I know I said I wouldn’t be updating the blog, but eventhough I haven’t been travelling anywhere I have been up to loads of stuff so figured I’d let you know what’s going on!

The main thing I’m still working on is the CD5 orchestrations, which is taking quite a bit of time. But it is also throwing up a load of really good songs that are no good for CD5 ( too many syllables) but will be great for the next phonics CD! In fact I’ve got half of it done, which is better than expected. I still haven’t figured out what to do about the vowel problem ( i.e. which accent to use), so this CD will be the consonants from p to z. It is sounding nice. One interesting email I got the other day though was saying that I should re-record the phonics page of the website with “real native English speakers” – which I thought was quite funny!

I’ve also been writing articles, answering lots of emails and working on some new ideas for the website. One cool idea was to have a version of the Genki English Card Game for countries, but choosing which of the over 200 countries to include was causing problems so I’ve put it on hold for now. The card game is really popular in the UK now, and I played some of the versions over here and to be honest some of them aren’t even as good as the GE animals one. I’m going to have to get more teachers to try it, as it really is addictive!

I think I’ve made a bit of a mistake with the CD5 songs though. Usually I write the songs in the studio, playing the music at the same time, so the production and song fit together perfectly. This time I’ve written all the songs in my head first, but actually getting that into the computer is taking ages and I keep going off on tangents. So one other benefit is that I’ve also got lots more songs ready for the adults CD.

But the other day I figured out what the problem is, I can’t write sunny, happy, genki music if it’s bad weather outside! So I’ve decided to move to Spain next month and do the the recordings there. The advantages of being homeless! Unfortunately I don’t speak Spanish, so I’ve got to learn. The ipod is great for that, and I’ve got together a great series of courses to listen to. Stuff like Pimsleur and Michel Thomas are great, but a lot of it is really boring! I wish there was a Genki English course for Spanish….. Which got me thinking and I put up a song for learning Japanese numbers on the GenkiJapan.net site. I tried it out over the weekend and it really does work, a few times through and everyone here had the numbers stuck in their heads! So that’s pretty cool and has made me even more determined to get CD 5 done!!