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About

Born in Hamilton, Scotland in 1968, Joe McGowan is a music professional and award-winning multi-genre author whose work includes music education resources, textbooks and journals, biography, fiction, poetry, word search and children’s books.

Initially training in design and illustration, Joe’s love of classical guitar and composition ultimately saw him opt for a career in music. He obtained the LRSM and LTCL guitar teaching diplomas in 1989 and 1993 respectively, and studied at the Royal Conservatoire Scotland from 1992 to 1995, where he gained a BA degree in Musical Studies, with postgraduate study in composition (1996). He also obtained both a BA Hons degree in music, philosophy and the arts, and a diploma in music theory from the Open University.

Joe has been a private music tutor since 1989, in addition to holding positions as a music teacher (in schools and colleges in the UK and Spain) and college lecturer in computer graphics. He has also been active as a professional performer (classical guitar) in the Canary islands, southern Spain, Ireland and the UK, and is a qualified TEFL teacher.

In 2015 he founded jm-education (an online resource for Scottish secondary school music curriculum courses, and through which he publishes most of his music teaching and resource books), and in 2016 started the online teaching service, Your Music Mentor.

He began writing professionally in 1991 when he was invited to become a reviewer for Classical Guitar magazine, but in 2000 Joe broadened the scope of this area of his creativity by writing articles for various magazines including the Readers' Digest, as well as short fiction and poetry.

In 2001 his supernatural tale, ‘A Day to Remember’, was published in a book of collected short stories titled Serendipity, followed by ‘Castle by Candlelight’ and ‘Sacrifice’ in separate volumes published by New Fiction. His humorous children’s poem ‘The Witches’ was also published by Anchor Books.

Around the same time, Joe set his sights on creating larger educational works, including motivational texts and music resources for the education market, which he offered to various publishers. Among these publishers was Hodder Education (an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton), who were sufficiently impressed by Joe's writing and academic qualifications to invite him to prepare a proposal for the music component of a new series of study and revision books they would be producing for the Scottish secondary school courses. The proposal was successful, and Joe was commissioned to write ‘How to Pass Standard Grade Music’, his first published book.

The book was commercially successful, winning the Times Education and Saltire Society (TESS) academic book of the year award in 2005, which led to a further two book commissions from the same publisher - ’How to pass Higher Music’ and ’How to Pass Higher Music Listening’ - in 2006 and 2008 respectively.

These textbooks were a significant creative undertaking as Joe not only wrote their content but also composed original music for some of the exercises and composing workshops, in addition to compiling the 60 minute CDs which accompanied each book. Drawing upon his art and design experience, he even had some input in the graphic content of these books!

In the proceeding years there was a hiatus in Joe’s published work as he experimented with longer fiction and novel writing, resulting in some as yet incomplete manuscripts, followed by a move to Spain in 2010. However, in 2013 he was again commissioned by Hodder Education to write a textbook that would accommodate the changes being made to the secondary school music curriculum in Scottish schools. The result was ’How to Pass National 5 Music’, published in 2014 (second edition published in 2018).

Upon his return to the UK in 2018, Joe’s focus on publishing new work returned, and he began writing a textbook for the revised Higher Music course in the Scottish School music curriculum. The new book, ‘The jm-education Guide to Higher Music’, was the first title to be published (in 2020) by Joe’s own music resource, jm-education. Available in both paperback and e-book formats, this book is available through amazon’s KDP facility, which allows updates or curriculum changes to be immediately integrated into published work, thereby ensuring it remains current.

Together, ’How to Pass National 5 Music’ and ‘The jm-education Guide to Higher Music’ cover all the requirements for both the National 5 and Higher music courses.

Publication of ‘The jm-education Guide to Higher Music’ marked the beginning of an era of creativity which continues to the present day.

Joe’s next major project was a collaboration with world-renowned musician and composer Terry Oldfield, who asked Joe to assist him with the writing and production of his memoirs. The pair, who share a similar philosophical outlook (and a mutual love of fishing!), had been friends for some time, and the joint work was a pleasurable and successful endeavour, resulting in a 484 page book, Only Now: The Terry Oldfield Story, published in 2022.

Between the publication of Oldfield’s book and 2025, Joe produced over thirty-five music-related titles, including specialist manuscript and tab papers, themed journals and instrument-specific resource books, all punctuated by the larger projects The jm-education Guide to Composing Techniques: Minimalism. ‘Infinite Circles’ in 2023, and The jm-education Word Search and Criss Cross Puzzle Book in 2024. Also in 2024 came an unlikely humorous work, The Alternative AI Journal.

Simmering away in the background for many years there had also been a children’s rhyming storybook, The Wizard of Winkle, which was largely written in 2006 while Joe was on holiday in Lanzarote, the Canarian island where he’d lived and worked as a performer in the classical guitar duo Cross Culture in 1999. He had been unable to complete the book at the time, however, as it required specific illustrations, and it was not until 2025 that software became available that would permit Joe to produce the entire work himself. And so, at last, ‘The Wizard of Winkle and The Quest for a Tinkle’ became a reality!

Encouraged by the possibilities of the new software, Joe created a further three titles based on the Wizard of Winkle character, including a colouring book, thereby producing a mini series published through jm-education KIDS in the summer of 2026.

Joe is currently engaged in new writing projects which will be announced in the News section of this website, where all updates will also be noted.