It has been a while! First of all, I need to give a huge shout-out to Chris Roode for encouraging me to get back to work on this project and for some awesome conversation on the philosophy of open source materials. His website is ChrisRoode.com and you can find his published works via Tapspace Publications.
When I started this website, I was in a very different place. I thought I was done as a public school music educator and was planning on making this a full-time project along with gigging and a small adjunct position that I had picked up. However, as I got sucked back into the world of band directing, this project fell by the wayside. I did not update once a month as I had originally planned. I did not continually add new materials. I also didn’t do a great job promoting it in the social media engines. In short, I was not a good steward of my own work.
The idea of this project was never to have a walled garden where everything ran through me, but for it to operate more like a moderated forum. However, people do not engage with instructional materials like they do social media, and honestly, that idea itself was never clear.
So starting today, this project is really going to be open source. When you go to the store page, the PDFs have been replaced with a .ZIP file that contains the PDF, the editable .DOCX file, and all of the photos used to make the project. I no longer have the notation files or they would be included as well. My hope is that this allows more people to use the bits of this that they want to use in the way that they like. I also have a ton of battery and front ensemble packets that I have created over the years and my hope is that by the end of the year I will make a similar package for those. I need to get permission from the people in the photos for those packets to publish them for a different use first.
I’m also sorry for the store interface. If someone has a way in which I can host downloads on Squarespace while getting download metrics without having to use the store, that would be ideal. Nothing on this site will ever cost money I promise. When you go through the store, you can leave the payment field blank.
I’m sorry it took me so long to do this and I hope that more people will find use of the product now that it has happened. Thanks!
-James Doyle