 | | M-R Music Staff |
It's been a hectic few months here at M-R Music, as you might have noticed by my lack of newsletters. Mark Schellenberg, the owner, has never experienced this level of business before and we've been scrambling to keep up with everything. We've made a few notes on how to make things more efficient next year. See below for more on that.
I'm about to head out the door for the first of three CBDNA regional events I'll be exhibiting at this season. If you are going to the North Central, Western/North Western, or South Western CBDNA conference, you'll see me there set up with a large display of band music, scores, and materials.
If you haven't got one already, take your smart phone out and download a QR Code reader from your app store (free). Nearly all our music and scores now have QR codes on them so you can listen to the music through your phone while looking at it. I even have phone rechargers on hand in case you've run low or out of power.
A few weeks ago Shattinger Music auctioned off their entire inventory. We managed to pick up a large portion of the music, and as a result I'm going to be bringing several boxes of SALE materials with me. This music is marked at a fraction of the original price, so this may give you an opportunity to investigate or try out an obscure piece you might not normally have looked at before. I have several boxes of oversized scores and some chamber music ready for the North Central conference, and I'll have some additional music sets and standard sized scores ready by Reno.
Speaking of Shattinger Music, I finally convinced Mark that I needed some extra help to keep up on everything I want to do here so I can be the best resource I can be in the wind band field. So as of last week we have hired Jim Kerfoot, my former coworker at Shattinger Music, to help us out. Now I can spend a little more time researching new music and resources and preparing for some of these conferences, and we'll have a wind band specialist on staff even when I'm out of town. Welcome aboard, Jim. We're really happy to have you here!
One of our major projects this summer will be to deal with the old, antiquated website for this store. I'll just say it - don't use it right now. It was never designed for anything beyond serving a few local teachers in the area with small simple orders. I'll keep you posted as to our progress on it, but for now you're better served either calling me or emailing your request to me at info@mrmusicinc.com. Hopefully by the next school year there will be something more practical available for you and your administrative assistants.
Finally, I plan on getting out one more band music newsletter while it's still relevant to the school year, so look for that next week. For the rest of the spring and summer, my newsletters will be about supplemental items that can assist you or music that may be of use to you in the future at some point - DVD's, reference works, obscure or foreign publishers, special categories of wind music, etc. Feel free to email me your suggestions of what you'd like to see me write about. For now, I'm heading out the door to Ball State University. Have a good semester, and I'll talk with you soon.
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