Learning was never so much fun! If you're looking for a revolutionary band curriculum that builds solid musicianship while motivating your students to practice throughout the year, then you've found it! This full band curriculum is sound in its pedagogy, written by leading young band composers and educators, including Robert W. Smith and Michael Story. The integration of important songs from the band world, that are both familiar and fun to play, is one of the stellar aspects of this course. Throughout the book, students experience music from a veritable "who's who" list of great band composers. They'll discover the musical contributions of Percy Grainger, Gustav Holst, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, John Williams and John Philip Sousa as well as classical composers. Some of the notable features include: A wonderful variety of melodies that span various styles and periods, including many popular themes students will know: -A 96-track CD in each student

Robert M. Garcia, a professional drummer from the age of 17, attended Florida A&M University (FAMU), in Tallahassee, and later studied at the Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts. During his freshman and sophomore years at FAMU (1968-1970), he was on the drum line of the world famous band, the FAMU Marching 100. Through the years, Garcia became widely known as a master drummer. However, later in his life, for reasons revealed in this book, he switched his focus from drums to the grand harp. Robert Garcia became a skilled and versatile harpist. His music was a joy to the many people who saw and heard him perform. . . . The fact that Robert was able to move over to the harp is a sign that he always had a pitched-instrument player nestled within his musical gift. It is a great blessing that he was able to express this part of his musical personality later in his career. The fact that he enjoyed such success at this is clearly a testament to the versatility and depth of his musical talent. -Vern C. Falby, Ph.D. Faculty, Music Theory Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University

Uses the rare depictions of musical instruments and musical sources found on the Eglantine Table to understand the musical life of the Elizabethan age and its connection to aspects of culture now treated as separate disciplines ofhistorical study. The reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) has often been regarded as the Golden Age of English music. Many works of high quality, both vocal and instrumental, were composed and performed by native and immigrant musicians, while balladry and minstrelsy flourished in hall, street and alehouse. No single source of the sixteenth century presents this rich musical culture more vividly than the inlaid surface of the Eglantine Table. This astonishing piece of furniture was made in the late 1560s for the family of Elizabeth or 'Bess' of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury (1527-1608). The upper surface bears a wealth of marquetry that depicts, amidst the briar roses and other plants, numerous Elizabethan musical instruments in exquisite detail together with open books or scrolls of music with legible notation. Given that depictions of musical instruments and musical sources are rare in all artistic media of the Elizabethan period, the Eglantine Table is a very important resource for understanding the musical life of the age and its connection to aspects of culture now treated separately in disciplines such as art history, social and political history or the study of material culture. This volume assembles a group of leading scholars in the history of instruments and associated fields to ground future research upon the most expert assessment of the depicted instruments, the music and the decorative imagery that is currently attainable. A final section of the book takes a broad view, placing the Table and the musical components of its decoration in relation to the full range of Elizabethan musical life.

The double bass - the preferred bass instrument in popular music during the 1960s - was challenged and subsequently superseded by the advent of a new electric bass instrument. From the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s, a melismatic and inconsistent approach towards the bass role ensued, which contributed to a major change in how the electric bass was used in performance and perceived in the sonic landscape of mainstream popular music. Investigating the performance practice of the new, melodic role of the electric bass as it appeared (and disappeared) in the 1960s and 1970s, the book turns to the number one songs of the American Billboard Hot 100 charts between 1951 and 1982 as a prime source. Through interviews with players from this era, numerous transcriptions - elaborations of twenty bass related features - are presented. These are juxtaposed with a critical study of four key players, who provide the case-studies for examining the performance practice of the melodic electric bass. This highly original book will be of interest not only to bass players, but also to popular musicologists looking for a way to instigate methodological and theoretical discussions on how to develop popular music analysis.

Created for a wide variety of musicians, 12 Medium-Easy Jazz, Blues & Funk Etudes will appeal to both aspiring players and more experienced musicians. Accessible, yet with some challenges, this music was written by world-renowned jazz composer, arranger, saxophonist, bandleader, educator, and member of the Yellowjackets, Bob Mintzer. Designed for the medium-easy difficulty level, this book includes 12 jazz, blues and funk etudes in a variety of jazz styles, tempos, and time signatures, performance notes/tips for each etude to assist in interpretation and improvisation, play-along CD with a stellar rhythm section, transcription exercise, composition exercise, and a practice page with scales/chords. All books in this series are compatible and written so they can be performed together. Study and learn melodic composition, improvisation, sight reading, motivic development, scales and chords, jazz concept, major and minor blues, jazz waltz, slow/medium/fast swing, and funky groove.

Short, clear chapters each focus on a single topic, presenting necessary information thoroughly and clearly, in a manner that's easy for students to grasp Large number of musical examples allows students to better understand techniques by seeing them in multiple contexts Companion website provides video demonstrations that help students understand techniques in action

Winner of the Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize Musical repertory of great importance and quality was performed on viols in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. This is reported by Thomas Mace (1676) who says that 'Your Best Provision' for playing such music is a chest of old English viols, and he names five early English viol makers than which 'there are no Better in the World'. Enlightened scholars and performers (both professional and amateur) who aim to understand and play this music require reliable historical information and need suitable viols, but so little is known about the instruments and their makers that we cannot specify appropriate instruments with much precision. Our ignorance cannot be remedied exclusively by the scrutiny or use of surviving antique viols because they are extremely rare, they are not accessible to performers and the information they embody is crucially compromised by degradation and alteration. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence including the surviving instruments, music composed for those instruments, and the documentary evidence surrounding the trade of instrument making, Fleming and Bryan draw significant conclusions about the changing nature and varieties of viol in early modern England.

Music has long been a way in which visually impaired people could gain financial independence, excel at a highly-valued skill, or simply enjoy musical participation. Existing literature on visual impairment and music includes perspectives from the social history of music, ethnomusicology, child development and areas of music psychology, music therapy, special educational needs, and music education, as well as more popular biographical texts on famous musicians. But there has been relatively little sociological research bringing together the views and experiences of visually impaired musicians themselves across the life course. Insights in Sound: Visually Impaired Musicians' Lives and Learning aims to increase knowledge and understanding both within and beyond this multifaceted group. Through an international survey combined with life-history interviews, a vivid picture is drawn of how visually impaired musicians approach and conceive their musical activities, with detailed illustrations of the particular opportunities and challenges faced by a variety of individuals. Baker and Green look beyond affiliation with particular musical styles, genres, instruments or practices. All 'levels' are included: from adult beginners to those who have returned to music-making after a gap; and from 'regular' amateur and professional musicians, to some who are extraordinarily 'elite' or 'successful'. Themes surrounding education, training, and informal learning; notation and ear playing; digital technologies; and issues around disability, identity, opportunity, marginality, discrimination, despair, fulfilment, and joy surfaced, as the authors set out to discover, analyse, and share insights into the worlds of these musicians.

In this book, Julian Hellaby presents a detailed study of English piano playing and career management as it was in the middle years of the twentieth century. Making regular comparisons with early twenty-first-century practice, the author examines career-launching mechanisms, such as auditions and competitions, and investigates available means of career sustenance, including artist management, publicity outlets, recital and concerto work, broadcasts, recordings and media reviews. Additionally, Hellaby considers whether a mid-twentieth-century school of English piano playing may be identified and, if so, whether it has lasted into the early decades of the twenty-first century. The author concludes with an appraisal of the state of English pianism in recent years and raises questions about its future. Drawing on extensive research from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, this book is structured around case-studies of six pianists who were commencing and then developing their careers between approximately 1935 and 1970. The professional lives and playing styles of Malcolm Binns, Peter Katin, Moura Lympany, Denis Matthews, Valerie Tryon and David Wilde are examined, and telling comparisons are made between the state of affairs then and that of more recent times. Engagingly written, the book is likely to appeal to professional and amateur pianists, piano teachers, undergraduate and postgraduate music students, academics and anyone with an interest in the history of pianists, piano performance and music performance history in general.

This companion volume to The Courtly Consort Suite in German-Speaking Europe surveys an area of music neglected by modern scholars: the consort suites and dance music by musicians working in the seventeenth-century German towns. Conditions of work in the German towns are examined in detail, as are the problems posed by the many untrained travelling players who were often little more than beggars. The central part of the book explores the organisation, content and assembly of town suites into carefully ordered printed collections, which refutes the concept of the so-called 'classical' suite. The differences between court and town suites are dealt with alongside the often-ignored variation suite from the later decades of the seventeenth century and the separate suite-writing traditions of Leipzig and Hamburg. While the seventeenth-century keyboard suite has received a good deal of attention from modern scholars, its often symbiotic relationship with the consort suite has been ignored. This book aims to redress the balance and to deal with one very important but often ignored aspect of seventeenth-century notation: the use of blackened notes, which are rarely notated in a meaningful way in modern editions, with important implications for performance.

1) This is the only book that is written as a coursebook for Improv, and directed to the college classroom. 2) Brings various aspects of the jazz learning process together -- practicing scales, chord arpeggios and melodic motives in 12 keys, along with the assimilation of the rhythmic nature of jazz and its related forms of (primarily African American) music -- in one systematic, organized and easy-to-assimilate manner. 3) Chapters are organized with: - a paragraph or two explaining a particular scale/harmonic basis or a common form used in jazz repertoire - suggested exercises, from basic scales to advanced melodic motives taken directly from recordings - a repertoire list that employs the harmonic, melodic or formal aspects being discussed in each chapter - concludes with a transcription of an improvised solo by a jazz master which illustrates how theory is put into practice. 4) Includes supplementary materials such as recordings of the transcribed solos, relevant Aebersold Play-Along recordings, and fake books

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.

What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament" the equal division of the octave into twelve notes that has become our standard tuning method? Thanks to How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony, "we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor 'black'" (Wall Street Journal).In this "comprehensive plea for more variety in tuning methods" (Kirkus Reviews), Ross W. Duffin presents "a serious and well-argued case" (Goldberg Magazine) that "should make any contemporary musician think differently about tuning" (Saturday Guardian)."

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CRAIG BROWN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ONE TWO THREE FOUR Everybody knows the Beatles: John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Brian. The Fab Four's meteoric rise is one of the most famous rags-to-riches stories ever told. And behind it all was Brian Epstein, the 'fifth Beatle' and legendary manager, who transformed the group from a small-time club band into global superstars. What was his secret? How did one man lead these scruffy Liverpool lads to change the world of popular music forever? A Cellarful of Noise is Brian Epstein's original 1964 memoir of a life spent making music history. It includes thirty contemporary photographs which offer a glimpse of Brian and the Beatles on their way to phenomenal success. Eye-opening, moving and constantly entertaining, this is essential reading for every Beatles fan.

Every day people come together to make music. Whether amateur or professional, young or old, jazz enthusiasts or rock stars, what is common to all of these musical groups is the potential to create communities of musical practice (CoMP). Such communities are created through practices: ways of engaging, rules, membership, roles, identities and learning that is both shared through collective musical endeavour and situated within certain sociocultural contexts. Ailbhe Kenny investigates CoMP as a rich model for community engagement, musical participation and transformation in music education. This book is the first to produce a valid and reliable in-depth study of music communities using a community of practice (CoP) framework - in this case focusing on the social process of musical learning. Employing case study research within Ireland, three illustrations from particular sociocultural, genre-specific, economic and geographical contexts are examined: an adult amateur jazz ensemble, a youth choir, and an online Irish traditional music web platform. Each case is analysed as a distinct community and phenomenon offering sharpened understandings of each sub-culture with specific findings presented for each community.

The era of the self-playing or automatic piano embraced the first three decades of the 20th century. Piano-playing cabinets were followed by the pneumatic player-piano, soon to be known the world over by the name of the leading American make - Pianola. There were many other makes, of course, with names like Kastonome, Triumph, Pistonola, Claviola, Autoplayer and Apollo. Invented almost simultaneously in Germany and America, player pianos became the most sought-after addition to the family home and the huge industry that built them and made their perforated paper music rolls became both important and wealthy. This book, written by a world-renowned authority on mechanical music and its instruments, relates the development of the automatic piano from the spring-powered dulcimer-playing musical clocks of the 16th century through the once-popular barrel-playing pianos and street pianos to the great era of the Reproducing Piano that could bring a famous artist's interpretation of a musical classic into your own drawing-room. The inventors, their perpetual quest for perfection, and their successes and failures are related in this new and fully-illustrated history. Just how the automatic piano works is described in both words and the author's own clear line-drawings, together with 603 b/w and 43 full colour photos. Also, a guide to servicing, maintaining, and playing player pianos and the magnificent Aeolian Orchestrelle roll-playing reed organ is included. Illustrated appendices include a list of makers, brand-names, and a modern-day valuation guide.

In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour-a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player-that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory, and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself. Alongside a word-centred theoretical tradition, in which rules are described in verbiage and enriched by musical examples, we are rediscovering the importance of a music-centred tradition, especially in Spain and Italy, where the music stands alone and the learner must distil the rules by learning and playing the music. Throughout its various sections, the volume explores the path of improvisation from theory to practice and back again.

Research in the field of keyboard studies, especially when intimately connected with issues of performance, is often concerned with the immediate working environments and practices of musicians of the past. An important pedagogical tool, the keyboard has served as the 'workbench' of countless musicians over the centuries. In the process it has shaped the ways in which many historical musicians achieved their aspirations and went about meeting creative challenges. In recent decades interest has turned towards a contextualized understanding of creative processes in music, and keyboard studies appears well placed to contribute to the exploration of this wider concern. The nineteen essays collected here encompass the range of research in the field, bringing together contributions from performers, organologists and music historians. Questions relevant to issues of creative practice in various historical contexts, and of interpretative issues faced today, form a guiding thread. Its scope is wide-ranging, with contributions covering the mid-sixteenth to early twentieth century. It is also inclusive, encompassing the diverse range of approaches to the field of contemporary keyboard studies. Collectively the essays form a survey of the ways in which the study of keyboard performance can enrich our understanding of musical life in a given period.

William Sweetland was a Bath organ builder who flourished from c.1847 to 1902 during which time he built about 300 organs, mostly for churches and chapels in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, but also for locations scattered south of a line from the Wirral to the Wash. Gordon Curtis places this work of a provincial organ builder in the wider context of English musical life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An introductory chapter reviews the provincial musical scene and sets the organ in the context of religious worship, public concerts and domestic music-making. The book relates the biographical details of Sweetland's family and business history using material obtained from public and family records. Curtis surveys Sweetland's organ- building work in general and some of his most important organs in detail, with patents and other inventions explored. The musical repertoire of the provinces, particularly with regard to organ recitals, is discussed, as well as noting Sweetland's acquaintances, other organ builders, architects and artists. Part II of the book consists of a Gazetteer of all known organs by Sweetland organized by counties. Each entry contains a short history of the instrument and its present condition. Since there is no definitive published list of his work, and as all the office records were lost in a fire many years ago, this will be the nearest approach to a comprehensive list for this builder.

The late 17th century through to the end of the 18th century saw rapid progress in the development of woodwind instruments and the composition of a vast body of music for those instruments. During this period a large amount of music for domestic consumption was written for a growing amateur market, a market which has regrown in the latter part of the 20th century. The last 30 years has also seen the standard of performance by professionals on these instruments rise enormously. This book provides a guide to the history of the four main woodwind instruments of the Baroque, the flute, oboe, recorder and bassoon, and this is complemented by a repertoire list for each instrument. It also guides those interested towards a basic technique for playing these instruments - a certain level of musical literacy is assumed - and it can be used by students, professionals and amateurs. Advice is also given on buying a suitable reproduction instrument from a market where now virtually any Baroque instrument can be obtained as a faithful copy. This is the first book of its kind and has its origins in the wind tutors of the 18th century.

Winner of the Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize Musical repertory of great importance and quality was performed on viols in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. This is reported by Thomas Mace (1676) who says that 'Your Best Provision' for playing such music is a chest of old English viols, and he names five early English viol makers than which 'there are no Better in the World'. Enlightened scholars and performers (both professional and amateur) who aim to understand and play this music require reliable historical information and need suitable viols, but so little is known about the instruments and their makers that we cannot specify appropriate instruments with much precision. Our ignorance cannot be remedied exclusively by the scrutiny or use of surviving antique viols because they are extremely rare, they are not accessible to performers and the information they embody is crucially compromised by degradation and alteration. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence including the surviving instruments, music composed for those instruments, and the documentary evidence surrounding the trade of instrument making, Fleming and Bryan draw significant conclusions about the changing nature and varieties of viol in early modern England.

Mozart's piano sonatas are among the most familiar of his works and stand alongside those of Haydn and Beethoven as staples of the pianist's repertoire. In this study, John Irving looks at a wide selection of contextual situations for Mozart's sonatas, focusing on the variety of ways in which they assume identities and achieve meanings. In particular, the book seeks to establish the provisionality of the sonatas' notated texts, suggesting that the texts are not so much identifiers as possibilities and that their identity resides in the usage. Close attention is paid to reception matters, analytical approaches, organology, the role of autograph manuscripts, early editions and editors, and aspects of historical performance practice - all of which go beyond the texts in opening windows onto Mozart's sonatas. Treating the sonatas collectively as a repertoire, rather than as individual works, the book surveys broad thematic issues such as the role of historical writing about music in defining a generic space for Mozart's sonatas, their construction within pedagogical traditions, the significance of sound as opposed to sight in these works (and in particular their sound on fortepianos of the later eighteenth-century) , and the creative role of the performer in their representation beyond the frame of the text. Drawing together and synthesizing this wealth of material, Irving provides an invaluable reference source for those already familiar with this repertoire.

This innovative study of nineteenth-century cellists and cello playing shows how simple concepts of posture, technique and expression changed over time, while acknowledging that many different practices co-existed. By placing an awareness of this diversity at the centre of an historical narrative, George Kennaway has produced a unique cultural history of performance practices. In addition to drawing upon an unusually wide range of source materials - from instructional methods to poetry, novels and film - Kennaway acknowledges the instability and ambiguity of the data that supports historically informed performance. By examining nineteenth-century assumptions about the very nature of the cello itself, he demonstrates new ways of thinking about historical performance today. Kennaway's treatment of tone quality and projection, and of posture, bow-strokes and fingering, is informed by his practical insights as a professional cellist and teacher. Vibrato and portamento are examined in the context of an increasing divergence between theory and practice, as seen in printed sources and heard in early cello recordings. Kennaway also explores differing nineteenth-century views of the cello's gendered identity and the relevance of these cultural tropes to contemporary performance. By accepting the diversity and ambiguity of nineteenth-century sources, and by resisting oversimplified solutions, Kennaway has produced a nuanced performing history that will challenge and engage musicologists and performers alike.

To reach the highest standards of instrumental performance, several years of sustained and focused learning are required. This requires perseverance, commitment and opportunities to learn and practise, often in a collective musical environment. This book brings together a wide range of enlightening current psychological and educational research to offer deeper insights into the mosaic of factors and related experiences that combine to nurture (and sometimes hinder) advanced musical performance. Each of the book's four sections focus on one aspect of music performance and learning: musics in higher education and beyond; musical journeys and educational reflections; performance learning; and developing expertise and professionalism. Although each chapter within its home section offers a particular focus, there is an underlying conception across all the book's contents of the achievability of advanced musical performance and of the important nurturing role that higher education can play, particularly if policy and practice are evidence-based and draw on the latest international research findings. The narrative offers an insight into the world of advanced musicians, detailing their learning journeys and the processes involved in their quest for the development of expertise and professionalism. It is the first book of its kind to consider performance learning in higher education across a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, popular and folk musics. The editors have invited an international community of leading scholars and performance practitioners to contribute to this publication, which draws on meticulous research and critical practice. This collection is an essential resource for all musicians, educators, researchers and policy makers who share our interest in promoting the development of advanced performance skills and professionalism.

This is the first full-length study of British women's instrumental chamber music in the early twentieth century. Laura Seddon argues that the Cobbett competitions, instigated by Walter Willson Cobbett in 1905, and the formation of the Society of Women Musicians in 1911 contributed to the explosion of instrumental music written by women in this period and highlighted women's place in British musical society in the years leading up to and during the First World War. Seddon investigates the relationship between Cobbett, the Society of Women Musicians and women composers themselves. The book's six case studies - of Adela Maddison (1866-1929), Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Morfydd Owen (1891-1918), Ethel Barns (1880-1948), Alice Verne-Bredt (1868-1958) and Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962) - offer valuable insight into the women's musical education and compositional careers. Seddon's discussion of their chamber works for differing instrumental combinations includes an exploration of formal procedures, an issue much discussed by contemporary sources. The individual composers' reactions to the debate instigated by the Society of Women Musicians, on the future of women's music, is considered in relation to their lives, careers and the chamber music itself. As the composers in this study were not a cohesive group, creatively or ideologically, the book draws on primary sources, as well as the writings of contemporary commentators, to assess the legacy of the chamber works produced.