Trumpet Journey is now one year old!!!!

Both it, and I, have done some growing in that year. On August 2, I made a commitment to post an article everyday until this birthday. I almost made it (but there are a few days missing).

I have reached out to thousands more since that article. In total this past year, nearly 16,000 unique visitors have come to my blog to find out something new about the trumpet. Here’s a map and a top-twenty list of the visitors, by country.

Global Map of visitors to Trumpet Journey

 

 

All Visitors to Trumpet Journey by country, top twenty

By far, the most popular article has been by satirical take on How not to get a trumpet job, which was written at about 1:00 am on September 1 and viewed by around 12,000 visitors. I didn’t have a good image to go with the article, so I just drew the donkey playing the trumpet myself. Also popular were a report I did with trumpet job numbers and trumpet degrees and statistics on studying the trumpet at institutions of higher learning. I was really proud to be able to report these statistics, because it now means that trumpeters wanting to get a performing job have just a little better idea how difficult it is to get one. This hopefully will lead to better job preparation and/or creative entrepreneurship as a trumpeter.

Also popular were my top ten list of jazz players today and my plea for baroque trumpet playing without the use of fingerholes. There were two posts updating the research done on a 1995 ITG Journal article about early cornopean literature which lead to my theory that one of the pieces looked at may have been actually composed by Wagner. I will probably work to get this new research published in the ITG Journal soon.

Of course I am thrilled at the people who come to read my Trumpet Building Blocks PDFs to get practice ideas. Also popular is my Trumpet History Timeline.

Two big projects that I hope to get going in the next year. One is an enlargement of my “This Day in Trumpet History”. This is a little widget that you will sometimes see on my sidebar if there is an entry for that calendar day. It has little tidbits of trumpet history, especially birthdays and death anniversaries. I hope to add more dates to this for a little better sense of our trumpet heritage.

The other really big news is that I have been working with some college students on a new trumpet literature database that will eventually go online. It may not be able to go on the Trumpet Journey site (compatibility with WordPress may be an issue), but it will be a trumpet literature tool that is accessible and “contributable” by anyone with an internet connection. More on this later.

I am looking forward to many new interviews with interesting trumpeters. In November, I will publish a fantastic interview with Latin jazz specialist Brant Tilds, an American who now lives in Great Britain. I hope that reading about his unique career path will inspire many.

I will continue my serialization of my dissertation on Monteverdi’s Symbolic Use of the Cornett, which I think will take me well into October. I just love that any interested scholars will be able to access this in the future.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to another year. Keep journeying.

 

 

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