Paul Sheftel

Having a very exciting meeting with Phyllis as we begin planning for the birth of “Personal Trainer.”  Keep your eyes on this page for breaking news!!

Laura raises some interesting questions in her response to my Atlanta posting.  I’ll post my thoughts ASAP and would love to have yours.

Very excited about all the new things that are in late stages of development.  Keep watching.  The Bahamas, by the way, were great.  More soon.

Atlanta was great!!  My stay was brief but the Carl Fischer showcase with Phyllis Lehrer was great fun and the Distance Learning session With Kathy Maskell from my perspective was also fun and hopefully of value to the attendees.  Had a brief session with Nick who is a born performer.  His rendition of my masterpiece Now you C It brought many in the audience to tears (whenther this was due to my music or his rendition is perhaps something we shall never know.)  Distance learning is, to use the vernacular, most cool.  The main point I tried to make at the session is that there is nothing mystical about it.  The technology is available and easy to underststand and use.  No special teaching skills are required that are not already in place—at least in my opinion.  I would not suggest that it is a replacement for traditional teaching but it sure comes in handy when, for instance, you have the greatest grandkids in the world  who, unfortunately, do not live in the same place as you.  Hope to hear from some of you.

It’s been a while since I gave attention to my site.  Starting to get back on the air.  Very excited about the upcoming events at the Music Teacher’s National Association conference in Atlanta.  At 8 AM on Tuesday 3/31 Phyllis Lehrer, my very dear friend and colleague, and I will be doing a showcase for Carl Fischer/Theodore Presser in which not only many wonderful titles will be featured but scintillating photos of our 8 grankdkids as well. If you are going to be in Atlanta don’t miss this thrilling event.  Then at 9:15, same morning,  I’ll be dong a joint presentation with another dear friend and colleague, Kathy Maskell,  on long distance learning.

In addition I’m especially excited  to be working closely with George Litterst who has designed three extraordinarily  innovative software programs that are bound to be of immense interest to teachers.  One, Home Concert Xtreme, provides an extraordinary platform for playing MIDI files.  George will be offering a large number of my files at no cost to attendees at the convention who purchase Home Concert Xtreme.  Be sure to plan to spend time at his booth, Time Warp Technologies to learn more.

Hope to see you in Atlanta.

Had a great meeting last evening with web guru Nick.  Look for some alterations and additiions to the page.

AND —Getting more recordings on the publications page.  Have just added Interludes, which has, I’m happy and proud to report, been rather a perennial favorite.  If you are playing any of these pieces you now have a way of comparing your performance against that of the composer (me).  Also have posted the duets in Festivities.  In addition I’ve posted accompaniments to most of them as well, so that you can hear them in two versions.  Hope to have the accompaniments available as MIDI files very soon.

Haven’t been updating the page of late but meeting with  Nick, our resident guru, this evening to start things rolling again.  Keep watching!!

I guess anyone who has ever written music harbors a secret wish that somehow it will be heard. Well now my not so secret wish is starting to be realized. Spent the evening with my genial, ingenious and ever gracious young friend Nick who is entirely responsible for the design of my web page who has devised a remarkably simple and straightforward way for me to post recordings of my music. I got to work today and you can see the results in the section of the page entitled “Publications & MIDI.” I’ve posted music for five of my collections (you can hear some MIDI accompaniments in Piano Patterns):

• Patterns for Fun vol 2


• Paul’s Practical Piano Pieces


• Paul’s Perplexing Piano Pieces


• Play’s the Thing


• Piano Patterns

In addition I’ve posted the music to a little four hand piece called Scherzo.

All you have to do is click on any one of these titles to bring up the contents and voila!

I’ll be discussing these collections subsequently. In the meantime I do hope you’ll give a little listen.

As I sit here a great deal of the music I have composed is being uploaded from my computer to my web page. In short order I hope to have it all sorted so you will be able to access the contents of any of my collections and hear the music. Just to give you an example:

Pick Up 6ths (Easy As 1-2-3)

Many of my pieces have accompaniments available as MIDI files.

Here is an examples of Pick Up 6ths with accompaniment.

More to come.

Just finished a great lunch with a great friend—Jim Lyke. Jim has recently completed interviewing me for a piece soon to appear in Clavier magazine. Now it’s my turn and I’m interviewing Jim who has had an astonishing career in music. Keep your eye on this page for updates.