This book is a useful guide for adult learners who are thinking of taking up a musical instrument for the first time or who want to pick up from where they left off as children. The author helps the reader to answer such questions as which instrument they should choose, the level of difficulty involved in learning and the likely costs. The book discusses the various benefits of taking up music for fun and general well-being. The author provides practical information about the most commonly taught instruments as well as some of the more unusual ones, and includes useful contact information to help readers to take their interest further. This book will help all aspiring musicians to make a truly informed choice.
In the age of digital music it seems striking that so many of us still want to produce music concretely with our bodies, through the movement of our limbs, lungs and fingers, in contact with those materials and objects which are capable of producing sounds. The huge sales figures of musical instruments in the global market, and the amount of time and effort people of all ages invest in mastering the tools of music, make it clear that playing musical instruments is an important phenomenon in human life. By combining the findings made in music psychology and performative ethnomusicology, Marko Aho shows how playing a musical instrument, and the pleasure musicians get from it, emerges from an intimate dialogue between the personally felt body and the sounding instrument. An introduction to the general aspects of the tactile resources of musical instruments, musical style and the musician is followed by an analysis of the learning process of the regional kantele style of the Perho river valley in Finnish Central Ostrobothnia.
(Amadeus). In this groundbreaking book, prize-winning pianist and noted educator William Westney helps readers discover their own path to the natural, transcendent fulfillment of making music. Drawing on experience, psychological insight, and wisdom ancient and modern, Westney shows how to trust yourself and set your own musicality free. He offers healthy alternatives for lifelong learning and suggests significant change in the way music is taught. For example, playing a wrong note can be constructive, useful, even enlightening. The creator of the acclaimed Un-Master Class workshop also explores the special potential of group work, outlining the basics of his revelatory workshop that has transformed the music experience for participants the world over. Practicing, in Westney's view, is a lively, honest, adventurous, and spiritually rewarding enterprise, and it can (and should) meet with daily success, which empowers us to grow even more. Teachers, professionals, and students of any instrument will benefit from this unique guide, which brings artistic vitality, freedom, and confidence within everyone's reach.
Guitarists are athletes. Playing the guitar requires the skilled use of your entire body. Unfortunately, most books on playing guitar focus exclusively on what notes to play, and give little or no attention to how they should be made. This leaves guitarists with a problem. Misunderstanding the mechanics of movement leads to frustration, because it makes learning new techniques harder, limits your abilities when techniques don't work like they should, and causes injury when unhealthy technique wears down your body. The solution is simple: Anatomy of Guitar Playing is your guide to moving well, learning faster and avoiding injury. When you understand the mechanics of moving, you will know for yourself how techniques work. Anatomy of Guitar Playing is both a description of how the body works, as well as a prescription for how to move better, taking you through what you need to know about the body in order to use it more effectively. It covers the anatomy and physics of fretting and picking, how to set up and adjust the guitar to your body and many other important topics. Through learning about the proper use of the body at the guitar, you will be able to learn faster, play with better facility and reduce injury.
"The rhythmic, onomatopoeic text dances across exuberant watercolors with lots of movement. This celebration of a child’s agency in choosing a means of artistic expression strikes just the right note." --Kirkus "A delightful offering for reading aloud, especially during music-themed storytimes." --School Library Journal From New York Times bestselling author Chris Barton and new illustrator Louis Thomas comes a fun, rhythmic picture book about finding the music that is perfect for you! A boy who loves to make noise gets to pick only one instrument (at his parents urging) in a music store, but there is too much to choose from! There’s triangles and sousaphones! There’s guitars and harpsichords! Bagpipes and cellos and trombones! How can he find the one that is just right for him out of all those options?
In The Musical Instrument Desk Reference, Michael Pagliaro, musical instrument authority extraordinaire, provides the one-stop shop for those in need of a quick, visually-rich reference guide to band and orchestral instruments. Descriptions and illustrations of everything from the physics of sound to detailed discussions of each orchestra and band instrument make this work the ideal desktop reference tool for the working musician. Through its Quick Start and In Depth features, readers can quickly decide how deeply they want to delve into the instrument at hand. Following a contemporary format designed to facilitate what any musician or music instructor needs to know, The Musical Instrument Desk Reference eliminates the need to leaf through multiple method books or trawl through websites to find information. The Musical Instrument Desk Reference includes general information on fingering, the anatomy of musical instruments, sound production, amplification, and control, as well as the science of sound. Readers will find individual chapters on woodwinds, brass instruments, non-fretted string instruments, and percussion instruments. In each category, Pagliaro delves deeper, describing for woodwinds such things as tuning, key systems, fingerings, sound production, tone holes, assembly, materials, embouchures, and reed use; for brass instruments such matters as valve systems, fingering patterns, French horn types, mouthpiece selection, and intonation; for non-fretted string instruments such issues as tuning and fingering, playing position, bowing technique, instrument parts, and materials; and for percussion instruments such elements as instrument types and their classifications, tuning procedures, and accessories. The Musical Instrument Desk Reference is the perfect guide for anyone interested in or responsible for working with varieties of instruments and their players. Teachers, students, teachers in training, music instructors, instrument technicians, and musicians can quickly locate any specific detail related to any band or orchestral instrument.
This book is exclusively for future musicians, music instructors, and for all of those who have a profound passion to learn the techniques of how to play musical instruments. Visual images of musical instruments are included such as a clarinet, congas, drums, flute, guitar, keyboard, saxophone, trombone, tuba, and violin. Researchers say that children who are exposed to music or those who play an instrument, do better in school. Adults may benefit also from learning to play an instrument because it helps the mind to be alert and remain active. And as an added benefit, it will help sharpen the memory. One of the qualities musicians possess is discipline. A musician must be disciplined in order to master playing an instrument. On a daily basis, it is pertinent that musicians set a time each day to practice. Furthermore, playing an instrument relieves stress, it makes you feel more relaxed, and it plays a major role in helping to calm the mind.
This is the first book that teaches piano practice methods systematically, based on mylifetime of research, and containing the teachings of Combe, material from over 50 pianobooks, hundreds of articles, and decades of internet research and discussions with teachersand pianists. Genius skills are identified and shown to be teachable; learning piano can raiseor lower your IQ. Past widely taught methods based on false assumptions are exposed;substituting them with efficient practice methods allows students to learn piano and obtainthe necessary education to navigate in today's world and even have a second career. See http://www.pianopractice.org/
On the eve of his 40th birthday, Gary Marcus, a renowned scientist with no discernible musical talent, learns to play the guitar and investigates how anyone—of any age —can become musical. Do you have to be born musical to become musical? Do you have to start at the age of six? Using the tools of his day job as a cognitive psychologist, Gary Marcus becomes his own guinea pig as he takes up the guitar. In a powerful and incisive look at how both children and adults become musical, Guitar Zero traces Marcus’s journey, what he learned, and how anyone else can learn, too. A groundbreaking peek into the origins of music in the human brain, this musical journey is also an empowering tale of the mind’s enduring plasticity. Marcus investigates the most effective ways to train body and brain to learn to play an instrument, in a quest that takes him from Suzuki classes to guitar gods. From deliberate and efficient practicing techniques to finding the right music teacher, Marcus translates his own experience—as well as reflections from world-renowned musicians—into practical advice for anyone hoping to become musical, or to learn a new skill. Guitar Zero debunks the popular theory of an innate musical instinct while simultaneously challenging the idea that talent is only a myth. While standing the science of music on its head, Marcus brings new insight into humankind’s most basic question: what counts as a life well lived? Does one have to become the next Jimi Hendrix to make a passionate pursuit worthwhile, or can the journey itself bring the brain lasting satisfaction? For all those who have ever set out to play an instrument—or wish that they could—Guitar Zero is an inspiring and fascinating look at the pursuit of music, the mechanics of the mind, and the surprising rewards that come from following one’s dreams.
Music Lessons marks the first publication in English of a groundbreaking group of writings by French composer Pierre Boulez, his yearly lectures prepared for the Collège de France between 1976 and 1995. The lectures presented here offer a sustained intellectual engagement with themes of creativity in music by a widely influential cultural figure, who has long been central to the conversation around contemporary music. In his essays Boulez explores, among other topics, the process through which a musical idea is realized in a full-fledged composition, the complementary roles of craft and inspiration, and the degree to which the memory of other musical works can influence and change the act of creation. Boulez also gives a penetrating account of problems in classical music that are still present today, such as the often crippling conservatism of established musical institutions. Woven into the discussion are stories of his own compositions and those of fellow composers whose work he championed, as both a critic and conductor: from Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Varèse, from Bartók to Berg, Debussy to Mahler and Wagner, and all the way back to Bach. Including a foreword by famed semiologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, who was for years a close collaborator and friend of the composer, this edition is also enriched by an illuminating preface by Jonathan Goldman. With a masterful translation retaining Boulez’s fierce convictions, cutting opinions, and signature wit, Music Lessons will be an essential and entertaining volume.
