News and Updates
Honour Music Weekend pictures
I've finally uploaded the 76 Honour Music Weekend pictures to our gallery. You can also choose to download all 76 of these pictures in a ZIP archive.
Over the next while, more pictures will be coming!
"Recordings" section added
You spoke, and we listened. During a recent Music Council general meeting, it was brought up that it may be difficult to find previous performance recordings (like Silver Band at York University) without the link on the home page.
To deal with this, a new section for Recordings has been added. There is now a link in the navigation menu below the header:
Bandwidth limitations effected
The popup Flash Player for pieces on our web site is intended for a one-time, quick preview of the music that would not require additional software or the act of downloading. However, since it is very convenient to use, it has driven up the bandwidth consumption significantly due to the unfortunate reality that it does NOT store a temporarily cached copy of the music on the hard drive. (Therefore, every time the piece is re-loaded in the Flash Player, it must be streamed again.)
In order to deal with this consumption, I have enforced a limitation of 3 uses of the Flash Player for any given MP3 file. The screen usually looks like this when loaded (noting the unique numeric ID of the MP3 file and how many uses you have already consumed):
Thus, the piece "A Festive Overture" may only be played 3 times before the following error message appears:
This new implementation is intended to encourage downloads, be it of the high-quality or 128 kbps version of the file. Downloading the files is a more suitable method of accomodating the re-use of the music; for instance, no more bandwidth is consumed for either you or our web site when you listen to the music again.
Silver Band at York University and Gold Band at OBA
Performance recordings for these two prize-winning ensembles can be found on this web site. They can be downloaded (high quality or 128 kbps) from:
- Silver Band at the York University Grade 10 Band Festival and Concert
- Gold Band at the Ontario Band Association Festival
Course information updated and Grade 8 FAQ added
During this critical time of year when courses for the upcoming school year are selected, some guidance for Grade 8 students/parents and specific course descriptions, have been added to our web site.
The Grade 8 Frequently Asked Questions encompasses issues such as the choice of an instrument, whether or not Experienced Band is suitable for the student, and so on.
The Courses page now provides improved descriptions that name prerequisites.
MP3 download button graphics created
I've created a few new buttons that will be shown when downloading an MP3 file from our web site. Some of the best examples of its use include the Music Backgrounds page in the Resources section. Take a look at the buttons:
