About

Welcome to the brand new website of Pre-Press Music Australia.

Hi! My name is Ross Salomon. My mission is to publish, promote and sell the works of various composers and arrangers who excel in any number of a variety of musical forms. My main focus is in new compositions and arrangements of music for the Church, with a salute to traditional styles as well as a friendly and encouraging nod to more contemporary styles that still feel at home within a structured liturgical context. But as this site grows, and more and more pieces become available, you will see more than just church music here. Church music may be my special interest, but I am keen to promote and sell musical scores for musicians of other persuasions as well. As an ex-secondary music teacher, I am still keen to encourage the promotion and distribution of music of educational value that is a joy to perform, as well as be heard. So, in time, you will find arrangements here for musical ensembles such as choirs and instrumental groups, as well as music for soloists, particularly organists and cantors, as well as pianists and singers. My thinking is that in a venture such as this, it is probably best to start with the more familiar and branch out further as more composers and arrangers get involved.

I am on the lookout for original works and arrangements that are suitable for publication and that also fit in with the needs and interests of those who follow this website. In its current form, this website is still very new, but my experience in music engraving (music typesetting) began began back in 2000. Since then I have typeset compositions and arrangements for numerous composers and arrangers, as well as providing music typesetting services for a number of publishers including McGraw-Hill Publishing and Willow Publishing in Sydney, as well as working with notable Australian composers and directors of music such as Colin Smith, Robin Mann, David Gallasch, Michael Brimer and the late Dr Ralph Morton, as well as the late Dr Guy Jansen who was living in Brisbane at the time before returning to New Zealand.

In the shop section you can see the humble beginnings of what I hope will grow into a treasure trove of pieces and works to edify musicians and listeners alike. More recently, it has been an honour for me to work with Mary Mosses on typesetting, designing and publishing her setting of the Catholic mass called Mass ‘Jubilate Deo’. I particularly like it because it is so suitable for a vast majority of congregations since the music is not daunting to musicians with a modest confidence. Aren’t the best loved mass settings the ones that congregations find easy to follow and feel encouraged to join in singing? This is definitely one of those settings. It is also an ideal setting to use in worship at school chapel services. It is published with the approval of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

An exciting project that I currently have in progress involves preparing musical settings that will be compliant with the new Lectionary for Australia. As they say, watch this space!

You are probably thinking that “Pre-Press Music Australia” is a strange name for a publisher. Initially, when I started the business as a music engraver (music typesetter), I was concentrating my energies on that aspect and so I was looking for a name that best described that. Becoming a publisher in my own right was more an afterthought, and the idea of handling promotion and distribution gradually evolved from that. In our ever-changing world, with advances in technology and the like, people are getting used to online shopping and they are getting more and more used to obtaining e-books online rather than purchasing physical hard copies. You will still be able to purchase some works as printed hard copies from Pre-Press Music Australia, but in time you will see a lot of music made available for electronic download, whether they be PDF files of scores or MP3 files of sound recordings. The PDF files that you purchase will have your name watermarked at the bottom of each page as the licensed owner of that copy. Provided that you save your PDF file carefully, you can print and replace your printed copy as you need to, but it will still only be licensed to you as the purchaser. This means that you can have a whole library of music scores saved to your personal drive in the Cloud and you can access it from any of your internet connected devices. So, perhaps ‘Pre-Press Music Australia’ wasn’t such a silly idea after all, but in fact embraces the changes we are now seeing in the way that musical scores will be sold and marketed well into the future — we make the files and you take responsibility for the printing as you wish.

A lot of thought and research has gone into the whole aspect of e-commerce and privacy issues. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy.

I would be grateful for your support, either as a purchaser of music from our online store, or as a subscriber to any of our mailing lists. You can indicate various categories of music that you are interested in by filling in the form on the Contact page. That way we can avoid sending you notifications about new publications or special promotions for music that may not be what you are looking for. There is also opportunity on the Contact form for composers and arrangers who are interested in promoting their work.

Last, but not least, I would be grateful for your constructive feedback. Even if you end up not purchasing any music through this website, your views will hopefully help to make this website more relevant to those with similar interests. The same Contact form referred to above can also be used for this purpose.