Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and Their Orchestras


Tom Service - 2012
    Orchestras can be inspired to the heights of musical and expressive possibility by their maestros, or flabbergasted that someone who doesn't even make a sound should be elevated to demigod-like status by the public.This is the first book to go inside the rehearsal rooms of some of the most inspirational orchestral partnerships in the world. It's the first to see how Simon Rattle works with his musicians at the Berlin Philharmonic, how Mariss Jansons deals with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, and how Claudio Abbado creates the world's most luxurious pick-up band every year with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. From London to Budapest, Bamberg to Vienna, great orchestral concerts are recreated as a collection of countless human and musical stories. The book reveals how the catalysts of place, time, and personal history are alchemised into the indelible magic of life-changing performances.

Elvis Presley: A Life in Music — The Complete Recording Sessions


Ernst Jorgensen - 1998
    With exclusive access to the RCA vaults, producer Ernst Jorgensen brings to intimate life every moment that Elvis spent in the studio--from the spontaneous joy of his early sessions to the intensely creative periods of his later career. At once the definitive recording session guide and a compellingly readable narrative, this is the ultimate companion to the singer and his songs.

Guitar Fretboard: Memorize The Fretboard In Less Than 24 Hours: 35+ Tips And Exercises Included


Guitar Head - 2018
    Learning guitar theory with no knowledge about the names of the fretboard is comparable to learning complex arithmetic equations without knowing numbers! This book will make sure you don't end up like one of those guitarists! Here is why you should learn the fretboard: Understand how notes are arranged on the fretboard Create a mind map to navigate through the fretboard Communicate the ideas you have in your head to written format or to other musicians Create various visual references to make the fretboard less daunting And lots more Why Should I buy this book? It's only fair to ask yourself this question before spending your hard-earned money on anything. Here is what you'll find inside: The whole process of learning the fretboard simplified into 5 easy steps A step by step approach which will give you results even if you are a complete beginner 35+ exercises and tips to make sure you get results as fast as humanly possible The theory behind every concept for those who need it Countless memory techniques to make the process as simple as possible Beginner friendly - no prior music experience required All this taught in less than a day! Why this book from among the 100 others? I know there are multiple books out there that teaches you the exact same things. They have a lot more reviews and have been out for longer than this book. But here is how this book is different: Unique memory techniques which cannot be found elsewhere High quality pictures and diagrams to give you the whole picture Free bonus material including fretboard diagrams, Flash cards, Reference material and lots more! Gives you results faster than any book out there! I hope that was enough reasons to make you jump onto the book! So, what are you waiting for? Scroll up and click the BUY NOW button to get access to such a goldmine!

Urban Spacemen and Wayfaring Strangers: Overlooked Innovators and Eccentric Visionaries of '60s Rock


Richie Unterberger - 2000
    From folk-rockers to blue- and brown-eyed soulsters to rock sati

Soul Mining: A Musical Life


Daniel Lanois - 2010
    A French-speaking kid from Canada, Lanois was driven by his innate curiosity and intense love of music to transcend his small-town origins and become one of the world’s most prolific and successful record producers, as well as a brilliant musician in his own right. Lanois takes us through his childhood, from being one of four kids raised by a single mother on a hairdresser’s salary, to his discovery by Brian Eno, to his work on albums such as U2’s The Joshua Tree, Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, and Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball. Revealing for the first time ever his unique recording secrets and innovations, Lanois delves into the ongoing evolution of technology, discussing his earliest sonic experiments with reel-to-reel decks, the birth of the microchip, the death of discrete circuitry, and the arrival of the download era. Part technological treatise, part philosophical manifesto on the nature of artistic excellence and the overwhelming need for music, Soul Mining brings the reader viscerally inside the recording studio, where the surrounding forces have always been just as important as the resulting albums. Beyond skill, beyond record budgets, beyond image and ego, Lanois’s work and music show the value of dedication and soul. His lifelong quest to find the perfect mixture of tradition and innovation is inimitable and unforgettable.

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music


Alex Ross - 2020
    Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil.In Wagnerism, Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner's many-sided legacy. As readers of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of WEB Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now.In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over twenty-first century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.

Beatles Forever


Nicholas Schaffner - 1977
    Beatles.

Mind Over Matter, Revised Edition: The Images of Pink Floyd


Storm Thorgerson - 1997
    The images of Pink Floyd album sleeves and the artwork they contain are the subject of Mind over Matter, a first-hand look at the music business and a consideration of where art ends and commerce begins.'

Michael Jackson Treasures


Jason King - 2009
    Michael Jackson Treasures pairs a compelling exploration of his story with photographs and memorabilia that illuminate h is fascinating, complicated life. Featuring a number of rare pieces, including selected pages from the Jackson children’s high school yearbook, the patent for the antigravity lean shoes from “Smooth Criminal,” and a fancifully die-cut mask from the Dangerous Tour, Michael Jackson Treasures is a trove of powerful images and ephemera from a truly global superstar.

Artist Management for the Music Business


Paul Allen - 2007
    You will learn to prepare yourself for a career in artist management - and then learn the tools to coach, lead, organize time, manage finances, market an artist, and carve out a successful career path for both yourself and your clients.The book features profiles of artist managers, an exclusive and detailed template for an artist career plan, and samples of major contract sections for artist management and record deals. Updated information including a directory of artist management companies is available at the book's companion website.A peer reviewer for Artist Management for the Music Business proclaimed ."this is going to be an excellent text. It contains many unique insights and lots of valuable information." This is essential reading for managers, students, and artists in the music business.

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph


Jan Swafford - 2014
    His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world’s most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and “fate’s hammer,” his ever-encroaching deafness. Throughout, Swafford offers insightful readings of Beethoven’s key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come.

How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart


Robert Greenberg - 2011
    The right knowledge can deepen the ability of this music to edify, enlighten, and stir the soul. In How to Listen to Great Music, Professor Robert Greenberg, a composer and music historian, presents a comprehensive, accessible guide to how music has mirrored Western history, that will transform the experience of listening for novice and long-time listeners alike. You will learn how to listen for key elements in different genres of music - from madrigals to minuets and from sonatas to symphonies-along with the enthralling history of great music from ancient Greece to the 20th century. You'll get answers to such questions as Why was Beethoven so important? How did the Enlightenment change music? And what's so great about opera anyway? How to Listen to Great Music will let you finally hear what you've been missing.

The Craft of Lyric Writing


Sheila Davis - 1984
    Successful author and songwriter, Davis provides a complete guide to writing words for and to music, showing how to create lyrics with universal appeal.

Principles of Orchestration


Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - 1822
    But invention, in all art, is closely allied to technique, and technique can be taught. This book, therefore, which differs from most other texts on the subject because of its tremendous wealth of musical examples and its systematic arrangement of material according to each constituent of the orchestra, will undoubtedly be of value to any music student. It is a music classic, perhaps the only book on classical orchestration written by a major composer.In it, the composer aims to provide the reader with the fundamental principles of modern orchestration from the standpoint of brilliance and imagination, and he devotes considerable space to the study of tonal resonance and orchestral combination. In his course, he demonstrates such things as how to produce a good-sounding chord of certain tone-quality, uniformly distributed; how to detach a melody from its harmonic setting; correct progression of parts; and other similar problems.The first chapter is a general review of orchestral groups, with an instrument-by-instrument breakdown and material on such technical questions as fingering, range, emission of sound, etc. There follows two chapters on melody and harmony in strings, winds, brasses, and combined groups. Chapter IV, Composition of the Orchestra, covers different ways of orchestrating the same music; effects that can be achieved with full tutti; tutti in winds, tutti pizzicato, soli in the strings, etc.; chords; progressions; and so on. The last two chapters deal with opera and include discussion of solo and choral accompaniment, instruments on stage or in the wings, technical terms, soloists (range, register, vocalization, vowels, etc.), voices in combination, and choral singing. Immediately following this text are some 330 pages of musical examples drawn from "Sheherazade," the "Antar Symphony," "Capriccio Espagnol," "Sadko," "Ivan the Terrible," "Le Coq d'Or," "Mlada," "The Tsar's Bride," and others of Rimsky-Korsakov's works. These excerpts are all referred to in the text itself, where they illustrate, far better than words, particular points of theory and actual musical practice. They are largely responsible for making this book the very special (and very useful) publication it is.This single-volume edition also includes a brief preface by the editor and extracts from Rimsky-Korsakov's 1891 draft and final versions of his own preface, as well as an appendixed chart of single tutti chords in the composer's works.

Jazz In The Bittersweet Blues Of Life


Wynton Marsalis - 2001
    Set in the studio, on the stage, and in great cities and small towns across the country, this book captures life on the road for Marsalis and his musicians, evoking its ritual and renewal, energy and spirituality. Describing the art of improvisation, the book's two voices mirror the interplay at the heart of jazz. "On the road and on the bandstand," Marsalis writes, "something great may happen at any moment, something that might even change your life." Alternately luminous and boisterous, often poignant, and always passionate, Marsalis and Vigeland's extraordinary dialogue is a must for fans, musicians, and anyone curious about America's only indigenous art form.