By Happy Traum
 Homespun Tapes grew out of the conviction that making music is a positive and beneficial activity, whether you are a professional musician or just learning to play to entertain yourself, your family and friends. Jane and I started Homespun in 1967 to bring greater musical enjoyment to aspiring players at all levels by helping expand your musical knowledge, technique and understanding. Through the years we have been able to provide lessons by musician/teachers of the highest caliber, who pass on their expertise and years of experience through our successful teaching methods. How did all this come about?
I had been teaching guitar since my college days, and wrote my first instruction books in the mid-sixties. Shortly after "Fingerpicking Styles For Guitar" was published in 1966, I started getting letters from players who just couldn't quite get the right sound by reading the notes off the printed page. At the same time, I was going on tour more often, leaving my many guitar students without lessons for weeks at a time. The perfect solution for both situations was to tape a series of lessons, based both on my book and on the successful teaching method I had developed over the years.
My first instructional tapes were recorded in my living room on a home recorder . Once they were on tape, it seemed like a natural idea to offer them to a wider audience, so we placed some classified ads in a few small magazines to see what would happen. Well, the response took us by surprise. Not only were people ordering the lessons, but they started to request instruction in other styles, and then in other instruments. To accomodated them, I recorded a few more series, and then enlisted the help of some friends to teach other courses. Before we knew it, we had a small but growing catalog of taped music instruction.
The name "Homespun" was an apt one. After dinner Jane and I would clear the table, hook up a daisy-chain of reel-to-reel and cassette recorders, and start making copies. It must have been a comical sight to see us then. We'd start the master player, then race down the line to get each recording machine going. At the end of the side, we'd turn each machine off, flip the tapes over, then start the process again. The next day, after the kids caught the school bus, Jane would wrap up the tapes we recorded the night before and take them to the Woodstock Post Office. (A few years later we finally purchased a high-speed duplicator, a scary but necessary investment for us.)
 In 1981 we moved the office out of our home and renovated another house down the road. It's now staffed by a marvellous group of people who look after the myriad tasks necessary to the smooth-running and efficient operation of Homespun. Jane takes charge of many of the details of the day-to-day running of the business, and casts her keen eye on the graphics and design of our catalogs, ads, video covers and other printed material. I personally produce every lesson, overseeing it to make sure that the instructor gives a clear and cohesive presentation. Susan Robinson, who started working with us in our little home office more than 30 years ago, is our office manager to this day.
Video revolutionized the learning process. We were the first to develop close-ups and split screen images using professional three-camera systems, good studios and top camera operators to give you clearest possible angles. Now, of course, DVD is the standard, with its clarity of image and sound and its convenient menu navigation system so you can find just the right lick or song with the flick of your remote. With all of that, though, the instruction is the most important part of the end product, and we work hard to make sure that each tape does the job.
We now have more than 350 DVD titles in our growing catalog, in addition to our still popular audio CD lessons and our Listen & Learn series of book/CD publications.
Homespun's students are in every state of the U.S. and in more than 40 countries around the world, with tens of thousands of satisfied customers learning to play a wide variety of instruments and styles. We measure our success primarily by the loyalty and enthusiasm of our customers, but we are also thrilled by the positive attention we  receive from the media. We've had excellent reviews in Time, People, Entertainment Weekly, Forbes, Playboy and in dozens of newspapers around the country, as well as feature stories on NBC's Today Show, CNN's Entertainment Tonight, NPR's All Things Considered and the Discovery Channel's Monitor World News.
It's been a long and wonderful musical adventure for us for over three decades now. I hope you'll continue to be a part of it. |