Basic Guitar Workout offers a condensed schedule of tips and advice which will let you maintain or improve your playing standard with the minimum of time and in such an entertaining way you won't know you are practising.

(Guitar Educational). This book/CD pack explores all the main components necessary for crafting well-balanced rhythmic and melodic phrases. It also explains how these phrases are put together to form cohesive solos. Many styles are covered rock, blues, jazz, fusion, country, Latin, funk and more and all of the concepts are backed up with musical examples. The 50 ideas are divided into five main sections: The Basics covers fundamental but all too often forgotten techniques, such as slurs and vibrato, that can breathe new life into your phrases; Melodic Concepts explores various aspects of melodic phrasing, such as motifs, chromaticism and sequences; Harmonic Embellishments discusses the melodic potential of harmonic intervals (dyads), chords and chord partials; Rhythmic Concepts explores various aspects of rhythmic phrasing, such as accents, free-time phrasing and metric modulation, and how it pertains to melodic soloing; Solo Structure all of the topics discussed in the book come together to help form the big picture. The companion CD contains 89 demos for listening, and most tracks feature full-band backing. Also available for keyboard, tenor saxophone and trumpet.

This new edition contains all the scales and arpeggios required for ABRSM's Grades 6-8 Cello exams. Contains all scales and arpeggios for the revised syllabus from 2012, with bowing patterns and suggested fingering, and a helpful introduction including advice on preparing for the exam.

collection for cello and piano, with audio tracks online Solo Time for Cello is a two-volume series of concert pieces for the intermediate to advanced cellist. Featuring arrangements and original pieces by the composers of the award-winning Cello Time series, these graded collections provide a diverse range of repertoire from the Baroque to the modern age and introduce players to exciting new arrangements of amongst others, Amy Beach, Florence Price, Teresa Carreno, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

In A Notebook for Viola Players, Ivo-Jan van der Werff offers a guide to playing the viola with the greatest freedom, dexterity, and ease. It includes right and left hand exercises to build a sound technique, sections on how to practice them, how to hold the viola and bow, how to think about good posture, how to create a good sound, how to play with the least amount of tension, how to deal with anxiety, and thoughts on wellness and practice techniques. Alongside these are photographs and a companion website of video demonstrations of the exercises played by the author, as if in a lesson. Interspersed throughout the book are lively and illuminating anecdotes of van der Werff's own experiences as a student and as a professional musician, as well as a number of blank pages and staff paper for the student to literally 'make notes' and write down their own ideas, offering a space for creative expression using the skills they learn in reading and playing along with the text. Bringing together decades of teaching and performance experience from one of the most respected figures in viola pedagogy, A Notebook for Viola Players is a master class in viola ideal for any player hoping to perfect the fundamental areas of their practice.

collection for cello and piano, with audio tracks online Solo Time for Cello is a two-volume series of concert pieces for the intermediate to advanced cellist. Featuring arrangements and original pieces by the composers of the award-winning Cello Time series, these graded collections provide a diverse range of repertoire from the Baroque to the modern age and introduce players to exciting new arrangements of amongst others, Amy Beach, Florence Price, Teresa Carreno, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Viola Time Joggers is a landmark book in the popular Viola Time series, which is enjoyed by students and teachers all over the world. It contains Kathy and David Blackwell's trademark attractive and engaging compositions that appeal to learners of all ages. This book contains viola accompaniments for the tunes in Viola Time Joggers. These fun, characterful duet parts are suitable for a teacher or more advanced student, and will enhance lessons by providing an alternative accompaniment option for these popular pieces.

(Ukulele). The Ukulele from the Beginning Pop Songs The Blue Book is a great collection of 15 favorite pop songs, specially chosen and arranged for primary school-age and early secondary school-age children. The songs are simplified, and annotated with easy chord symbols, strumming and picking patterns. This is a truly accessible pop songbook, combing a great deal of contemporary repertoire with a selection of true pop classics. Songs include: Bleeding Love * Call My Name * Fireflies * Locked Out of Heaven * Love Story * Mad World * and more.

*A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK* 'Utterly enthralling - a beautifully-written voyage of discovery that takes us deep into the heart of music-making' Deborah Moggach From the moment she hears Lev's violin for the first time, Helena Attlee is captivated. She is told that it is an Italian instrument, named after its former Russian owner. Eager to discover all she can about its ancestry and the stories contained within its delicate wooden body, she sets out for Cremona, birthplace of the Italian violin. This is the beginning of a beguiling journey whose end she could never have anticipated. Making its way from dusty workshops, through Alpine forests, cool Venetian churches, glittering Florentine courts, and far-flung Russian flea markets, Lev's Violin takes us from the heart of Italian culture to its very furthest reaches. Its story of luthiers and scientists, princes and orphans, musicians, composers, travellers and raconteurs swells to a poignant meditation on the power of objects, stories and music to shape individual lives and to craft entire cultures.

The most comprehensive resource available for beginning and experienced guitarists alike, whether acoustic or electric. Completely redesigned and with many more full-color photos than the original, this new edition surveys recent models and profiles current masters, includes an expanded lesson section, and encompasses 10 years of technological change in recording and amplification.

This volume is an introduction to cello playing by an outstanding recitalist, soloist and teacher of international repute whose natural wish - as a teacher - would be to sing, play and demonstrate what he means. Devoted pupil, Nona Pyron, herself a figure of some authority in the world of the cello, has guided and marshalled William Pleeth's brilliantly perceptive advice - based on his lifetime's playing and teaching - into the confines of this valuable book.

String players face a bewildering array of terms related to their instruments. Because string playing is a living art form, passed directly from master to student, the words used to convey complex concepts such as bow techniques and fingering systems have developed into an extensive vocabulary that can be complicated, vague, and even contradictory. Many of these terms are derived from French, Italian, or German, yet few appear in any standard music dictionary. Moreover, the gulf separating classical playing from fiddle, bluegrass, jazz, and other genres has generated style-specific terms rarely codified into any reference work. All Things Strings: An Illustrated Dictionary bridges this gap, serving as the only comprehensive resource for the terminology used by the modern string family of instruments. All of the terms pertaining to violin, viola, cello, and double bass, inclusive of all genres and playing styles, are defined, explained, and illustrated in a single text. Entries include techniques from shifting to fingerboard mapping to thumb position; the entire gamut of bowstrokes; terms found in orchestral parts; instrument structure and repair; accessories and equipment; ornaments (including those used in jazz and bluegrass); explanations of various bow holds; conventions of orchestral playing; and types of strings, as well as information on a select number of famous luthiers, influential pedagogues, and legendary performers. All Thing Strings is expertly illustrated with original drawings by T. M. Larsen and musical examples from the standard literature. Appendixes include an extensive bibliography of recommended reading for string players and a detailed chart of bowstrokes showing notation and explaining execution. As the single best source for understanding string instruments and referencing all necessary terminology, All Things Strings is an essential tool for performers, private teachers, college professors, and students at all levels. It is also an invaluable addition to the libraries of orchestra directors and composers wishing to better understand the complexities of string playing. With the inclusion of terms relevant to all four modern string instruments played in all genres from jazz to bluegrass to historically informed performance this resource serves the needs of every string musician."

Presents 140 of the most frequently played tunes in old time fiddle contests as well as the most popular bluegrass, square dance and country tunes heard throughout the United States. The performance length arrangements of contest tunes include standard as well as challenging variations on hoe-downs, rags, polkas, show pieces, and waltzes complete with suggested accompaniment chords. This encyclopedia of fiddle tunes and variations spotlights American popular fiddle music as played by the great fiddlers of our time.

For many years, musicians in Nashville have used a system of numbers, rather than standard musical notation, in playing and singing and at recording sessions. Neil Matthews, Jr., one of the original members of Elvis Presley's back-up vocal quartet The Jordanaires, invented the system and also wrote this book, which teaches the whole system and also includes quotes, stories and photos of country and pop stars. The second edition features 12 songs to play: Beautiful Brown Eyes * Blue * Boot Scootin' Boogie * Crying in the Chapel * Green Green Grass of Home * He Stopped Loving Her Today * Heartbreak Hotel * (Hey, Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song * I Fall to Pieces * King of the Road * Make the World Go Away * Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys.

New research throws light on the history of the viol after Purcell, including its revival in the late eighteenth century through Charles Frederick Abel. It is normally thought that the bass viol or viola da gamba dropped out of British musical life in the 1690s, and that Henry Purcell was the last composer to write for it. Peter Holman shows how the gamba changed its role and function in the Restoration period under the influence of foreign music and musicians; how it was played and composed for by the circle of immigrant musicians around Handel; how it was part of the fashion for exotic instruments in themiddle of the century; and how the presence in London of its greatest eighteenth-century exponent, Charles Frederick Abel, sparked off a revival in the 1760s and 70s. Later chapters investigate the gamba's role as an emblem of sensibility among aristocrats, artists and intellectuals, including the Countess of Pembroke, Sir Edward Walpole, Ann Ford, Laurence Sterne, Thomas Gainsborough and Benjamin Franklin, and trace Abel's influence and legacy farinto the nineteenth century. A concluding chapter is concerned with its role in the developing early music movement, culminating with Arnold Dolmetsch's first London concerts with old instruments in 1890. PETER HOLMAN is Professor Emeritus of Historical Musicology at Leeds University, and director of The Parley of Instruments, the choir Psalmody, and the Suffolk Villages Festival.