The Jazz Ear by
"The Jazz Ear will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing."--Nat Hentoff,Jazz Times Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpieceKind of Blue. Musicians often avoid discussing their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts. InThe Jazz Ear, acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff discusses with jazz greats the recordings that most influenced them and skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz--from horn blare to drum riff--is conceptualized. Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation and attitude that define their music. Playful and keenly insightful,The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.
The Pianist's Bookshelf, Second Edition by
Originally published in 1997, The Pianist's Bookshelf, was, according to the Library Journal, "a unique and valuable tool." Now rewritten for a modern audience, this second edition expands into the 21st century. A completely revised update, The Pianist's Bookshelf, Second Edition, comes to the rescue of pianists overwhelmed by the abundance of books, videos, and other works about the piano. In this clear, easy-to-use reference book, Maurice Hinson and Wesley Roberts survey hundreds of sources and provide concise, practical annotations for each item, thus saving the reader hours of precious research time. In addition to the main listings of entries, such as "Chamber Music" and "Piano Duet," the book has indexes of authors, composers, and performers. A handy reference from the masters of piano bibliography, The Pianist's Bookshelf, Second Edition, will be an invaluable resource to students, teachers, and musicians.
Where have all the good times gone? : the rise and fall of the record industry by 
Get Tusked by
In this behind-the-scenes look at the making of Fleetwood Mac's epic, platinum-selling double album, Tusk, producers and engineers Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas tell their stories of spending a year with the band in their new million-dollar studio trying to follow up Rumours, the biggest rock album of the time. Following their massive success, the band continued its infamous soap opera when its musical leader and guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, threatened to quit if he didn't get things his way, resulting in clashes not only with his band but especially Caillat, who had been essential to the band's Grammy-winning sound. Hernan Rojas's story recounts a young man who leaves Chile after General Pinochet's coup to seek his future in the music industry of Los Angeles, where he finds success at one of the hottest studios in town. When Fleetwood Mac arrives, Rojas falls in love with its star singer, Stevie Nicks, and the two of them become romantically involved. Throughout the book, both Caillat and Rojas detail not only the trials and sacrifices they made to finish the album, but also triumphs of musical inspiration and technical innovation that have made Tusk the darling of music critics and indie rockers today.
The Sound of Being Human by
'Too often we treat popular music as wallpaper surrounding us as we live our lives. Jude Rogers shows the emotional and cerebral heft such music can have. It's a personal journey which becomes universal. Fascinating' Ian Rankin 'Moving and absorbing, The Sound of Being Human mixes memoir, analysis, anecdote and personal chronicle into a mosaic that evokes what music means to the individual and the human tribe. A candid, beautiful read' Stuart Maconie The Sound of Being Human explores, in detail, why music plays such a deep-rooted role in so many lives, from before we are born to our last days. At its heart is Jude's own story: how songs helped her wrestle with the grief of losing her father at age five; concoct her own sense of self as a lonely adolescent; sky-rocket her relationships, both real and imagined, in the flushes of early womanhood, propel her own journey into working life, adulthood and parenthood, and look to the future. Shaped around twelve songs, ranging from ABBA's 'Super Trouper' to Neneh Cherry's 'Buffalo Stance', Kraftwerk's 'Radioactivity' to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' 'Heat Wave', the book combines memoir and historical, scientific and cultural enquiry to show how music can shape different versions of ourselves; how we rely upon music for comfort, for epiphanies, and for sexual and physical connection; how we grow with songs, and songs grow inside us, helping us come to terms with grief, getting older and powerful memories. It is about music's power to help us tell our own stories, whatever they are, and make them sing.
Listen Up! by
An album-by-album account of working with iconic artists such as Anthony Kiedis, Michael Stipe, Gord Downie, and Bono, from a leader in the field Mark Howard, a record producer/engineer/mixer and a trailblazer in the industry, will take you through the star-studded world of recording and producing Grammy Award-winning artists. Listen Up! is an essential read for anyone interested in music and its making. Along with the inside stories, each chapter gives recording and producing information and tips with expert understanding of the equipment used in making the world's most unforgettable records and explanations of the methods used to get the very best sound. Listen Up! is both production guide and exclusive backstage pass into the lives of some of the planet's most iconic musicians. Writing with his brother Chris Howard, Mark Howard provides a rare glimpse into the normally invisible, almost secretive side of the music story: that of the producer and recording engineer.
The Spirit of Music by
Grammy Award winner Victor Wooten's inspiring parable of the importance of music and the threats that it faces in today's world. We may not realize it as we listen to the soundtrack of our lives through tiny earbuds, but music and all that it encompasses is disappearing all around us. In this fable-like story three musicians from around the world are mysteriously summoned to Nashville, the Music City, to join together with Victor to do battle against the "Phasers," whose blinking "music-cancelling" headphones silence and destroy all musical sound. Only by coming together, connecting, and making the joyful sounds of immediate, "live" music can the world be restored to the power and spirit of music. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL
The Jazz Book by
For fifty years The Jazz Book has been the most encyclopedic interpretive history of jazz available in one volume. nbsp; In this new seventh edition, each chapter has been completely revised and expanded to incorporate the dominant styles and musicians since the book’s last publication in 1992, as well as the fruits of current research about earlier periods in the history of jazz. In addition, new chapters have been added on John Zorn, jazz in the 1990s and beyond, samplers, the tuba, the harmonica, non-Western instruments, postmodernist and repertory big bands, how the avant-garde has explored tradition, and many other subjects. nbsp; With a widespread resurgence of interest in jazz, The Jazz Book will continue well into the 21st century to fill the need for information about an art form widely regarded as America’s greatest contribution to the world’s musical culture.
The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition by
WINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF MUSIC THEORY'S 2019 CITATION OF SPECIAL MERIT FOR MULTI-AUTHORED VOLUMES The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition addresses fundamental questions about the nature of music from a psychological perspective. Music cognition is presented as the field that investigates the psychological, physiological, and physical processes that allow music to take place, seeking to explain how and why music has such powerful and mysterious effects on us. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of research in music cognition, balancing accessibility with depth and sophistication. A diverse range of global scholars--music theorists, musicologists, pedagogues, neuroscientists, and psychologists--address the implications of music in everyday life while broadening the range of topics in music cognition research, deliberately seeking connections with the kinds of music and musical experiences that are meaningful to the population at large but are often overlooked in the study of music cognition. Such topics include: Music's impact on physical and emotional health Music cognition in various genres Music cognition in diverse populations, including people with amusia and hearing impairment The relationship of music to learning and accomplishment in academics, sport, and recreation The broader sociological and anthropological uses of music Consisting of over forty essays, the volume is organized by five primary themes. The first section, "Music from the Air to the Brain," provides a neuroscientific and theoretical basis for the book. The next three sections are based on musical actions: "Hearing and Listening to Music," "Making and Using Music," and "Developing Musicality." The closing section, "Musical Meanings," returns to fundamental questions related to music's meaning and significance, seen from historical and contemporary perspectives. The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition seeks to encourage readers to understand connections between the laboratory and the everyday in their musical lives.
Every Brain Needs Music by
Whenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain's capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to a tune involves mental faculties most of us don't even realize we have. Larry S. Sherman, a neuroscientist and lifelong musician, and Dennis Plies, a professional musician and teacher, collaborate to show how our brains and music work in harmony. They consider music in all the ways we encounter it--teaching, learning, practicing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing--in terms of neuroscience as well as music pedagogy, showing how the brain functions and even changes in the process. Every Brain Needs Music draws on leading behavioral, cellular, and molecular neuroscience research as well as surveys of more than a hundred musical people. It provides new perspectives on learning to play, teaching, how to practice and perform, the ways we react to music, and why the brain benefits from musical experiences. Written for both musical and nonmusical people, including newcomers to brain science, this book is a lively and easy-to-read exploration of the neuroscience of music and its significance in our lives.
Become a Competent Music Producer in 365 Days by
Become a Competent Music Producer in 365 Days is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to the fundamentals of music production. Over the course of a year, this book takes the reader through ten chapters covering mixing, equalization, compression, reverb, delay and modulation, automation, vocals, synthesis, and mastering.
50 Movie Music Moments by
50 Movie Music Moments comprises a wide-ranging collection of analyses of some of the most fascinating uses of music in modern Hollywood cinema. Considering narrative strategies, filmmaking techniques, functions of film music, audience engagement and conditioning, cultural implications, and intertextuality, the case studies gathered here introduce music as a crucial element of film. In 50 examples drawn from popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood films from the late 1950s to the present, the collection showcases the many dimensions of film music and its role in cinematic storytelling. Each example includes an analysis addressing the film's context and providing a close reading of how music, narrative, and visual elements of the scene interact. Case studies exploring the role of music in film include Amadeus, Gladiator, Baby Driver, The Dark Knight, Philadelphia, Schindler's List, and Black Panther. This invaluable collection offers an ideal resource to support undergraduate and graduate courses in film music history, film scoring, and filmmaking, as well as readers with a general interest in music in film.
Rites, Rights and Rhythms by
Colombia has the largest black population in the Spanish-speaking world, but Afro-Colombians have long remained at the nation's margins. Their recent irruption into the political, social, and cultural spheres is tied to appeals to cultural difference, dramatized by the traditional music of Colombia's majority-black Southern Pacific region, often called currulao. Yet that music remains largely unknown and unstudied despite its complexity, aesthetic appeal, and social importance. Rites, Rights & Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia's Black Pacific is the first book-length academic study of currulao, inquiring into the numerous ways it has been used: to praise the saints, to grapple with modernization, to dramatize black politics, to perform the nation, to generate economic development and to provide social amelioration in a context of war. Author Michael Birenbaum Quintero draws on both archival and ethnographic research to trace these and other understandings of how currulao has been understood, illuminating a history of struggles over the meanings of currulao that are also struggles over the meanings of blackness in Colombia. Moving from the eighteenth century to the present, Rites, Rights & Rhythms asks how musical meaning is made, maintained, and sometimes abandoned across historical contexts as varied as colonial slavery, twentieth-century national populism, and neoliberal multiculturalism. What emerges is both a rich portrait of one of the hemisphere's most important and understudied black cultures and a theory of history traced through the performative practice of currulao.
Twentieth-Century Music in the West by
This is the first introductory survey of western twentieth-century music to address popular music, art music and jazz on equal terms. It treats those forms as inextricably intertwined, and sets them in a wide variety of social and critical contexts. The book comprises four sections - Histories, Techniques and Technologies, Mediation, Identities - with 16 thematic chapters. Each of these explores a musical or cultural topic as it developed over many years, and as it appeared across a diversity of musical practices. In this way, the text introduces both key musical repertoire and critical-musicological approaches to that work. It historicises music and musical thinking, opening up debate in the present rather than offering a new but closed narrative of the past. In each chapter, an overview of the topic's chronology and main issues is illustrated by two detailed case studies.
