Category Archives: Tobenski Music Press

Tobensk-Algera Concert Series Fundraising

Monday, November 23, 2009

I’ve decided that at least through the end of January, all sales at the Tobenski Music Press are being donated to the Tobenski-Algera Concert Series to help fund our concerts. So get a-buyin’!

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Two new songs

Thursday, October 22, 2009

I’ve spent some time over the past few days writing two new songs – part of a group of birthday songs for friends. The 8 planned super-short songs are, of course, a part of the Song Album Project (I haven’t forgotten about it!), but will be available in the Tobenski Music Press store as soon as they’re written.

So far, I’ve written songs for my friends Danny Stone and Joel Conarroe (the latter of whom is having a big birthday bash tonight on the East Side), who turned, respectively, 30 and 75. For Danny, I wrote the 1&12frac; minute “Twilight”, on the short poem of the same name by Walt Whitman. And for Joel’s one-minute song, I used another short Whitman poem, “To a Western Boy”.

Six more to go!

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Tobenski Music Press store fixed

Friday, August 21, 2009

I discovered this afternoon, much to my chagrin, that the Tobenski Music Press PDF storefront hasn’t been working properly since April. So, I just spent the past hour and a half updating my PayPal settings and upgrading my LinkLok files (I sure would have appreciated an email from the LL folks when the updated version rolled out in April…). After a sizable number of test transactions and their corresponding refunds to myself, I have the storefront up and working again!

On the one hand, at least no one tried to purchase anything in that time, so no one was inconvenienced (I receive emails of all purchases, and would have been able to have fixed it immediately, so it would only have been a minor inconvenience). On the other hand, nobody even tried to purchase anything during that time! Which left me a) without any idea that there even was a problem, and b) having managed not to have sold a single score in five months!

So now that everything’s working again, buy! buy! buy! Or just donate on the Links page because you love me so much.

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It’s all I have to bring to-day

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

This afternoon I added a new song to the Tobenski Press store: “It’s all I have to bring” for voice and piano, composed for Neri Shulman’s 60th birthday in 2007. The song, on the Emily Dickinson poem, clocks in at just under a minute – a cute little gem.

The engraved Sibelius file has been sitting on my hard drive for some time, now (over two years!), and sitting with my laptop on a rainy day in Montauk seemed to be the perfect time to post this little musical offering. I made a cover page and a very few minor revisions to the score, and here it is!

Here’s what my diary has to say about the writing of the song: “Ran back to Astoria in the morning and wrote Neri’s song. Decided on an Emily Dickinson poem – ‘It’s all I have to bring to-day’ – and wrote the song in around a half hour. Seventeen bars. It’s catchy and pretty!” There’s something about the pieces that you shake out of your sleeve – they have the real spark of life, and an easy grace that can’t be faked.

Enjoy!

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DT.com’s 3rd birthday PDF sale!

Friday, February 20, 2009

Next Saturday (Feb 28th) marks the 3-year anniversary of the launch of dennistobenski.com! The site’s gone through a ton of changes since then, most notably has been the recent addition of the Tobenski Music Press storefront. So, in celebration of dennistobenski.com’s third birthday, all PDF scores are half off!

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Tobenski Music Press: PDF Downloads

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

As of Monday afternoon, the Tobenski Music Press now sells PDF downloads of select scores: And He’ll Be Mine, till night is overgone, Sweet Briar Songs, echoes, Starfish at Pescadero (score only), Letter from a Young Poet (score only), and String Quartet No. 1 (score only). I’ll be adding more scores and their accompanying parts in the coming days and weeks.

If anyone encounters any difficulties, please let me know ASAP at tobenskipress@dennistobenski.com. My live tests with the new scripts have gone well. I should emphasize that the process is completely secure – everything is handled by Paypal and the Linklok Paypal IPN system. All credit card information is handled entirely by Paypal, and the file downloads are dealt with through the secure Linklok scripts. I’d love to be able to write all of my own scripts to handle everything on-site, but security’s far too important an issue to entrust to little old me.

Bound scores will be handled the same as before: place your order through Paypal, and I’ll mail you a pretty, bound copy of the score(s) or parts.

PDF downloads (and, in the future, MP3 downloads) are even simpler! Place your order through Paypal (Shameless Plug: note the lower prices because of the lack of printing/binding fees!), and Linklok will provide you with links to download the appropriate files. The links will be provided in two forms: a page loaded immediately after completion of your order with secure links to the file you purchased; and a confirmation email sent to you immediately. This email is distinct from the receipt you will receive from Paypal with your complete purchase details.

I ran several test transactions Sunday afternoon, and everything ran smoothly. Paypal even made a point of calling me to make sure that all of the sudden transactions-plus-refunds-of-my-own-money were “authorized activity”. As if I didn’t trust Paypal enough, that made me a believer – a phone call on a Sunday afternoon just to “make sure”. Good people! (Thanks, Karen! That kinda made my day!)

I’ll be adding a few more things to the Tobenski Music Press pages very, very soon (Shipping/Return policies, etc.) to flesh out the storefront and make the processes super-clear.

The process of making this happen has been really exciting for me. I’ve been eyeing Linklok for months, now – going over their materials, reading reactions to it all over the NetarWebs. I think I read their manual a half dozen times before I even bought the scripts! Just the initial Paypal integration for the bound scores storefront had me ten kinds of excited, so to finally get this up and running has me over the moon!

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