We also play much live music and are looking to get many tunes that can be downloaded on the site. For our first new music download podcast of we are in the home of Sophie Dawson in Glasgow. Sophie plays us some tunes on the Swedish overtone flute, also known as the yew flute, and tells us about this fascinating and beautiful instrument’s origins. She is accompanied for some of the tunes by her sister Rachael on the violin.

As well as hearing some live tunes and conversation from Sophie and Rachael we will listen to a few tracks featuring the yew flute.

As someone who is ashamed at his few disastrous tries at writing songs it is maybe somewhat unfair to air my opinions on this accessible but highly varying mode of expression. But when I consider more closely why I am afraid of taking my attempts into the public arena (based partially on the broad humour with which friends now refer to them) I start to see the essence of the issue as fairly basic – there are some subjects that have not been dealt with in the vast canon of folksong, and few songs that I think I could improve upon.

That’s not say that I should not try, or that the music scene is not helped by the continued additions of new song writing in an old-fashioned vein. Yet maybe the best accolade that any song poet can get is when his or her work continues even after them, when their opus takes on a bigger significance than its beginnings.

On this site we sell albums and a range of exciting music for you to buy. We have a wide range of music genres – rock, pop, indie, jazz, folk, classical, heavy metal and many more.

We sell works by composers on our schemes, music on the our classical music schemes, and a few choice scores which you can download. For information of our costs policy and how to purchase materials, go to how to order scores. You can also get recordings from our Critical Notice download site.

Music by more than 3000 different composers can be heard in one of our finest collections. Info about their work, and how to get it, can be found through the collection database.

New Voices is an initiative to market and sell the work of young UK-based composers. It is in place to meet a requirement: for an increasing generation of makers to get support and broader recognition for the substance of their music.

Our new voices project aims to represent an exciting and important selection of composers by making sure that scores, recordings and info about their work are available to as broad a range of performers, and hence listeners, as possible.

Twenty-five composers were a sector of our scheme in 2001, its inaugural year. A further fifteen joined in 2003, a further seven in May 2004 and six more in May 2006. With the crafting in 2006 of Contemporary Voices, New Voices will concentrate on promoting a smaller number of composers, with the aim of raising profile for emerging talent that is mostly finding its way without the support of commercial publishers or record companies.