Book picks similar to
A Modern Method for Guitar, Volume 1 by William Leavitt
music
guitar
nonfiction
guitar-instruction
Without Frontiers: The Life & Music of Peter Gabriel
Daryl Easlea - 2013
A quintessential Englishman, he has since pursued several overlapping careers, bringing to each of them his trademark preoccupation with quality control and restless curiosity.In 1975, after leaving the band that made him famous he diversified into writing movie soundtracks, various audio-visual ventures, tireless charity work and supporting major peace initiatives. He also became world music’s most illustrious champion, launching the WOMAD festival and recording solo albums that featured musicians from every corner of the globe. These and several other careers make writing Peter Gabriel’s biography an unusually challenging task, but Daryl Easlea has undertaken hours of new interviews with key friends, musicians, aides and confidants to get to the very heart and soul of Peter Gabriel, his music and his complex life. The result is an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary man.
The Art of Piano Playing
Heinrich Neuhaus - 1958
His mother, Olga Blumenfeld, was sister of Felix Blumenfeld, a distinguished pianist, conductor and teacher. Horovitz was one of his most famous pupils. Through his maternal grandmother he was related to Karol Szymanowski who became a lifelong friend.Heinrich Neuhaus was, strictly speaking, self-taught, and the main formative influence on his musical development came from Felix Blumenfeld. He made his first public appearance at the age of eleven, playing some Chopin Waltzes and an Impromptu. In 1902 he accompanied Misha Elman in a recital in Elisavetgrad. His first solo recitals took place in Germany and Italy while studying under Godowsky, in Berlin and Vienna. He returned to Russia at the outbreak of the First World War.In 1922 he began teaching at the Moscow Conservatoire and helped to create in 1932 the famous Moscow Central Music School for specially gifted children. From 1934 to 1937 he was Director of the Moscow Conservatoire, a post he relinquished so as to be able to devote himself entirely to teaching. Amongst his pupils were Radu Lupu, Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter who called him an artist of unique genius, a great teacher and friend. Seldom have artistic gifts been so closely matched by the qualities of selfless devotion, deep humanity, true culture and a great capacity for bestowing and winning friendship. He died on 10th October 1964. This book bears witness to his achievements as a man, musician and teacher.
Bullets in the Washing Machine
Melissa Littles - 2011
Bullets in the Washing Machine, her first release, is a compilation of short stories and poems, focusing on seeing the positives through the daily struggles of living a life in Law Enforcement. Melissa hopes to not only bring encouragement to those in law enforcement but to bring awareness to the general public of the daily sacrifices and misconceptions related to law enforcement officers. Melissa Littles is married to Officer Bervis Littles of the Edmond Police Department, in Edmond, Oklahoma. Officer Littles is a Hostage Negotiator, Suicide Prevention Officer and a School Resource Officer.
Piano Girl: A Memoir: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian
Robin Meloy Goldsby - 2005
Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, this is the story of a young woman's accidental career as a cocktail lounge piano player, and the adventures and encounters that follow.
Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music
Glenn Kurtz - 2007
He makes bittersweet and vivid a young man’s struggle to forge an artist’s life—and to become the next Segovia. And we see him after graduation, pursuing a solo career in Vienna but realizing that he has neither the ego nor the talent required to succeed at the upper reaches of the world of classical guitar—and giving up the instrument, and his dream, entirely.Or so he thought. For, returning to the guitar, Kurtz weaves into the larger narrative the rich experience of a single practice session, demonstrating how practicing—the rigor, attention, and commitment it requires—becomes its own reward, an almost spiritual experience that redefines the meaning of “success.” Along the way, he traces the evolution of the guitar and reminds us why it has retained its singular popularity through the ages.Complete with a guide to selected musical recordings and methods, Practicing takes us on a revelatory, inspiring journey: a love affair with music.
The Truth About Statins: Risks and Alternatives to Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs
Barbara H. Roberts - 2012
Now, the Director of the Women’s Cardiac Center in Providence, Rhode Island uses case studies and anecdotes to discuss the uses, misuses, dangers, and benefits of statins, enabling you to make informed decisions on how and when to use them. Including information on when statins help and when they don’t, common side effects, gender differences and drug use, as well as tips and recipes that promote heart health, The Truth About Statins is a timely and invaluable tool for improving cardiovascular health and helping you meet your lipid-lowering goals.
Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook
Gene H. Bell-Villada - 2002
Each casebook reprints documents relating to a work's historical context and reception, presents the best critical studies, and, when possible, features an interview with the author. Accessible and informative to scholars, students, and nonspecialist readers alike, the books in this series provide a wide range of critical and informative commentaries on major texts. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is arguably the most important novel in twentieth-century Latin American literature. This Casebook features ten critical articles on Garcia Marquez's great work. Carefully selected from the most important work on the novel over the past three decades, they include pieces by Carlos Fuentes, Iris Zavala, James Higgins, Jean Franco, Michael Wood, and Gene H. Bell-Villada. Among the intriguing aspects of the work discussed are its mythic dimension, its "magical" side, its representations of women, its relationship with past chronicles of exploration and discovery, its portrayals of Western power and imperialism, its astounding diffusion throughout the globe and the media, and its simple truth-telling, its fidelity to the tangled history of Latin America. The book incorporates several theoretical approaches--historical, feminist, postcolonial; the first English translation of Fuentes's renowned, oft-cited, eight page meditation on the work; a general introduction; and a 1982 interview with Garcia Marquez.
The Infinite Variety of Music
Leonard Bernstein - 1966
He begins with an "imaginary conversation" with George Washington entitled "The Muzak Muse," in which he argues the values of actively listening to music by learning how to read notes, as opposed to simply hearing music in a concert hall. The book also features the reproduction of five television scripts from Bernstein on the influence of jazz, the timeless appeal of Mozart, musical romanticism, and the complexities of rhythmic innovation. Also included are Bernstein's analyses of symphonies by Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Brahms, a rare reproduction of a 1957 lecture on the nature of composing, and a report on the musical scene written for New York Times after his sabbatical leave from directorship of the New York Philharmonic during the 1964-65 season.
Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus
Alex Halberstadt - 2007
A role model for generations of writers and performers, Doc was renowned for his mastery of virtually every popular style, from the gutbucket rhythm and blues of “Lonely Avenue” to the symphonic soul of “Save the Last Dance for Me” to the pure pop of “Viva Las Vegas.” His songs-“This Magic Moment,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Hushabye,” “Little Sister,” “Turn Me Loose,” and many others-have been recorded by everyone from Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, and B. B. King to Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen, with sales exceeding $100 million. Doc was ready-made for literature. His collaborator Mort Shuman once described him as an “entire rollicking soul neighborhood rolled into one man.” Garrulous, profane, hilarious, and Rabelaisian, Doc was never inhibited about offering his opinions and his friendship. His confidants, collaborators, and discoveries included Duke Ellington, John Lennon, Dr. John, Jimmy Scott, Bette Midler, and Lou Reed. In the words of renowned producer Jerry Wexler, “If the music industry had a heart, it would be Doc Pomus.” Despite, or more likely because of, his successes, few acquaintances knew that this writer of jukebox hits led one of the most dramatic and unlikely lives of his time. Spanning extravagant wealth and desperate poverty, suburban domesticity and the depths of New York’s underworld, worldwide fame and near-total obscurity, enduring love and persistent loneliness, Doc’s story remains one of the great untold American lives. Its chapters comprise a back-room history of rock ’n’ roll, touching on more than a half-century of American popular music-from the blues Doc performed with Lester Young to his collaborations with the luminaries of New York’s punk scene, shot through with vivid portraits of virtually every major player. Lonely Avenue is the first biography of this American original, so elegantly rendered that it reads like a novel, and fortified by full, exclusive access to Doc Pomus’s family, friends, voluminous journals, and archives.
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
K. Anders Ericsson - 2016
Rest assured that the book is not mere theory. Ericsson's research focuses on the real world, and he explains in detail, with examples, how all of us can apply the principles of great performance in our work or in any other part of our lives."--
Fortune
Anders Ericsson has made a career studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities. Whether you want to stand out at work, improve your athletic or musical performance, or help your child achieve academic goals, Ericsson's revolutionary methods will show you how to improve at almost any skill that matters to you."The science of excellence can be divided into two eras: before Ericsson and after Ericsson. His groundbreaking work, captured in this brilliantly useful book, provides us with a blueprint for achieving the most important and life-changing work possible: to become a little bit better each day."--Dan Coyle, author of
The Talent Code
"Ericsson's research has revolutionized how we think about human achievement. If everyone would take the lessons of this book to heart, it could truly change the world."--Joshua Foer, author of
Moonwalking with Einstein
How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
Alan Jacobs - 2017
As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper's, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America's culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us--political, social, religious--Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we're doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren't thinking.Most of us don't want to think, Jacobs writes. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that's a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias.In this smart, endlessly entertaining book, Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking--forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, "alternative facts," and information overload--and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. (For example: It's impossible to "think for yourself.")Drawing on sources as far-flung as novelist Marilynne Robinson, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, and Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all. Because if we can learn to think together, maybe we can learn to live together, too.
Ready or Not, Here We Come!: The Real Experts' Guide to the First Year with Twins
Elizabeth Lyons - 2003
And the adventure has only begun! In her first humor-packed guide to raising twins, Elizabeth Lyons and her "multiples" sorority offer the wisdom of their combined experience in the form of practical shortcuts, real-world strategies, and sage advice. Topics include: - Preparing the Lair: Mandatory Gear for Babies AND Mom - Twinproofing Your Marriage - Breastfeeding Strategies (and Why It's Okay if You Don't) - Unsolicited Advice: Stories from the Trenches - Getting Twins on a Schedule--Preferably the Same One Lyons balances the day-to-day challenges of raising twins--from double feedings to sleep deprivation to getting out while pretending everything's under control--with a sanity-saving dose of camaraderie. By the end, you'll be smiling and shouting, "Thank heaven, I'm not alone!"
Read & Speak Korean for Beginners
Sunjeong Shin - 2008
An exceptionally accessible book+audio (CD) course for beginning-level learners of Korean, helping them gain practical communication skills.
Finding Mrs. Warnecke
Cindi Rigsbee - 2010
Warnecke tells the inspiring story of Cindi Rigsbee, a three-time Teacher of the Year, and Barbara Warnecke, the first-grade teacher who had a profound and lasting impact on Cindi's life. Cindi, an insecure child who craved positive attention, started her first-grade year with a teacher who was emotionally abusive and played favorites in the classroom. Two months into the school year, her principal came into the classroom and announced that half the students were being moved to another classroom--a dank, windowless basement room, with a young and inexperienced teacher. This change turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Cindi. Her new teacher, Mrs. Warnecke, made learning come alive for her students. She went overboard caring for each child, made her classroom magical, and encouraged students to pursue their dreams. Although Cindi was reluctant to explore her creativity as a student, Mrs. Warnecke encouraged her to read and write poetry, which became a lifelong passion. The two kept in touch for several years but lost track of each other when Mrs. Warnecke moved out of state. Cindi spent many years trying to reconnect so she could thank Mrs. Warnecke for making such a difference in her life, but to no avail. Eventually Cindi became a teacher herself, and thirty years later she has taught more than 2,000 children and been named Teacher of the Year for her home state. She later came to realize that all those years she wasn't really trying to track down Barbara Warnecke, but rather, she was trying to find Mrs. Warnecke within herself. In Fall 2008 Cindi and Barbara were reunited on Good Morning America; the show's producers had tracked Barbara down and brought both women on-set for a tearful reunion. Barbara was floored at this attention--she had no idea she could have made such an impact on a former student's life. As Cindi travels around talking with new and veteran educators, she is always approached by audience members who are moved to tears and want to share the story of the Mrs. Warnecke in their own lives. Finding Mrs. Warnecke not only tells the story of this teacher who made a lifelong impact on her students, it illustrates the importance of the teacher/student relationship in the classroom, and offers principles for other teachers to follow to make a positive impact in their own classrooms.