Welcome to our website!

From here you can find your way to the other pages using the links to the right of the screen. The main pages are:

   Latest News - for the latest news about what we are doing see below

   About us - who we are and what we do

   Lists  -  Gigs and talks, bibliography, discography and links to related websites

   Parallel Strands - pages for our 2005 CD with details, words, samples and photos

   Dusty Diamonds - pages for our second CD, released August 2008

   Martin's Songbook - A Collection of songs written or set by Martin

   Voice - download the hand-outs for Shan's Voice workshops

   Education - download the hand-outs for Shan's work with SEN teachers

  Song School  Songs - as taught by Shan at the Baring-Gould Song School

We will continue to add material to this site and try to keep the 'Lists' page up to date. Shan is still writing handouts related to her voice workshops and teaching and we will add anything new as she does so.

We hope that you enjoy exploring the site. If you would like to get in touch with us then contact details are on the card below.

If you have found this site useful, then you might like to have a look at our other site that deals specifically with the song collection of Sabine Baring-Gould - www.sbgsongs.org. There you will find information about that wonderful collector and an increasing number of songs selected from his marvelous hoard.

 

Martin and Shan

Updated 21st Feb 2010

 

 

 

 

 

Latest News:

 

Our 'World Tour' 2010

We had a great time travelling in Hong Kong, Australia, Fiji and the USA and thoroughly enjoyed meeting and making friends. Thank you to all who made our trip so much fun and for exchanging your songs with us. If we still have any money when we've added up the cost of our lovely holiday we just might do it again. It is a real joy to be with people who enjoy the music that we love so much ourselves.

And now back to summer of singing nearer to home. Even though Shan is saying that I'm not allowed out until I've done some serious work on 'The Book' we will be at a few festivals and have a couple of trips planned to Ireland in the Autumn. And we have a raft of new songs to learn! Watch this space! (7th June 2010)

 

Shan's 'Education' hand-outs and song sheets

Shan is, at present, working with the Sing Up organisation in the Southwest, to deliver a number of training sessions in using song with children who have special educational needs. These sessions are being carried out in association with our friends at Wren Music. The hand-outs for these sessions, as well as the song-sheets, can be found in the 'Education' section. (Jan 2010)

 

Re-working the website

 I am reviewing and re-building my websites at the moment, making them more consistent and easy to use (I hope). I am trying to finish this one first and will then complete www.sbgsongs.org. The main changes I am making here are:

• I have added a section of the songs that Shan has taught in the Baring-Gould Song School in 2008 and 2009
• I have changed all the sheet music to the Sibelius 'Scorch' format. We have found that this works well and makes it possible for us to provide a high quality song sheet for printing and a good system for playing back tunes while the score is displayed.
• The 'Parallel Strands' page is now a single page from which all the song sheets can be accessed, rather than having a separate page for each song. 
• We have removed the midi files that were available for the songs from 'Parallel Strands' - the Scorch files play back in the same way and are more controllable.
• I have repaired a number of links and corrected a number of spulling mistookes

I hope that you will find these changes work for you - let us know if you have any suggestions.

 

Shan's handouts

We have had great feedback about Shan's handouts from her voice workshops. We are keeping these up to date. We will be adding a new section shortly for the hand-outs for her training in song for teachers of children with special educational needs and, particularly, her approach to the use of communication aids in singing classes.  (Nov 09)

 

A Busy Year

We have got about a fair bit over the last year, with trips to Australia, New Zealand and the East Coast of the USA, as well as getting out to a number of clubs and festivals in the British Isles. We have met some wonderful people and had some great times - thank you all for making us feel so welcome. Shan has now threatened to lock Martin in his study until he has finished putting together his book on Baring-Gould - but will let him out for more travel and gigs - and to mow the lawn.

(Jul 09)

 

Lists

The 'lists' section now has our confirmed gigs and the list of publications by Martin is now more complete, though there are a few more to be found and added.

(Oct 08)

 

Martin's Songbook

I have now added the sheet music for all the songs from my songbook 'Jack in the Green and Other Heroes' to the site. You can download, play and print the songs from there - and then sing them!

(September 2008)

 

Dusty Diamonds

 Our new CD 'Dusty Diamonds' was successfully launched at the Whitby Folk Week. Our sincere thanks to the musicians who played and sang on the CD: Becki Driscoll, Nick Wyke and Keith Kendrick and Sylvia Needham.  Thanks also to Doug and Sue Bailey for their support and encouragement. For details of the CD go here (or click the link to the right of the screen).

(August 2008)

 

Cherington Bells

 Tim Eldridge, who runs the website for the village of Cherington in Gloucestershire, recently challenged folkies to supply a tune for the song texts he had recently unearthed that tell of dark deeds of bell-napping in the early 19th Century. Martin rose to the challenge and gave one of the songs a new tune. Read the story and listen to the song on the Cherington Village website. You can also download, play and print the sheet music here.  (August 2008)