Today marks the one year anniversary of my first blog post.  So far blogging has been a wonderful creative outlet, and has helped connect me to many friends and colleagues in the music world.  I’ve mentioned this somewhere in a previous post, but simply trying to generate topics to write about gets me engaged and thinking in unexpected ways.  I look forward to continuing to blog throughout the summer and the next academic year.  As a retrospective of my first year in blogging, I thought I’d do a rundown of reader favorites and my personal favorites ( I got this excellent idea from the folks at HornMatters, the gold standard for horn related websites!).  Here are the top 10 most viewed posts:

1. New Blog and Dennis Brain’s Embouchure (Read the follow-up to this post here)
2. What Alec Wilder Thought of John Barrows
3. More Warm-Ups and Routines for Horn
4. Free Tuner and Metronome
5. Recommended DVDs for the Horn Player, Part 1
6. Equipment in Review: Thompson Edition Cases
7. Dudamel with the Vienna Philharmonic, or What Kind of Horn is That?
8. Music for Horn by Alec Wilder
9. Jacob Medlin Demonstrates his New Single B-flat/C ascending horn
10. Warm-Ups and Routines You May Not Know – Part I – Ifor James 

Looking at the list, it’s interesting to note that posts on Alec Wilder appear twice. He is definitely a major composer of 20th-century horn music, and if you aren’t familiar with his compositions I highly recommend them!  Warm-ups and routines also seem to be a consistently popular topic.  No. 10 on the list is actually a three-part series, and if you liked Part I be sure to read Part II and Part III.  In addition to this top 10 list, I also have a few personal favorites that are worth a read too.  These posts are important to me for various reasons, both personal and professional, and even though they may not be statistically the top posts on this blog, they are among my favorites.

1. A Tough Week and Influences
2. The Lenoir High School Band
3. About Worrying
4. Of Summers Past: Brevard Music Center
5. Some Notes on Performance Anxiety

In closing I highly recommend blogging as an academic, creative, and even therapeutic pursuit.  Although there are already some excellent music blogs out there, as well as sites which initially began as blogs but have now expanded into online magazines, there is always room for your own thoughts and ideas.