Finding the perfect recorder consort

This was the most popular request among those who responded to my questionnaire last year, and I’m pleased to say I think I’ve found a solution which works. Even better, it was simple to install on my website and the process didn’t leave me wanting to throw my computer out of the window! Sadly the search option wasn’t one offered natively by my website provider, but there’s a really good community out there to support Squarespace users and the cost (about £100) wasn’t prohibitive - worth every penny to keep my wonderful community of recorder players happy!

Before I make this update public on my website I’m opening it up to you, my Score Lines subscribers, so you can give it a test drive. I have various options for you…

1. You can sort the content of the list by clicking on the heading at the top of each column. This will sort that column into alphabetical (A to Z) or numerical order. Clicking it a second time will reverse that order (Z to A).

2. If you click on the heading of the Instruments, Parts, Style and Type of Consort columns that will bring together all the consorts of each type.

3. For every consort you’ll see a Bitly link on the right hand side (beneath Location) - clicking on this will whisk you straight across to the Google Drive folder where the piece is stored.

4. Search - the icing on the cake! Just above the table, on the right hand side, you’ll see a ‘SEARCH’ box. If you’re after piece by a particular composer (or even a specific piece of music) just type the name in here (composers by surname only) and it’ll find all the pieces by that composer and display them together - magic! You can also use this same search box to bring together all the Easier and the Minus One consorts by searching with those words.

5. If you’ve finished searching and just want to see the whole list again, all you need to do is click on the cross beside whatever you typed into the search box and the entire table will reappear.

6. On the same row as the search box, you can also click on ‘CATEGORY’ to select music by composer, or ‘TAGS’ to select music for a particular combination of instruments. To return to the complete list, click on the little cross and the filter will be removed.

7. Please note this list doesn’t include the consorts I created exclusively for my subscribers. Assuming this works as well as I hope, and you find it easy to use, I’ll add a similar table for those over in your Members Area so you can search there too.

Please now go and explore - you can’t break it no matter how many things you click on. I think it’s pretty intuitive to use, but please do let me know what you think about this improvement - I’d love to hear your feedback. You can use the contact form here or simply reply to any of my Score Lines emails. Enjoy!