Pay the Piper

So you want to play a musical instrument?

Just so you don't think we're
making all this up ....

Pay the Piper was created, written and posted by David Bramhall.
 
A singer, clarinettist, double-bassist and pianist, David spent 25 years as a school music teacher in London, Scotland, Norfolk and Suffolk before becoming a manager of Suffolk County Council's Schools Music Service which employs instrumental teachers, loans instruments, provides lessons to pupils in most of the County's schools and operates its own examination system. It also provides bands, orchestras, choirs and other out-of-school activities for young musicians.
 
During his twelve years with the Music Service, David found that many of the enquiries he received were very basic ones relating to parents' need for information and reassurance about choosing an instrument for their son or daughter, about buying the instrument and maintaining it, and about what standards might reasonably be expected and what opportunities would present themselves. Paradoxically, as his task was to provide services to schools and not members of the public, he was not officially allowed to answer this type of question - though he always did! So when he retired from real work in 2001 it made sense to use some of the expertise he had built up over the years making such information available to those who need it through this website. He is greatly assisted in this task by having access to friends and former colleagues who are very experienced instrumental teachers, and can usually come up with any answers he doesn't know himself.
 
David has written extensively in various periodicals on music education, and has published two books about classroom music (Composing in the Classroom Opus 1 and Composing in the Classroom Opus 2, published by Boosey & Hawkes) and an eBook about choirs (Training your young choir published by The Choirmaster Press). He is also a successful composer and arranger of music for young people. He has run youth orchestras and choirs for many years, is currently Director of the award-winning Harmony Girls' Choir, has conducted in towns and cities all over Europe, is a concert-promoter and also runs a business called Plainsite designing simple websites for choirs and other amateur music groups.
 

 

 
Use this Google Search box to find more stuff about
buying instruments, either on this site or on the World Wide Web.

	Web PayThePiper.co.uk