art . And I can't wait until one of my little boy students is ready to tackle the collection. I know he will be thrilled with it. (I'm sure girls would enjoy it too, but i have one little boy that loves dragons and magic and anything fantasy related)

Fun collection! Received my copy today and plan to order more. My favorites so far: "Cheap Ripoff" , "the Pride of the Moron" ; all are fresh and fun to play.
Thanks, Nikolas! Looking forward to your collection for 4 hands.

favorite picture has to be the "fried chicken"

i received my book a few days ago.. it's delightful.. my husband loved the stamps. It certainly addresses a subset of skills that is rarely focused on. kind of hard to sight read.. i had to really think about it..

and loved the pics.

i have this girl who is an excellent sightreader.. so excellent that she won't practice efficiently and separately (altho she must be doing something right.. tho advanced, I am going to see if she can learn 1/2 the book in a week).

thanks

ladychen, Barb, apple* I'm pleased that you got your copy hassle free and that you're enjoying the music and the illustrations!

I will admit that, while composing them I hadn't fully taken into account the 'learning it by heart' factor, so some works are rather hard to learn. The 'Pride of the Moron' is a prime example of that. The first couple of systems while monophonic and require only the right hand, do not have anything repeated and the melody seems to go on developing (even if the pattern remains the same), so it's quite hard to memorize it.

Same goes for sight reading. Exactly because of the harmonic language it's a tiny bit harder in the aspect of reading and getting the right spelling of the notes. I am hoping, though, that the result will be satisfactory for both the student and the teacher!

apple*1/2 the book in a week?!?!? Do let us (me?) know how this went... I'm most curious to learn the reactions of the students!

just this one student. She is quite advanced but does not have the same learning and practicing techniques that I embrace. She can sight read Chopin and when i give her a piece and can sit down and play it slowly, hands together. I actually bought the book for her little sister and if the older sister will play it, the younger will acquire an aural memory.

bwa ha ha ha ha

Sorry that I'm bumping this thread, but it's for a good cause...

I'd like to inform that anyone who's ordered and received a copy of Sketch Music shortly will be receiving a new copy! We decided to reprint Sketch Music having undergone a strict proof reading, eliminating (hopefully all but...), most errors. In addition to that we've gone our way to ensure a better printing quality and better paper quality (and much thicker cover).

The packages have been shipped on Monday, the 21st of March, so they should be reaching you shortly.

________________________

In addition to that, we'd like to inform you that quite soon we will be able to ship our products directly off Canada, thus with much quicker delivery times and cheaper shipping fees.

We are working hard for this to happen and we hope that it won't take too long, but for now every score is still shipped from Greece.

And we're also working hard to install a coupon method, that will allow us to offer discount to loyal customers, or customers who are teachers/students, etc...

________________________

Our member, Luke Bartolomeo and reviewer/blogger of Repertoire Review (<- LINK) has recently reviewed Sketch Music and performed a few pieces from the set, which have not been offered to the public yet! You can listen to the podcast and the recordings, or read the transcript of the podcast HERE. (<-Well... LINK)

A public thanks for Luke for doing this, even with a digital, watermarked score. I do hope that very soon he will be receiving his copy.
________________________

Finally,

If I may request all you members here.

I'm hoping to start some steady promotion efforts, especially for Sketch Music in the form of a a flyer, or something to be distributed around. I would like to quote some of you, through the posts, with your names if possible. So pretty soon (counting in weeks here) I will be contacting you for a direct permission, and your full name. I'm just thinking out loud right now, in case anyone objects to this, in which case I won't even try to contact them.

All the best,

Nikolas

Woo Hoo! Looking forward to getting another copy.

What a great review by Luke also. It was interesting, informative and it was helpful to hear him pronounce Cirque du Rien. Thanks for the link.

I'm almost sure that you'll find it much better than the previous 'editions'. As I said we worked hard to create a much better book...

Yup! Though I don't think he has much to do with France (?). He misses though the pronunciation of the name 'Alkistis', but who can blame him?

I enjoyed reading through the review myself, not only because he loved the collection, but because he really dug deep into the works, provided some great insights to teaching, plus he performed 'Smooth Classical' which is one of the hardest pieces in the set!

I got my new edition this week! Thank you so much. I am thinking it might be fun to have a subset of my students each learn a piece this summer then show them off at our end-of-summer party.

The new edition arrived yesterday. Thanks so much!

Ok! So I can relax, since you now hold a corrected score...

Stanny: Great idea! That would be huge fun! Let me know how it goes, or recordings or other...

Nikolas, do you have any other youtube videos out of the other pieces in the book? I can find the two you have out there with six pieces.

No, not at this moment.

But I think I could find some time and make another few if there's interest.

I should note that Luke (link given above, with the review) performed six of the 21 pieces, some of which have not been recorded yet.

BUMP!

Here's various news (and part reason of why I've vanished a bit from the forums).

1. I made a new video, with 4 more pieces from this set. They are the early one in the collection, so they probably are easier than the ones you've already heard. You can view it right in the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SEw9lS2pBM

2. The scores now are available in bundles and various discounts, which can be found through the catalog of the website (don't want to link it here for understandable reasons). 2 copies gets you a 10% off, 3 copies a 20% off and 5 copies a 30% off (which is a bit less than 2 copies for free in this case).

3. We do hope that in a couple of weeks at most (unless customs say differently) our North American Warehouse (stationed in Canada) will be operational. When this happens, shipping times will be lessen by a lot for anyone in N. American grounds or the whereabouts and I think that there's also a bit of savings to be found in shipping fees, but I'd have to double check, so don't hold me on that.

Received my copy today!

Only had a brief play through so far, but it more than lives up to expectations - I was immediately impressed with how approachable the pieces are, despite them belonging to a genre which is so often quite the opposite. There's certainly no fat here, either - not individually nor on the work as a whole.

I really like the overall feel of the book, too - the illustrations match the mood perfectly, the scores are nicely laid out, and it's all done on nice paper

I look forward to presenting it to my students in the coming weeks!

Thanks for the short review Ben.

And I like the term 'no fat here', given the fact that I've gained quite a bit of weight over the last year!

Very much looking for any kind of feedback from your students! It's always nice to listen to anything (positive or negative) from the actual users of the score: the students.