Latest articles and resources

I've been beavering away creating as many articles and resources as I can to support teachers and students. Here's a little update as to what's been published recently.

I've been honoured to have been able to contribute to two features in May's edition of Music Teacher Magazine. The first, a collaboration with the amazing director of I Can Compose, Rachel Shapey, is a collection of ideas to get composing happening more easily in Key Stage 3 music lessons. Where time is short and classes are large, quick and easy activities that are fun and engaging, tailored to all experiences, are essential. Here's a link to the feature.

I've also written a smaller Quick Tips feature about helping students who are writing songs, perhaps for their GCSE or A Level coursework. You can find that article here.

Music Teacher's online resources bank for this month includes my latest in the Developing Wider Listening series, which I've been producing resources for since 2020. This one is part 1 of a two-part resource on Sonata Form, to complement next month's part 2 and the March issue's resource on binary and ternary form. There are further resources on other musical structures, such as variations, rondo, song-form and fugue, in the coming months.

Developing Wider Listening is pretty comprehensive now, and contains resources about all of the main musical periods, fifty years (decade by decade) of rock and pop music, film music, Musical Theatre, jazz, opera and much, much more. There's also another series, called World Tour, which I completed a couple of years ago and which I wrote about in one of my previous blogs on this page.

Away from all that, my latest OCR Supplement (published by Rhinegold Education) is out, to support students taking the OCR Music A Level in 2026. This examines the two prescribed works: Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and four songs by the blues legend Bessie Smith. You can find that one here.

There's much more in the pipeline, and links to all of my other books and resources, elsewhere on my website - either in other blogs or on the education page. Do get in touch if there's something that needs to be written, and I'll get onto it! :-)