Alongside his multimillion selling albums, Kanye has also launched record labels and clothing lines and in the process, become one of the most respected, creative and influential artists in music today.The most in-depth look at West’s life and career to date, Mark Beaumont’s new book lifts the mask to expose the man behind the endless myths. Featuring quotes from all of the major players in West’s life, Kanye West: God and Monster traces his life from the suburbs of Chicago through art school and rap apprenticeships to recording in the coolest studios of New York and Hawaii with the biggest names in music, revolutionizing hip-hop at every step of the way. Beaumont documents every rumor and revelation, details the wildest extravagances and biggest ego blow-ups of this true rap original.

    It's Introduction explains your journey through the book.http://www.mixingwithyourmind.com/pre...

    This is part two of The Piano Girl. She plays from memory. Her memories. The continuing saga of a girl, a boy, and the future of a kingdom. This princess to pauper story is filled with prayers, promises and plenty of piano. Part one and two are combined in paperback. The Viola Girl, the second book in the Counterfeit Princess Series is now available.

    Founded on rock music, celebrity, boom-time economics, and fleeting political optimism, this was "Cool Britannia." Records sold in the millions, a new celebrity elite emerged, and Tony Blair's Labour Party found itself returned to government. Drawing on interviews from all the major bands including Oasis, Blur, Elastica, and Suede, and from music journalists, record executives, and those close to government, Britpop! charts the rise and fall of the Britpop moment. In this wonderfully engaging, page-turning narrative, John Harris, currently the hottest young music journalist in the UK, argues that the high point of British music's cultural impact also signaled its effective demise. After all, if rock stars were now friends of government, how could they continue to matter?"Cool Britannia was an empty promise that was bound to end in tears. John Harris captures the moment when New Labour, desperately wanting to seem hip, invited Britpop into Downing Street. Irresistible."-Billy Bragg

    Includes a 30-page bibliographical essay, numerous illustrations, and a full-color pictorial biography of the composer.

       With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy. He analyzes the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn, and he gives musicians including Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, and Vladimir Horowitz the opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Charlap. A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna’s coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics. Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, brilliantly evoked and as marvelous as its most recent performance.   With this wide-ranging volume, Isacoff gives us a must-have for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.

    Written in 1828, in the last months of the young Schubert's life, 'Winterreise' ("Winter's Journey"), has come to be considered the single greatest piece of music ever written for the male solo voice. Deceptively brief - the twenty-four short poems are performed uninterrupted in 70 minutes - it nonetheless has an emotional depth and power that no music of its kind has ever equalled. Originally intended to be sung to an intimate gathering, performances of 'Winterreise' now pack the greatest concert halls around the world. Drawing on his firsthand experience with this work (he has performed it more than one hundred times), on his musical knowledge, and on his training as a scholar, Ian Bostridge teases out the enigmas and subtle meanings of each song, exploring the world and the states of heart and mind in which Schubert created them, and the exquisite resonance and affinities that continue, even today, to move us so profoundly.

    It's not about how much students do. It's about how they spend that time. A long overdue look inside the practice room - what works, what doesn't and why, from the founder of and chief writer for PracticeSpot.com, the world's largest website for music teachers and students.

    It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. Paul Hegarty argues that noise is a judgement about sound, that what was noise can become acceptable as music, and that in many ways the idea of noise is similar to the idea of the avant-garde.While it provides an excellent historical overview, the book's main concern is in the noise music that has emerged since the mid 1970s, whether through industrial music, punk, free jazz, or the purer noise of someone like Merzbow. The book progresses seamlessly from discussions of John Cage, Erik Satie, and Pauline Oliveros through to bands like Throbbing Gristle and the Boredoms. Sharp and erudite, and underpinned throughout by the ideas of thinkers like Adorno and Deleuze, Noise/Music is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the louder side of experimental music.

    This play, first staged at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, is based on a tenth-century Jain myth about a king who finds his queen involved with an elephant-keeper.

    It is a greatly expanded version of Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course that will include lesson, theory, technic and additional repertoire in a convenient, "all-in-one" format. This comprehensive course adds such features as isometric hand exercises, finger strengthening drills, and written assignments that reinforce each lesson's concepts. There is a smooth, logical progression between each lesson, a thorough explanation of chord theory and playing styles, and outstanding extra songs, including folk, classical, and contemporary selections. At the completion of this course, the student will have learned to play some of the most popular music ever written and will have gained a good understanding of basic musical concepts and styles. Titles: Alouette * Alpine Melody * Amazing Grace * Au Claire de la Lune * Aunt Rhody * Auld Lang Syne * Aura Lee * The Bandleader * Beautiful Brown Eyes * Blow the Man Down * Blues for Wynton Marsalis * Brother John * Caf? Vienna * The Can-Can * Chasing the Blues Away * Chiapanecas * Cockles and Mussels * The Cuckoo * Day is Done * Dueling Harmonics * The Entertainer * A Friend Like You * Go Down, Moses * Good King Wenceslas * Good Morning to You * Good People * Got Those Blues * Greensleeves * Happy Birthday to You * Harmonica Rock * Harp Song * Here's a Happy Song * He's Got the Whole World in His Hands * I'm Gonna Lay My Burden Down * Jericho * Jingle Bells * Joy to the World * Kum-ba-yah * Largo (Dvorak) * Lavender's Blue * Lightly Row * Little Brown Jug * Liza Jane * London Bridge * Lone Star Waltz * Love Somebody * Lullaby * The Marine's Hymn * Mary Ann * Merrily We Roll Along * Mexican Hat Dance * Michael, Row the Boat Ashore * Money Can't Buy Everything * My Fifth * Ode to Joy * On Top of Old Smoky * O Sole Mio * Raisins and Almonds * Rock Along * Rockets * Rockin' Intervals

    Although "Pink Flag "appeared before the end of 1977, it was already a meta-commentary on the punk scene and was far more revolutionary musically than the rest of the competition. Few punk bands moved beyond pared-down rock 'n' roll and garage rock, football-terrace sing-alongs or shambolic pub rock and, if we're honest, only a handful of punk records hold up today as anything other than increasingly quaint period pieces. While the majority of their peers flogged one idea to death and paid only lip service to punk's Year Zero credo, Wire took a genuinely radical approach, deconstructing song conventions, exploring new possibilities and consistently reinventing their sound. THIS IS A CHORD. THIS IS ANOTHER. THIS IS A THIRD. NOW FORM A BAND, proclaimed the caption to the famous diagram in a UK fanzine in 1976 and countless punk acts embodied that do-it-yourself spirit. Wire, however, showed more interesting ways of doing it once you'd formed that band and they found more compelling uses for those three mythical chords.

    Celebrated  journalist Kitty Kelley spent three years researching  government documents (Mafia-related material, wiretaps  and secret testimony) and interviewing more than  800 people in Sinatra's life (family, colleagues,  law-enforcement officers, personal friends). Fully  documented, highly detailed and filled with  revealing anecdotes, here is the penetrating story of  the explosively controversial and undeniably  multi-talented legend who ruled the entertainment  industry for more than fifty  years.

    It is filled with dozens of humorous tales of musician antics and concert meltdowns. Outsiders are rarely allowed such access, but at last you can have your own personal tour of the mystical and magical realm of professional orchestras and the people who play in them. "Real Men Don't Rehearse" was written by Justin Locke, who spent 18 seasons as a professional freelance double bassist in Boston. He played with the Boston Symphony and the Boston Pops, as well as for ballets, operas, and Broadway shows. He is also well known in the symphonic world as the author of "Peter VS. the Wolf" and "The Phantom of the Orchestra," which are internationally acclaimed programs for orchestra family concerts. This is the perfect gift for your favorite music lover! This is a book no musical library should be without!

    After that he could describe his cars for three [LP] sides and get away with it." Christgau on Carly Simon: "If a horse could sing in a monotone, the horse would sound like Carly Simon, only a horse wouldn't rhyme 'yacht,' 'apricot,' and 'gavotte.'" Christgau on Van Morrison: "This is a man who gets stoned on a drink of water and urges us to turn our radios all the way into the mystic. Visionary hooks his specialty." Christgau on Lou Reed: "Reed Sounds like he's imitating his worst enemy, himself." (Lou Reed on Robert Christgau: "What a moron! Studying rock and roll. I can't believe it!") An indispensable book, Christgau's Rock Albums the '70s is the definitive guide to nearly 3,000 albums of the decade that brought us progressive rock, country rock, glam rock, funk, disco, punk, heavy metal, and new wave.