So, 2013 is coming to a close and a new year (hello 2014!) is peaking its head around the corner.

Thank you very much, all of you my dear, dear readers, for reading, following, commenting, linking, tweeting, posting, re-posting and emailing. The blog is going from strength to strength, growing in readership all the time and it wouldn’t exist without you folks out there in the big widey world taking time to read – well, it would exist, but it would just be me sitting here in Melbourne, Australia typing away on my own! Not nearly half as fun as knowing you folks are out there!

So thank you 🙂

Without further ado, let’s take a look at your top ten posts from 2013:

(10) The art of sight reading

(9) Happy 80th Birthday Julian Bream!

(8) Concert Review – Karin Schaupp & Pavel Steidl Presented by Musica Viva

(7) New Album Review: Bryan Baker – The Lacuna Variations and a Q&A with the Man Himself!

(6) Interview with Australian Guitar Maker Lance Litchfield

(5) Alexander Technique and the guitar – taking it to the next level

(4) Lance Litchfield Guitars – Road Test of the C400 and C900 Cedar Tops

(3) Cold hands, warm…guitar?! Keeping your hands toasty and warm for playing guitar

(2) Avoiding hand and wrist injury when playing the guitar

(1) Guitar Review – Paulino Bernabe Model 10 and Yulong Guo Double Top

Quite a mix of different topics there – a bit of drool-inducing gear, technical approaches, practical issues, guitar makers, players and recordings.

And as I stated above, the blog has been continuing to increase in readership with folks from over 100 countries checking out Classical Guitar n Stuff! Fantastic! It’s nice to know that classical guitar and music enthusiasts are spread so far and wide.

Now then, you may be interested to know that I already have plans underway for 2014 and just for you I’ll let you in on a few of them.

* I think it’s time for a new layout and theme. We’ve had this current one now for probably around the two year mark, so on 2nd January (our first post for 2014) Classical Guitar n Stuff will be looking a little different. Don’t worry; you’ll still have access to the entire back catalogue of blog posts.

* In terms of some of the topics coming up, you can expect to see a continuation of the series on preparing for exams, Q&As with some more Aussie guitar makers, getting back to basics with technique, getting to grips with technical elements of playing including tremolo, apoyando versus tirando (aka rest stroke versus free stroke), finding your own musical voice, practice schedules, learning to read music, fretboard geography and learning higher fret positions, shaping your nails and many more. As always, please feel free to email me with any suggestions or requests for topics.

* Podcasts – something that I started in the earlier days of the blog but have not really kept up with (smack hands). Well, I’m going to be getting back on top of these again with the aim of posting up a new podcast at least once a fortnight.

* Videos – not something that I’ve really tried for myself as yet, but I figured a wee 30-60 second video post around once a fortnight, giving some direction perhaps with certain aspects of playing may be useful to you guys. Let’s give it a bash and see how we go!

* Downloadable eBooks – I’ve had the idea of collating one or two topics together and forming them up into pdf books for you to download, take away, print or read offline. I might put some extra special content in these too, which won’t have featured on the blog 😉

Please let me know what topics tickle your fancy, or if there’s a particular issue you’re grappling with and you’d like some pointers – I promise I take pretty much everything on board (provided its not silly or rude of course!) and it will more than likely feature on the blog.

And that’s that!  Thank you very much, once again, for being the most fantastic readers – I love you all!

See you in 2014, happy playing and Happy New Year!

Nicole