(from announcement made during the meeting)
As many of you know already, Jeff has been working for several years on a series of sightreading books to enable guitarists to read music anywhere on the fretboard. They're based in part on his own studies after retirement, finally learning the whole fretboard, and in part on his prior experience in database design, so that you can learn to read in a new position without having to un-learn what you learned previously in other positions.
Of course, to sightread, you need a wealth of material that works in the positions you're trying to learn. That's what's been taking him so long. He's collected over a thousand melodies from public domain sources and arranged them into computer-graded exercises, most of which can be played in multiple positions. The grading system shows, for each exercise, the left-hand difficulty of playing it in all its accessible positions.
He's been giving one ot two sample exercises to a few of you, but beginning this month he's providing a monthly sightreading handout for all of us, with tunes appropriate to each month's seasonal theme. This month's sightreading handout*, as you can guess from the colors, has some scary music for Halloween. Play the first exercise (easiest in first position) and see if it sounds familiar. It was written in 1892 by a 19-year-old Russian whose name you'd recognize. Still guessing? Then read the back page and follow the info and performance links. Rediscovering an old tune can be fun, so give it a try.