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About These Pages

You're probably as sick as I am with those pages that boast...
"This page was created on a 45 GigaHertz PC, powered using Cold Nuclear Fusion and using superheated steam as the primary heat transfer agent off to a high-pressure turbine capable of generating 6 megawatts of electric power which is distributed across a city the size of New York."

This, then, with typical British understatement, is how these pages were born...

• I produced these pages on an Apple Mac using Adobe Page Mill and then Dreamweaver. On-line time is expensive in the UK, so I've designed the pages to be fast to load. Nearly all the colour work is done using HTML rather than images, so you get fast downloads over dial-up lines.
  You also get a couple of interesting hidden comments in the HTML...
   
• My music is produced using Cubase SX for Mac.
  This is an excellent program, available for Mac and PC, which integrates MIDI, scoring and digital audio together seamlessly. It's easy to use and I can typeset by playing the music in, or by typing it in. I hear it before I print it, and it's been invaluable in producing high quality teaching material in minutes.
   
• The incipits on this site are produced in seconds by drawing round an area of the actual score with the mouse, saving the rectangle to disc as a Mac graphics image, and using AppleWorks (another powerful and blindingly easy-to-use package) to export the image as a web-compatible GIF.
   
• The audio on this site comes from a Yamaha MD-4 MiniDisc recorder, Cubase, iTunes (AIFF to mp3 converter), some cheap electret microphones and, for some of the items, a wonderful collection of the most lovely pupils a teacher could wish for.
   
• The wallpaper behind selected pages is real music of mine, made by importing a GIF into AppleWorks and replacing black by light grey, a process which is also currently taking place on my hair.

I have no interest in technology for its own sake.
My machine is quick and easy to use, and my software is quick and easy to use. That's why I bought them.
It leaves me time and energy to get on with the jobs of teaching and of creating music.

I'd recommend a similar setup to anyone in a similar situation.

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My other tools comprise a digital piano with weighted keys, and an endless supply of coffee.

I'd also recommend the coffee to anyone in a similar situation.