# Musical Experience: Intro #1



## RonPrice

INTRODUCTION #1

The first booklets of music in my life, at least those I remember, go back to the early 1950s. But the first booklet of music that I put together myself in order to run sing-alongs was in the late 1960s. From about 1953 to 2005, a period of more than 50 years, I was involved in sing-alongs in one form or another. In the last ten years, 1995 to 2005, though, singalongs using booklets of songs I created became rarer and eventually non-existent occasions. In some ways it was fitting that the last three years of singalongs, 2002-2005, I was engaged in were with senior citizens using songbooks whose content was mainly for a generation born in the first quarter of the twentieth century—the earliest years of Baha’i administration, the 1910s and 1920s.

There is material here for all age groups, although there is no material that originated from about 1975 to 2005, the group born in the the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I did not listen to the music of that generation enough to be familiar with it and certainly not well enough to sing it in groups informally in the Baha’i community and in any other communities of which I was a part. 

These resources are here for a future time when and if singalongs return to my life and to the groups I am involved with.

Ron Price
May 24th 2005


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## RonPrice

*Musical Experience: Intro #2*

INTRODUCTION

In primary school from 1949 to 1958 music was a regular part of the curriculum. From my birth in 1944 my mother and father both played the piano until it was sold in about 1957 due to financial need. My parents also sang in church choirs and listened to classical music around the house until my father died in 1965. My mother and I then moved into different houses. In the mid-to-late fifties I became interested in rock and roll and listened to it on a small radio in my bedroom in Burlington. I bought my first LP in about 1965 and added it to the one LP that I kept from my parents' collection: Handel's Messiah. I learned to play the guitar in 1968 after listening to guitar music for perhaps 15 years.

In 1989 I taught guitar to a class of Aboriginal students at Thornlie Tafe. I led sing-alongs from 1968 to 1999 when I retired from the teaching profession. In 2001 I joined a small choir in George Town to sing to senior citizens at Ainslie House and I continued until 2005. Such, in summary, is a brief history of my musical experience.

From 2002 to 2005 I made a list of the pieces of music I have enjoyed. I continue to add to the list; it can be found in this section of the file. I have also opened a file(not included here) which contains a list of articles about music, articles I began to save in 1984, but did not begin to save seriously until the year 2000. By 2003 I required a separate file for these articles and items. The main function of this resource, thusfar, nearly twenty years in the making, but only a serious collection for the last four years, has been to help me write poetry. Obviously, it helps me gain an increased appreciation of music as well.

I 2004 I conjoined 'dance' with music which became two 2-ring binders. The Nureyev special which I saw in September of 2004 inspired the creation of this new section of an arts file. Dance really had little part in my personal life: square dancing in 1957/8, the ocassional high school dance from 1958 to 1963 and the occasional dance in my four years at university. My first wife, Judy, and my second wife, Chris, and I have done little dancing together. I have done little dancing outside my marriages and none that I can recall after 1984 when I went by myself to a dance in Katherine. I could say more about dances I attended, both inside and outside the Baha'i community, but I shall leave that for now.

Ron Price
May 17th 2005


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