Dear Readers,

Welcome to a new school year. I hope everyone’s semester is off to a good start. I’m sure you are all every bit as busy as I am - but not too busy to investigate some “new” web resources, I hope!

The first site I’d like to share with you in this new school year is www.thomas.gov. This is the official site maintained by the Library of Congress to provide citizens with a reputable source for finding out what legislation is being considered in Congress. I went there looking for information on Bill 848 – The Performing Rights act to provide “parity in radio performance rights under title 17”. There, you can see what action has been taken and what is pending. I also found Congressional Resolution 49 – the Local Radio Freedom Act – put forth by Republican Gene Green from Texas that, “Declares that Congress should not impose any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge relating to the public performance of sound recordings on a local radio station for broadcasting sound recordings over-the-air, or on any business for such public performance of sound recordings.” It is interesting to note that this resolution has 249 Cosponsors in the House. Upon searching the term “music” I came up with 32 Congressional actions including one that stated that, “Lena Horne should be recognized as one of the most popular performers of the 1940s and 1950s and for her outspoken opposition to racial and social injustice” and a resolution to have Sam Phillips’ likeness put on a stamp. It is certainly interesting to see what our lawmakers are up to!

I almost hate to mention this next site, but, it might help someone, some time. Perhaps everyone already knows about www.lyrics.com. This site may not have the lyrics for every song ever written, but it sure is extensive- bordering on exhaustive. Whether or not they have licensed all of the words, streamed music, and videos is another discussion, but if you need lyrics to a song, this is definitely the “go to” place.

Best of all for this month, I’d like everyone to be aware of an excellent eLearning experience I have been working with for about six months now. Yamaha has an on-line training program – Yamaha On-line University (YOU)- where you can learn a lot about different instruments and complete sessions on salesmanship and merchandising. I have found the program very helpful – learning about everything from marimba construction, to trumpet valves, to the difference between yellow and gold brass. And, I have used some of the salesmanship sessions in my classroom. Last year I required all of my students to do at least 10 modules and several of them went beyond that to receive the “Yamaha Sales Professional” certification – a nice thing for the resume, especially for the products kids. I got a unanimous thumbs up on the project from the students and plan to require it again this year. If you are interested in checking this out, you can contact Jeff Hawley at Yamaha (jhawley@yamaha.com). He has been super to work with and would be happy to help other schools get involved.

That’s it for this month – again, please feel free to contact me if you have great websites that you use in classes and I will get them published (giving you credit,
of course) in our next edition!