About Frank

Hi, my name is Frank...

I was born in 1962 in a small Southern Norwegian town you've probably never heard of (Lillehammer).
  I started playing piano at the tender age of five and switched to the guitar as a teenager (of course! ;-) After dropping out of engineering school, I ended up at the Edvard Grieg Academy and somehow managed to get a degree in classical guitar and music teaching despite my best efforts to do anything but what I was supposed to do.

Since then I've had just about every job within the field of music  you can imagine (and a few you probably can't). I've performed on and/or taught a dozen or more different instruments, I've been a classroom teacher on all levels from pre-school up to and including college, I've tried to run a music store, I've been a (music) book critic (not a pleasant experience), been a recording engineer, record producer, I've composed, arranged, conducted... I've even worked as a church organist (they were really desperate ;-)

Nowadays I live in Bodø, Northern Norway, and work as a guitar teacher, conductor, performing musician and - well anything that has something to do with music and/or computers.
  Most of my time I spend extending and improving Musica Viva, though. I'm really proud of this child of mine, you see. I built it from scratch all by myself, with only my own two hands and an old Macintosh computer.

My favourite author is Terry Pratchett, my favourite TV channel is National Geographic, and -
my favourite music?  I think it was Louis Armstrong who once said: "There are just two kinds of music; good music and bad music." He was absolutely right. Except that bad music is often just good music played badly - or at the wrong time and in the wrong place. I got a real lesson about the latter when I was drafted as a keyboard player for a band specializing in Swedish dance band music (I know, I know, but I really needed the money!) Let me tell you, that music is absolutely horrible to listen to! It is, however simply great for dancing! Good or bad music? Well, it's up to you to make up your mind (I know, I've made up mine!)

I'd love to have all music in the world available for free here at Muscia Viva. That's not possible, of course. Apart from the facts that there aren't enough hours in a single man's lifetime to transcribe it all, and not a server on earth big enough to store it, there's the legal aspect. There's a big wolf pack of lawyers and such just waiting for the chance to close down Musica Viva, the moment I begin posting copyright protected music here! (Yes, they are watching. They send me an email every now and then just to let me know they're still there.)
  That means there is very little modern music here - not because I don't want to post it, but because I can't! You can download that kind of stuff at places like Musicnotes.com, though. Not for free, but darned cheap! Or, if you want good old-fashioned printed music, you should visit Sheet Music Plus. They've got everything!

Also, there are some things here that have simply taken me so much time that I can not give it away for free. Take the Folkband section for example. You don't have to tell me it's great. I know it is! I don't want to brag (well, to be honest, I do ;-) but Folkband should be mandatory for anyone who want to learn to play British or Scandinavian traditional music. I was really going to hand these arrangements over to my publisher, but can you imagine how much a printed copy would cost at your local book store?
  Instead, you can just sign up as a Musica Viva member and get all of it - plus all the other membership benefits (Folkband was just an example, remember!) for only thirty bucks.

But that being said, you're still welcome even if you don't want to or if you can't pay the membership fee. There is lots of absolutely free stuff here as well! :-)

Hope you enjoy your stay!

Bodø, December 12th 2002

Frank Nordberg
Webmaster

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