Discovering Country Music chronicles the incredible evolution of country music in America -- from the fiddle to the pop charts -- and provides an insightful account of the reasons and motives that have determined its various transformations and offshoots over the years. In order to understand what country music is today, and why, it is essential to understand how it makes its money -- the basic revenue streams, the major companies involved, and how country artists such as Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Toby Keith, and Rascal Flatts are booked and marketed. In Discovering Country Music author Don Cusic helps readers do that, and goes even further, covering not only the business and the technology that have shaped the industry, but also tackling the question of country's relationship to the other major genres of the American recording industry, including pop, blues, and rock music. Discovering Country Music is broken down into ten sections which include: key musical trends; ancillary business trends such as recording technology, radio, and the recording industry; and prominent artists, including as a small sample Stephen Foster, The Carter Family, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and Kenny Chesney. This work should appeal to fans, scholars, educators, libraries and the general reader alike.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This book is a survey and analysis of how deep learning can be used to generate musical content. The authors offer a comprehensive presentation of the foundations of deep learning techniques for music generation. They also develop a conceptual framework used to classify and analyze various types of architecture, encoding models, generation strategies, and ways to control the generation. The five dimensions of this framework are: objective (the kind of musical content to be generated, e.g., melody, accompaniment); representation (the musical elements to be considered and how to encode them, e.g., chord, silence, piano roll, one-hot encoding); architecture (the structure organizing neurons, their connexions, and the flow of their activations, e.g., feedforward, recurrent, variational autoencoder); challenge (the desired properties and issues, e.g., variability, incrementality, adaptability); and strategy (the way to model and control the process of generation, e.g., single-step feedforward, iterative feedforward, decoder feedforward, sampling). To illustrate the possible design decisions and to allow comparison and correlation analysis they analyze and classify more than 40 systems, and they discuss important open challenges such as interactivity, originality, and structure. The authors have extensive knowledge and experience in all related research, technical, performance, and business aspects. The book is suitable for students, practitioners, and researchers in the artificial intelligence, machine learning, and music creation domains. The reader does not require any prior knowledge about artificial neural networks, deep learning, or computer music. The text is fully supported with a comprehensive table of acronyms, bibliography, glossary, and index, and supplementary material is available from the authors' website.

He starts the decade a teenage pop idol. But the one-hit wonder who sang 'Space Oddity' is still very far from becoming the star who will one day define the 1970s. Not when he still has a band to find, a manager to sack, a mentally ill brother to save, a wife to marry and a rival called Marc Bolan to beat. Not when David Bowie still has no idea who or what David Bowie is. Starting at the beginning of Bowie's incredible ten-year odyssey changing the course of pop music, Simon Goddard's bold and expressionistic biography weaves time, space, rock'n'roll and social history to relive Bowie's 1970 - moment by vivid moment.

This book examines the intersection between sound and modernity in dramatic and musical performance in Manila and the Asia-Pacific between 1869 and 1948. During this period, tolerant political regimes resulted in the globalization of capitalist relations and the improvement of transcontinental travel and worldwide communication. This allowed modern modes of theatre and music consumption to instigate the uniformization of cultural products and processes, while simultaneously fragmenting societies into distinct identities, institutions, and nascent nation-states. Taking the performing bodies of migrant musicians as the locus of sound, this book argues that the global movement of acoustic modernities was replicated and diversified through its multiple subjectivities within empire, nation, and individual agencies. It traces the arrival of European travelling music and theatre companies in Asia which re-casted listening into an act of modern cultural consumption, and follows the migration of Manila musicians as they engaged in the modernization project of the neighboring Asian cities.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Native Americans supplied the maracas, African slaves brought drums and ritual music, and Spaniards brought guitars, brass instruments, and clarinets along with European ballroom dancing. The advent of blues and jazz gave new forms to styles of songs, notably feeling songs, which joined the more traditional styles of trova and bolero. Cuban culture represents a convergence of these diverse backgrounds, and the musical heritage presented in this book reflects these traditions as well. In colonial times, African ritual sounds mixed with Catholic liturgies and brass bands of the Spanish military academies. Ballroom dances, including French music from Haiti popular in 18th-century Havana society, existed side by side with the cabildos (guilds and carnival clubs) and the plantations. The son, considered the expression of Cuban musical identity, had its origins in a rural setting in which African slaves and small farmers from Andalusia worked and played music together, developing many variations over the years, including big band music. Cuban music is now experiencing a major renaissance, and is enjoyed throughout the world.

Computing is transforming how we interact with music. New theories and new technologies have emerged that present fresh challenges and novel perspectives for researchers and practitioners in music and human-computer interaction (HCI). In this collection, the interdisciplinary field of music interaction is considered from multiple viewpoints: designers, interaction researchers, performers, composers, audiences, teachers and learners, dancers and gamers. The book comprises both original research in music interaction and reflections from leading researchers and practitioners in the field. It explores a breadth of HCI perspectives and methodologies: from universal approaches to situated research within particular cultural and aesthetic contexts. Likewise, it is musically diverse, from experimental to popular, classical to folk, including tango, laptop orchestras, composition and free improvisation.

Teaching Music in the Multicultural Early Childhood ClassroomM discusses principles and strategies for integrating music into early childhood and early elementary school education. Readers learn how music education meets the expressive and developmental needs of young children, and how integrating music into curricula enhances enactive, iconic, and symbolic learning experiences. Written to align with national teaching standards for early childhood teaching certification, the book teachers readers how to identify and describe basic music notation, perception, and performance. They study music and lesson planning methodology, and learn how to successfully plan and present a lesson using music as the link to the desired learning objective. Specific topics include music for children with special needs, multicultural music, ELL and ESL bilingual fluencies, rhythm and movement, extension and character songs, and the importance of singing. Each chapter includes lesson plan templates and study guides with key terms and assessment questions. The book features numerous activities, all of which have been successfully class-tested. The revised first edition incorporates small edits throughout based on student feedback and to clarify key concepts. Teaching Music in the Multicultural Early Childhood Classroom has been developed for courses in early childhood music, and elementary school programs such as music and children, music in the early childhood, Mommy and Me, and Kindermusik, among others.

"It is the most singular of sounds, yet among the most ubiquitous. It is the sound of isolation that has sold itself to millions." Miles Davis's Kind of Blue is the best-selling piece of music in jazz history and, for many listeners, among the most haunting works of the twentieth century. It is also, notoriously, the only jazz album many people own. Recorded in 1959 (in nine miraculous hours), there has been nothing like it since. Richard Williams's "richly informative" (The Guardian) history considers the album within its wider cultural context, showing how the record influenced such diverse artists as Steve Reich and the Velvet Underground. In the tradition of Alex Ross and Greil Marcus, the "effortlessly versatile" Williams (The Times) "connects these seemingly disparate phenomena with purpose, finesse and journalistic flair" (Financial Times), making masterly connections to painting, literature, philosophy, and poetry while identifying the qualities that make the album so uniquely appealing and surprisingly universal.

Examining corporeal expressions of indigenousness from an historical perspective, this book highlights the development of cultural hybridity in New Zealand via the popular performing arts, contributing new understandings of racial, ethnic, and gender identities through performance. The author offers an insightful and welcome examination of New Zealand performing arts via case studies of drama, music, and dance, performed both domestically and internationally. As these examples show, notions of modern New Zealand were shaped and understood in the creation and reception of popular culture. Highlighting embodied indigenous cultures of the past provides a new interpretation of the development of New Zealand's cultural history and adds an unexplored dimension in understanding the relationships between M?ori (indigenous New Zealander) and P?keh? (non-M?ori) throughout the late nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries.

The Last Supper illustrates the definition of an Eat Greedy Girl. You will see that the definition applies to any mini, but how they apply it to themselves is totally different than each other. The Last Supper, illustrates four women with the same purpose going about it in different Eat Greedy Ways . Open this book and see which lady is the Eat Greediest to you, and by the way are you an Eat Greedy Girl?

The Band Director's Guide to Success is the ideal guide for preparing future band directors for the practical challenges and obstacles that they will face in the introductory years of their teaching careers. Written in an easy to understand, quick-reference guide format, this book is designed to be easily navigated as a series of case studies arranged by topic in concise, user-friendly chapters ranging from budgeting to classroom management to conflict resolution and beyond. This manual and career guide in one may be used as a supplemental text with suggestions and practical advice to spare new music teachers from many of the initial headaches and stress that often accompany the transition into the full-time teaching profession.

Studies of Latin American music often overlook its Cuban roots and the political policies that brought the musicians to the United States. This work rectifies that omission by examining the Afro-Cuban influence upon Latin American music and its various idioms. A brief history of Afro-Cuban musicians in the United States provides the background and context for the study. Influential pre-revolutionary Afro-Cuban immigrant musicians, such as Mongo SantamarIa, Jesus Caunedo, Charanga and Pup Legarreta, Juan Carlos Formell, and Alfredo Chocolate Armenteros, discuss both their music and their attitudes toward the political policies that led them to flee Cuba. Speaking from firsthand experience, founding figures of Latin music in the United States present unique insights into the Afro-Cuban experience within the Latin musical community.

Adding to the musicians' stories, Gerard provides a history of relations between Cubans, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans in the Latin music community. He also discusses the impact of the mass emigration in the 1980s that brought many more Cubans to the States. This multicultural approach to Latin American music will appeal to music and Latin American history scholars and to jazz and Latin music enthusiasts. An appendix includes album listings for the musicians interviewed."

Performing Music History offers a unique perspective on music history and performance through a series of conversations with women and men intimately associated with music performance, history, and practice: the musicians themselves. Fifty-five celebrated artists-singers, pianists, violinists, cellists, flutists, horn players, oboists, composers, conductors, and jazz greats-provide interviews that encompass most of Western music history, from the Middle Ages to contemporary classical music, avant-garde innovations, and Broadway musicals. The book covers music history through lenses that include "authentic" performance, original instrumentation, and social context. Moreover, the musicians interviewed all bring to bear upon their respective subjects three outstanding qualities: 1) their high esteem in the music world as immediately recognizable names among musicians and public alike; 2) their energy and devotion to scholarship and the recovery of endangered musical heritages; and 3) their considerable skills, media savvy, and showmanship as communicators. Introductory essays to each chapter provide brief synopses of historical eras and topics. Combining careful scholarship and lively conversation, Performing Music History explores historical contexts for a host of fascinating issues.

Songwriters often use lyrics to describe the current events and social attitudes of a particular period or people. An examination of America's popular songs--and the stories behind their creation--can help us better understand our history and culture. This chronologically organized volume provides the stories of 150 songs in 20th-century American history. Each chapter begins with an historical overview of how songs from the period reflected the political, social, and economic culture of the decade. A discussion of 15 influential songs from each decade provides the songs' histories, what inspired the writers to create them, and why they have resonated over time. Included are patriotic songs, such as "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "God Bless America," protest songs of the civil rights and women's rights movements, such as "We Shall Overcome" and "I Am Woman," songs that defined musical genres, such as "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Stayin' Alive," and contemporary, often controversial music like Eminem's "Stan." Each song's entry includes the song title, songwriter(s), publication information, and current availability. A selected bibliography includes Web sites and books helpful for researching songs, songwriters, and events of the 20th century. Indexes are arranged alphabetically, by song title, by songwriter name, and by subject, making this an excellent research tool for students and general readers alike.