(Easy Guitar). Includes 13 hit Beatles songs: A Day in the Life * A Hard Day's Night * And I Love Her * Day Tripper * Eight Days a Week * Get Back * Help * Hey Jude * I Feel Fine * Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds * Please Please Me * Ticket to Ride * Yesterday.

In his book on left-hand violin technique, Maestro Ruggiero Ricci addresses common problems in shifting by advocating the study of the glissando technique. He asserts that re-incorporating this technique will not only aid violinists in developing a better-trained ear, but also provide them with "shortcuts" to playing some of Paganini's most difficult passages.

Ricci introduces and compares old and new systems of playing to provide a context for the glissando system. He outlines a series of glissando scales that provides the student with a blueprint for developing additional glissando scales in other keys. He offers exercises designed to increase flexibility, ear training, coordination, and crawling technique and has included a DVD in which he demonstrates various bowing techniques.

So you want to play acoustic guitar but don't want to spend years learning how? Welcome to Crash Course - Acoustic Guitar, an eight-week guide to mastering one of the world's most popular instruments. Over a two-month period, every aspect of playing acoustic guitar is broken down, explored and categorized, and the exercises show you how to recreate them from the notes up. Covering every angle, from tuning and choosing straps to seventh chords and advanced plectrum techniques, and with a free full-length demo CD, this book has everything you need to grab a guitar and hit the ground running.

(Instructional). The Hal Leonard Folk Harp Method is a comprehensive and easy-to-use beginner's guide, designed for anyone just learning to play folk harp. Inside you'll find loads of techniques, tips, and fun songs to learn and play. The accompanying CD contains 56 demo tracks that cover most of the music examples in the book. Covers: the harp and its parts; sitting with the harp; hand position and finger placing; key signatures and meter signatures; scales and arpeggios; the I-IV-V chords; ostinatos and slides; many classic folksongs; and much more

Fiddle Time is a great series for young violinists. Packed with lively original tunes, well-known pieces, and easy duets, the series is carefully paced and organized to build confidence every step of the way. The new editions contain all your favourite pieces from the previous books, back by popular demand.

(Bass Instruction). A walking bass line is the most common approach to jazz bass playing, but it is also used in rock music, blues, rockabilly, R&B, gospel, Latin, country and many other types of music. The term 'walking' is used to describe the moving feeling that quarter notes create in the bass part. The specific goal of this book is to familiarize players with the techniques used to build walking bass lines and to make them aware of how the process works. Through the use of 90-minutes' worth of recorded rhythm tracks, players will have the opportunity to put the new learning directly into action. This book literally gives bassists the tools they need to build their own walking bass lines.

16 pieces from the swashbuckling blockbusters, including: The Black Pearl * Davy Jones * He's a Pirate * I've Got My Eye on You * Jack Sparrow * To the Pirate's Cave! * Wheel of Fortune * and more.

(Violin Play-Along). The Violin Play-Along Series will help you play your favorite songs quickly and easily. Just follow the music, listen to the CD to hear how the violin should sound, and then play along using the separate backing tracks. With the melody and lyrics included in the book, you may also choose to sing along. Chord symbols are provided should you wish to elaborate on the melody. The audio CD is playable on any CD player, and also enhanced so Mac & PC users can adjust the recording to any tempo without changing pitch This volume includes transcriptions of 8 standards by this Parisian jazz great: Django * It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) * Limehouse Blues * Minor Swing * Nuages * Ol' Man River * Stardust * The Way You Look Tonight.

The Russian school of violin playing produced many of the twentieth century's leading violinists - from the famed disciples of Leopold Auer such as Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, and Mischa Elman to masters of the Soviet years such as David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan. Though descendants of this school of playing are found today in every major orchestra and university, little is known about the pedagogical traditions of the Russian, and later Soviet, violin school. Following the revolution of 1917, the center of Russian violin playing and teaching shifted from St. Petersburg to Moscow, where violinists such as Lev Tseitlin, Konstantin Mostras, and Abraham Yampolsky established an influential pedagogical tradition. Founded on principles of scientific inquiry and physiology, this tradition became known as the Soviet Violin School, a component of the larger Russian Violin School. Yuri Yankelevich (1909 - 1973), a student and assistant of Abraham Yampolsky, was greatly influenced by the teachers of the Soviet School and in turn he became one of the most important pedagogues of his generation. Yankelevich taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1936 to 1973 and produced a remarkable array of superb violinists, including forty prizewinners in international competitions. Extremely interested in the methodology of violin playing and teaching, Yankelevich contributed significant texts to the pedagogical literature. Despite its importance, Yankelevich's scholarly work has been little known outside of Russia. This book includes two original texts by Yankelevich: his essay on positioning the hands and arms and his extensive research into every detail of shifting positions. Additional essays and commentaries by those close to him examine further details of his pedagogy, including tone production, intonation, vibrato, fingerings and bowings, and his general approach to methodology and selecting repertoire. An invaluable resource for any professional violinist, Yankelevich's work reveals an extremely sophisticated approach to understanding the interconnectivity of all components in playing the violin and is complete with detailed practical suggestions and broad historical context.

This is an exceptional collection of ten original etudes by Aaron Minsky. First published to international acclaim as Ten American Cello Etudes, these captivating pieces are now available to violinists in this adaptation by editors Daryl Silberman and Danny Seidenberg. For intermediate to advanced players, these dynamic and lively etudes are equally suited to performance and study.

(Music Sales America). This complete violin course brings together the Step One Teach Yourself series in a single multimedia package to provide a total learning system. In this great pack you'll get: a complete instruction book, 3 CDs, and a DVD. The CD audio tracks tell you how everything should sound, and the full length accompaniment tracks give you instant backing. The DVD features an expert teacher demonstrating proper playing techniques.

"'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hands: He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins without Antonio."
-George Eliot
Antonio Stradivari (1644--1737) was a perfectionist whose single-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. In the course of his long career in the northern Italian city of Cremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments; approximately six hundred survive. In this fascinating book, Toby Faber traces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerless instruments-five violins and a cello-and the one towering artist who brought them into being.
Blending history, biography, meticulous detective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber embarks on an absorbing journey as he follows some of the most prized instruments of all time. Mysteries and unanswered questions proliferate from the outset-starting with the enigma of Antonio Stradivari himself. What made this apparently unsophisticated craftsman so special? Why were his techniques not maintained by his successors? How is it that even two and a half centuries after his death, no one has succeeded in matching the purity, depth, and delicacy of a Stradivarius?
In Faber's illuminating narrative, each of the six fabled instruments becomes a character in its own right-a living entity cherished by artists, bought and sold by princes and plutocrats, coveted, collected, hidden, lost, copied, and occasionally played by a musician whose skill matches its maker's.
Here is the fabulous Viotti, named for the virtuoso who enchanted all Paris in the 1780s, only to fall foul of the French Revolution. Paganini supposedly made a pact with the devil to transform the art ofthe violin-and by the end of his life he owned eleven Strads. Then there's the Davidov cello, fashioned in 1712 and lovingly handed down through a succession of celebrated artists until, in the 1980s, it passed into the capable hands of Yo-Yo Ma.
From the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, from the breakthroughs of Beethoven's last quartets to the first phonographic recordings, Faber unfolds a narrative magnificent in its range and brilliant in its detail. "A great violin is alive," said Yehudi Menuhin of his own Stradivarius. In the pages of this book, Faber invites us to share the life, the passion, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of the world's most marvelous stringed instruments.

"From the Hardcover edition.