How to Make Your Band Sound Great
For any band, learning to play together well is an essential skill that needs to be developed. There can be countless internal conflicts, as well as issues of sound, arrangement, and stage presence. Author, experienced producer, and engineer Bobby Owsinski covers it all using tips and tricks employed by top-bill stars from Billy Gibbons to Mick Taylor to Jackson Browne. This book will show you how to make your group tighter, and more dynamic, with improved recording sessions and live shows that are moreexciting and memorable.
How to Make Your Band Sound Great, by Bobby Owsinski, Hal Leonard Corporation, Milwaukee, WI, 2009.
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Rosindust: Teaching, Learning, and Lifefrom a Cellist’s Perspective
Learning to teach well can take a lifetime of trial and error of distilling hard-won performance skills into words in order to pass them on. Drawing on 30 years of private teaching experience,Cornelia Watkins has written a trueto-life guide to studio teaching that is a treasure trove of rich ideas for any teacher of any instrument. Based on the premise that the study of a musical instrument can have a powerful, positive effect on the whole person, Watkins encourages the development of musicianship from the inside out—for teacher and student alike. The book presents topics ranging from cello-specific techniques to discussions of nurturing student independence, how to practice, preparing for performance, and
comprehensive student-centered teaching.
Rosindust: Teaching, Learning, and Life from a Cellist’s Perspective, by Cornelia Watkins, Rosindust Publishing, Houston, TX, 2008.
The Listening Book and The Musical Life CD Set
Teacher, composer, and musician William Allaudin Mathieu has worked with such greats as Stan Kenton and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and was the founder of the Sufi Choir in San Francisco. His books The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music and The Musical Life and How to Live It are about listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal transformation. Mathiew asserts that, by exploring our capacity for listening to sounds and for making music, we can awaken and release our full creative powers.
Mathieu’s new two-disc CD set includes audio excerpts from the two books plus original music performed by Mathieu. It also contains exercises to explore and expand your capacity for listening; the connection between sound, music, and everyday life; and creative possibilities of music making.
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Tipbook: Music for Kids and Teens: A Guide for Parents and 
Caregivers
Music for Kids and Teens: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers
n Have you been wanting to introduce the world of music to your children or grandchildren but you are unsure how to go about it? This new Tipbook is a handy and thorough guide that will answer all your questions. Music for Kids and Teens is relevant to children of every age and musical genre and includes numerous tips and thoughts applicable to other aspects of their upbringing as well.
The book is based on information gathered from the experiences of musicians, teachers, directors, parents, and other specialists and includes topics such as: why should we introduce children to music, choosing and instrument, practicing tips and tools, stage fright and audition anxiety, and much more.
Music for Kids and Teens: a Guide for Parents and Caregivers, by Hugo Pinksterboer, The Tipbook Company, Heemstede, The Netherlands, 2006.
The Ethnomusicologists’ Cookbook
Ethnomusicologists visit the four corners of the earth to collect music and culture of native peoples. Music is an integral part of social interaction, particularly at lavish banquets and celebrations. The Ethnomusicologists’ Cookbook brings food and music together with a collection of assorted recipes from 47 diverse regions of the world such as Java, Morocco, Appalachia, and Iran. Each entry includes recipes for a complete meal for six people, an essay on the relationship between food and music within the culture, and a short list of appropriate CDs.
The Ethnomusicologists’ Cookbook, by Sean Williams, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York, NY, 2006.
Keeping the Beat
For years, medical professionals have been investigating the potential of music to facilitate wellness, improve communication and listening skills, and provide a multitude of other benefits. Notwithstanding, few people look upon music and say, “Hey, now that’s a good way for me to ensure a healthier life!”
Dr. Ada P. Kahn would like for you to say precisely that when picking up a clarinet, violin, a cello, or whatever else you prefer.
Kahn’s book Keeping the Beat: Healthy Aging Through Amateur Chamber Music Playing, is a straightforward endorsement of the vast list of benefits experienced by a mature adult while making music, emphasizing its social and creative benefits.
Keeping the Beat: Healthy Aging Through Amateur Chamber Music Playing, by Ada P. Kahn, Ph.D., Wordscope Associates, Inc., Evanston, IL, 1999.
The Joy of Music and Young People’s Concerts
If The Joy of Music was Leonard Bernstein’s first book. It illuminates the importance of the American symphony, the greatness of Beethoven, and the art of composing, in a readable format.
Written as conversations on music, Bernstein easily grabs and holds the reader’s attention. This reprint includes a new forward from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Washington Post music critic Tim Page.
Page writes that Bernstein was one of the most influential music teachers in history. The composer, pianist, and conductor not only taught other musicians directly, he also educated music appreciators, such as Page, through his television series and books. Composer and music critic Virgil Thomson once described Bernstein as “the ideal explainer of music, both past and present.” The book also includes a photo section, dozens of musical examples, and a section of transcripts from Bernstein’s televised Omnibus music series.
Amadeus Press has also published a revised edition of Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, a collection of transcripts from Bernstein’s Emmy and Peabody award-winning 53 concerts for children. So successful were the performances that they ran on television for more than a decade, were dubbed into a dozen languages, and syndicated in 40 countries. The concerts were also released on DVD earlier this year. The forward in this edition is written by Grammy award winning Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
“All of [Bernstein’s] programs are really lessons in listening. Informed, active listeners are what he wants us to be—and his guidance is inspiring. He wants us to understand that the rich tradition of music is easily available to us and that the spontaneous joy we take in street cries, folk songs, show tunes, and rock and roll is equally in the music that, for lack of a better word, is called ‘classical’ … [Bernstein] tackles all the ‘scary sounding’ terms like sonata and cadenza and makes them understandable and fun,” notes Thomas.
In these two books Bernstein, a unique and gifted musician and teacher, explains beautifully and clearly the joy of music in a way that grasps the attention of all. Each aspect of the music is so cleverly presented that everyone, regardless of age, culture, or educational background will enjoy and understand.
The Joy of Music, by Leonard Bernstein, Amadeus Press, Pompton Plains, NJ, 2004.
Essential Musical Intelligence
Using Music as Your Path to Healing, Creativity and Radiant Wholeness
Louise Montello, a certified music therapist/psychoanalyst and director of Musicians’ Wellness, Inc., defines Essential Musical Intelligence (EMI) as “your natural ability to use music and sound as self-reflecting, transformational tools to facilitate total health and well-being.”
In Essential Musical Intelligence, Montello asserts we are all born with EMI, but many lose their connection with it as faith in creative abilities wanes or the pressures of modern life rob us of time. Even professional musicians can have conflicting attitudes toward music as a result of giving up the joy of simply playing in order to perform. Others have their bond severed through the trauma of abuse, abandonment, or addiction.
Drawing from a wide range of spiritual traditions and her work as a clinical research scientist in psychology at New York University, Dr. Montello shows how one can re-establish the EMI connection and harmonize all five levels of being through a system of clinically proven musical exercises.
Essential Musical Intelligence: Using Music as Your Path to Healing, Creativity, and Radiant Wholeness, by Louise Montello, Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, 2002.
Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination
Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdain examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. In easily understandable language he guides the reader through a continuum of music experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding—and finally to ecstasy.
Jourdain uses a fascinating cast of characters to bring his narrative to life: “idiots savants,” composers who hallucinate compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from deceased composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. This book will entertain, inform, and stimulate lovers of music—and make you think about your favorite song in startling new ways.
Music, the Brain and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination, by Robert Jourdain, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
