The music of Tony Attwood

Tony started work as a musician, working with Cornelius Cardew in The Scratch Orchestra, and writing a children's musical Tamburlane with poet Adrian Mitchell.  He also played in various rock bands as support acts to such hit bands of the 60s as The Animals and The Pretty Things.

He first became known to a wider audience with the publication of a series of radical school text books, starting with "The Pop Workbook" which for the first time used rock music as a method of teaching in the classroom. Following a move to Oxford University Press Tony produced the three volume series "The Pop Songbooks" in which a series of pop classics were arranged for classroom performance.

Tony then brought his vision of music education together while working as senior lecturer in music at Dartington College of Arts, in Devon, through "Music from Scratch".  Such was the impact of this one volume that it reprinted 3 times in the first year of publication, and became the definitive music text for CSE and later GCSE music students.  Using the concept of writing simple songs as the basis for all the activities that followed this revolutionary work found its way into over 80% of the secondary schools in the UK, and is still to be found in use today, 25 years after its initial publication.  As Tony noted in his commentary written alongside the publication of the 7th edition of the volume, "Music from Scratch nearly didn't get published at all.  When OUP sent it out to various music teachers for comments in the 1970s all of them sent it back with statements to the effect that 'this isn't how we teach music at all.'  The fact is, when you look at it now, the book seems to represent the way music is taught at this level - which shows just how far we have come." 

In most recent times Tony's work on music education has been published by First and Best and has appeared in photocopiable form and as ebooks.  Current titles are

T1263  Music:  The Perfect Classroom

T1392  Music Department Management Policies

T1393  Listening to Music for GCSE

T1568  Head of Music Survival Guide

T1557  Making Music

T1574  Music and the Media:  Year 9 Activities

You can find more details on www.music.firstandbest.co.uk

In addition to writing about music Tony works as marketing director for Witchwood Records (www.witchwoodrecords.co.uk) and through this is closely involved with the promotion of the Strawbs and the music of Dave Cousins.   Tony also plays accordion in a group of six musicians who accompany the Rutland Morris Men.  The band have been known to conclude Morris Dancing evenings with jam sessions of their own which recreate various aspects of traditional music in new forms.

There's more about Rutland Morris Men at www.morrismen.org.uk