There are a TON of new pieces available at www.gpsmusic.biz - and even before we get them up onto the website, you can STILL order them as Friends of the GPS MUSIC Community!
-> A Walk In The Woods (SATB w/ piano, catalog #810) is a spectacular and spiritual piece that you can use in church, secular, and school choral ensembles. This is probably Gordon's best choir selection ever - feature your bass section or soloist and make music that will grab your audience and hold them for the five minutes it takes to convey the message!
-> American Folk Trilogy (SATB w/ piano, catalog #808) combines three of the most beloved songs in US history: "Amazing Grace", "Chester", and "Simple Gifts", in a brilliant collage that demonstrates how closely their chord progressions coincide. The key change at the end is particularly entrancing!
-> And the two newer songs that were posted during the last website update, One Time In Your Life (SSA or SATB w/piano, catalog #806 and 807) and Caveman Love Song (SAB or SSA w/ piano, catalog #804 and 805) are meeting with excitement from the directors that have gotten their hands on it already! One Time In Your Life is a lovely piece of syncopation with a moral, and Caveman Love Song is absolutely the most delightful playacting your students will ever get to do!
-> On the marching band front, our third complete show for sale is now available (even though the website hasn't said so yet!). Superhero Saga (marching band, catalog #604) will give your band the chance to show off its sense of humor with your Hero, his Damsel, and the Evil Villain all getting their spots in the limelight! The music is fun and challenging, and the show is as straight or as campy as you choose!
-> Before school is out, you'll be able to look at and listen to our fourth complete show, A Color Guard Fantasy, which is a cross between Alice In Wonderland and Dorothy's search for Oz, all set within the context of a marching band (specifically, yours!). Be forewarned - the "villain" in this fantasy is a stodgy band director, so if you're willing to be parodied on the field by your members, you may have a show that lives on beyond the season's end! This show is more difficult than the Medium-Easy rating our other three shows deserve; we guarantee that it's worth the effort!!
-> On the solo/ensemble front, we're venturing into Spanish music, with our first two selections about to be posted: "Vino y Soledad", a gorgeous and lush song for solo vocal with piano; and "Tu Eres Primerico" for a mariachi ensemble of vocal, guitars, and two trumpets. With a contract to produce music for a recording artist in the genre, there will be more to come!
-> And still on the horizon for summer are the first two selections in our Massed Band Collection - Christmas Collage and The First Hundred Years, designed for you to perform with a combined beginning, middle school, and high school bands together (or in any combination!). Creating a useful and functional format for you as directors to use has been a challenge, but we're clearing hurdles and getting them ready for you to look at and listen to this summer.
Thanks for your continued support, and we hope to keep building an incredible library of music for you to keep your bands and choirs learning, smiling, and growing!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
So how can we entice you to try out our music?
As with all start-up businesses, it takes patience to get the potential clientele interested in our product line. Not being the most patient people in the world, we're always looking to jump start the process any way we can.
So, how can we entice you to try out our music? Here are a few ideas we've been batting around; see which ones would be most effective in your opinion...
* We're putting together sample CD's in three categories - marching shows, concert music, and choral music - that we can send out to interested music teachers and other potential clients. Thanks to our dramatically upgraded software and computer system, we can record highly functional and representative recordings of brand new pieces that have never yet been performed by a live ensemble!
* Under consideration is a buy one-get one free plan... exactly what it sounds like, lower priced selection is marked down 100%.
* We have another mass mailing ready to go out, although frankly the actual business that's come from those so far hasn't been as significant as the Idaho word of mouth, which represents the vast majority of our sales to date.
* Advertisements in the MEJ and SBO are on the horizon as well...
What other ideas come to mind? The music we're producing is very exciting, and we very much want to share it with the world!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
So, how can we entice you to try out our music? Here are a few ideas we've been batting around; see which ones would be most effective in your opinion...
* We're putting together sample CD's in three categories - marching shows, concert music, and choral music - that we can send out to interested music teachers and other potential clients. Thanks to our dramatically upgraded software and computer system, we can record highly functional and representative recordings of brand new pieces that have never yet been performed by a live ensemble!
* Under consideration is a buy one-get one free plan... exactly what it sounds like, lower priced selection is marked down 100%.
* We have another mass mailing ready to go out, although frankly the actual business that's come from those so far hasn't been as significant as the Idaho word of mouth, which represents the vast majority of our sales to date.
* Advertisements in the MEJ and SBO are on the horizon as well...
What other ideas come to mind? The music we're producing is very exciting, and we very much want to share it with the world!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Bullseye!
It's an exciting day for us tomorrow - the 2013 Idaho District IV Middle School Honor Band, under the baton of Scott Farkis, will perform "Bullseye" at their concert at O'Leary Middle School in Twin Falls. We're looking forward to hearing what it sounds like with a band of two hundred players, although it won't be the largest band to play one of our pieces (that would be one of the various combined 6-12 grade program performances). It will, however, be the first time one of our selections has been performed by an honor group, and it's that milestone that is significant to us.
So thank you, Dennis Bortz and Ted Hadley, longtime colleagues who run the honor clinic and made this happen - we greatly appreciate the chance to share our music with so many new audiences!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
So thank you, Dennis Bortz and Ted Hadley, longtime colleagues who run the honor clinic and made this happen - we greatly appreciate the chance to share our music with so many new audiences!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Let's see if we've got the bugs worked out!
Melissa's spent a ton of time working on the order form, and she feels she's finally gotten it looking and working the way she wants it to - so log on to www.GPSMusic.biz and give it a try! Let us know what you think! And if you type in the code PATIENCE, we'll give you a ten percent discount on your order for being so patient with us! Thanks!
Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
We've hit a BULLSEYE!
It's exciting to have the band directors in southern Idaho working on our song "BULLSEYE", which we donated and dedicated to the Idaho District IV Middle School Honor Clinic Band. Gordon remembers those first Saturday rehearsals where large portions of the 200-member band would gather to run through the selected music for the first time. Since most of the schools only send a handful of students to the Honor Band, those Saturday practices are often the first time the students and directors really get to hear the songs. It's been great to hear all the positive feedback on "BULLSEYE" from those directors over the last week - and here's hoping it spreads to those directors (and you!) taking another look at the rest of our library of great concert band music (and so much more!)
Sunday, January 20, 2013
To all the members of our GPS MUSIC COMMUNITY - Thank you.
Every start-up business is difficult, and GPS
MUSIC is no exception. We have a product and a business philosophy we
deeply believe in - original and unique music, with a PDF-based delivery
system and the same create-a-family
atmosphere we used as teachers. But those won't by themselves make us a
successful, profitable enterprise able to help the thousands of music
directors we hope to eventually reach with this creation. Your
following, your belief in us, your participation in the GPS MUSIC
COMMUNITY is what will make our dream come true. Thanks for your help -
we'll continue to do our best to make this what you need it to be!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Carving more new niches...
In the process of trying to deliver what our patrons want, rather than what convention dictates, encouragement from several directions has led us to a new category of music coming to our web site in the coming months - the Massed Band Collection.
The need for pieces to play as combined band programs is being left completely unfulfilled - either your high school students are bored playing sixth grade music or your beginners are in way over their heads playing the older kids' pieces. The selections we're creating are three-level medleys which will work in single band performances, or in any combination of two versions, or the whole enchilada of all three versions working in conjunction. Some sections have everyone playing together - and the parts interlock and support each other - and some have individual bands playing their own material, so each band can have its own moment in the spotlight. (When you play just one or perhaps two of the three bands' parts, there are easy slices to be made deleting those unused solo sections.)
The benefits of combining your bands are many and obvious to experienced band directors, but for novices: realize that the best recruiting tool you have for your younger members is your older membership! And that the one of the best motivations for your older kids is the enthusiasm of younger players who idolize them!
There are two medleys in the works at this point, both of which should be available in the next few months: The First Hundred Years, a collection of early American folk songs (it begins with three contrasting versions of Yankee Doodle from the three bands, for example), and Christmas Collage (in which "Jingle Bells" is given the same treatment). Other combination pieces are on the drawing board - but if you have suggestions of ideas that you might use in this form, pass them on in the comments and we'll see what we can do for you!
Gordon was working on the Christmas medley over a year ago, when he was still teaching the Jerome band program, with the intent of using it in the year he chose not to teach band. Melissa encouraged him to explore the genre once she realized what he'd been developing, and then a few others thought this would be a useful and marketable creation. The biggest thank you goes to Gordon's longtime colleague April Peterson, who told us how she couldn't find anything to fit this bill for the Kuna program Gordon'd left her years ago, and wouldn't we be interested in creating something for her? That was the straw that broke the dam, to mix our metaphors.
Check out the GPS MUSIC Massed Band Collection as it appears over the course of 2013 - and if you teach in a program that can use something like this, drop us a line!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
The need for pieces to play as combined band programs is being left completely unfulfilled - either your high school students are bored playing sixth grade music or your beginners are in way over their heads playing the older kids' pieces. The selections we're creating are three-level medleys which will work in single band performances, or in any combination of two versions, or the whole enchilada of all three versions working in conjunction. Some sections have everyone playing together - and the parts interlock and support each other - and some have individual bands playing their own material, so each band can have its own moment in the spotlight. (When you play just one or perhaps two of the three bands' parts, there are easy slices to be made deleting those unused solo sections.)
The benefits of combining your bands are many and obvious to experienced band directors, but for novices: realize that the best recruiting tool you have for your younger members is your older membership! And that the one of the best motivations for your older kids is the enthusiasm of younger players who idolize them!
There are two medleys in the works at this point, both of which should be available in the next few months: The First Hundred Years, a collection of early American folk songs (it begins with three contrasting versions of Yankee Doodle from the three bands, for example), and Christmas Collage (in which "Jingle Bells" is given the same treatment). Other combination pieces are on the drawing board - but if you have suggestions of ideas that you might use in this form, pass them on in the comments and we'll see what we can do for you!
Gordon was working on the Christmas medley over a year ago, when he was still teaching the Jerome band program, with the intent of using it in the year he chose not to teach band. Melissa encouraged him to explore the genre once she realized what he'd been developing, and then a few others thought this would be a useful and marketable creation. The biggest thank you goes to Gordon's longtime colleague April Peterson, who told us how she couldn't find anything to fit this bill for the Kuna program Gordon'd left her years ago, and wouldn't we be interested in creating something for her? That was the straw that broke the dam, to mix our metaphors.
Check out the GPS MUSIC Massed Band Collection as it appears over the course of 2013 - and if you teach in a program that can use something like this, drop us a line!
- Gordon and Melissa Smith, publishers, GPS MUSIC
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