Why don't Guitar Hero players just pick up real guitars? What happens when millions of people play the role of a young black gang member in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? How are YouTube-based music lessons changing the nature of amateur musicianship? This book is about play, performance, and participatory culture in the digital age. Miller shows how video games and social media are bridging virtual and visceral experience, creating dispersed communities who forge meaningful connections by "playing along" with popular culture. Playing Along reveals how digital media are brought to bear in the transmission of embodied knowledge: how a Grand Theft Auto player uses a virtual radio to hear with her avatar's ears; how a Guitar Hero player channels the experience of a live rock performer; and how a beginning guitar student translates a two-dimensional, pre-recorded online music lesson into three-dimensional physical practice and an intimate relationship with a distant teacher. Through a series of engaging ethnographic case studies, Miller demonstrates that our everyday experiences with interactive digital media are gradually transforming our understanding of musicality, creativity, play, and participation.

Allen prepares you for the realities of successfully directing the careers of talented performers in the high- risk, high- reward music business. You will learn to prepare yourself for a career in artist management - and them learn the tools to coach, lead organise time, manage finances, market and artist, and carve out a successful career path for both you and your clients. The books features profiles of artist managers, an exclusive and detailed template for an artist career plan, and samples of major contract sections for artist management and record deals. Updated information including a directory of artist management companies is available on the companion website.

A revised edition of this bestseller, originally published 4 years ago. A revised edition of this bestseller, originally published 4 years ago. From the days when the staff wore white coats, through the rock 'n' roll years to today's big stars, Abbey Road's fascinating history is brought to life for everyone who's ever wondered what goes on behind the graffiti-covered walls.

Repeated Takes is the first general book on the history of the recording industry, covering the entire field from Edison's talking tin foil of 1877 to the age of the compact disc. Michael Chanan considers the record as a radically new type of commodity which turned the intangible performance of music into a saleable object, and describes the upset which this caused in musical culture. He asks: What goes on in a recording studio? How does it affect the music? Do we listen to music differently because of reproduction? Repeated Takes relates the growth and development of the industry, both technically and economically; the effects of the microphone on interpretation in both classical and popular music; and the impact of all these factors on musical styles and taste. This highly readable book also traces the connections between the development of recording and the rise of new forms of popular music, and discusses arguments among classical musicians about microphone technique and studio practice.

For the first time ever, Melanie C, aka Sporty Spice, tells her amazing life story in her own words and gives a full and honest account of what life was really like in The Spice Girls. THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ___________ 'What a woman and what a book!' Elizabeth Day 'Fabulous ... There is so much I really relate to, growing up as a young girl, the 90s, all the stuff you went through.' Zoe Ball 'Amazing ... Absolutely brilliant.' Chris Evans 'Sporty Spice telling it like it is.' Independent 'An amazing story ... An incredibly profound, vulnerable and honest look into the highs and lows of the Spice Girls.' Steven Bartlett 'Really lovely.' Chris Moyles ___________ For the first time ever, Melanie C, aka Sporty Spice, tells her amazing life story in her own words and gives a full and honest account of what life was really like in The Spice Girls. I never told my story before because I wasn't ready. Now, finally, I am. 25 years ago, The Spice Girls, a girlband that began after answering an advert in the paper, released our first single. 'Wannabe' became a hit and from that moment, my life changed for ever. I was suddenly part of one of the biggest music groups in history, releasing hit after hit, performing to our wonderful fans and spreading the message of Girl Power to the world. It was everything I'd dreamed of growing up, and I've had some incredible times... The BRITs! The movie! Travelling the world playing iconic venues like Madison Square Garden, The O2, Wembley Stadium and The London 2012 Olympics!!! When you're a woman, though, that power can be easily taken away by those around you, whether by pressure, exhaustion, shaming, bullying or a constant feeling like you aren't enough. I have been known as Sporty Spice, Mel C, Melanie C or just plain old Melanie Chisholm, but what you will read within the pages of this book is who I truly am, and how I found peace with that after all these years. I have really enjoyed reminiscing and getting everything down on the page, and, though revisiting some of my darkest times was hard, I hope this book can be inspiring and empowering as well as entertaining and give you a bit of a laugh.

It all starts when Southern Belle Lollie Woolfolk sashays into Rick Shannon's office at Rockin' Vestigations in Vicksburg. She hires him to find the grandfather she never met, one-time blues producer Tucker Woolfolk. The day after Rick finds him, the old man is murdered. A couple of days later, Tucker Woolfolk's former partner is killed too. Then Lollie Woolfolk disappears. Things start to get weird when another woman claiming to be Lollie Woolfolk shows up and hires him to find out who killed the two men and why. Rick's investigation turns up evidence pointing to the legendary Blind, Crippled, and Crazy sessions, a fabled blues recording date featuring Blind Buddy Cotton, Crippled Willie Jefferson, and Crazy Earl Tate. Blues scholars have been searching for these tapes for fifty years. But no one has ever killed for them. Until now. Rick and Lollie soon find themselves looking back half a century to solve the case and it takes them up famed Highway 61 to places rich in the history of the blues. A place where, for the past fifty years, certain people have worked very hard to keep the lid on some unsavoury business. Reviews of the DJ Rick Shannon series 'Hilarious - and dead on. Fitzhugh treats us to a tragicomic tour of regional black-and blues history.' New York Times 'Fast, funny, and fabulous. This is Fitzhugh's finest - and that's saying a lot!' Jill Conner Browne 'A lost-tapes mystery - all blues mysteries are lost-tapes mysteries - but unlike the rest, this pays off with a climax so rich you want to hear the tapes as much as the people hunting them down.' Greil Marcus

Mute Records is one of the most influential, commercially successful, and long-lasting of the British independent record labels formed in the wake of the late-1970's punk explosion. Yet, in comparison with contemporaries such as Rough Trade or Stiff, its legacy remains under-explored. This edited collection addresses Mute's wide-ranging impact. Drawing from disciplines such as popular music studies, musicology, and fan studies, it takes a distinctive, artist-led approach, outlining the history of the label by focusing each chapter on one of its acts. The book covers key moments in the company's evolution, from the first releases by The Normal and Fad Gadget to recent work by Arca and Dirty Electronics. It shines new light on the most successful Mute artists, including Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Erasure, Moby, and Goldfrapp, while also exploring the label's avant-garde innovators, such as Throbbing Gristle, Mark Stewart, Labaich, Ut, and Swans. Mute Records examines the business and aesthetics of independence through the lens of the label's artists.

From shifts in format, through the effects on circulation and ownership, to the rise of digitally-produced genres, the ways we create, share and listen to music have changed fundamentally. In Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society, Nick Prior explores the social, cultural and industrial contexts in which these shifts have taken place. Both accessible and authoritative, the book: Clarifies key concepts such as assemblage, affordance, mediation and musicking and defines new concepts such as playsumption and digital vocalities Considers the impact of music production technologies such as MIDI, sampling, personal computing and smartphone apps Looks at the ways in which the internet shapes musical consumption, from viral marketing to streaming services Examines the effects of mobile audio devices on everyday social interactions Opens up new ways to think and write about the personal experience of making and performing digital music This book is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand the place of popular music in contemporary culture and society. It will be fascinating reading for students and researchers across media and communication studies, sociology, cultural studies and the creative industries.

The first photographic celebration of the most famous recording studio in the world, publishing in its 80th year. Unprecedented access to the Abbey Road archive - from Edward Elgar to the Beatles, Kate Bush to Elbow the most famous artists in the world have recorded here. This gorgeous book includes material on the artists, the engineers, the technology and the history of Abbey Road. It's an incredible document of cultural history, for anyone who values music and how it's made.

This book examines the working lives of musicians over the past 120 years via the history of the Musicians' Union. The union has been at the centre of all major agreements covering the employment of musicians across the UK's music industries for this period and its role to date has largely been ignored by historians of the music profession, the music industries and trade unions. This book remedies that oversight, providing fresh insight to musicians' working lives, the industries in which they work and wider British social life. It explores a history of confrontation, coercion and compromise played out across the nation's studios, performance spaces and airwaves. -- .

"The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business" is chatty and informal, and it's full of useful, hard-earned advice telling you how to get ahead in the music business. Through interviews with industry experts in the US and the UK, "The Guerilla Guide" gives priceless tips on every aspect of gigging - from rehearsals to foreign tours. It takes you through the process of recording, from home-made demos to releasing your own finished product and radio promotion. "The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business" also explains what managers, publishers, PR people, accountants, and lawyers can do for you, and when and why you will need their services. It's a book that will help you enjoy what you do, avoid too many pitfalls, and maybe even help you have a hit or two along the way.

Partly because they are objects of such intense adulation by fans, popular musicians remain strangely enigmatic figures, shrouded in mythology. This volume looks beyond the myth and examines the diverse role music makers have had to adopt in order to go about their work: designer, ventriloquist, star, delegate of the people. Arguing against that strand in cultural studies which deconstructs all claims for authorship by the individual artist, the author suggests that creativity should be reconceived rather than abandoned. What is needed is a sense of "the radius of creativity" within which musicians work, an approach that takes into account both the embedded collectivism of popular music practice and the institutional power of the music industries. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical positions, as well as examining musical texts from across the history of 20th century pop, this text develops a case for the importance of production in contemporary culture.

Once a thriving body of innovative and fluid music, jazz is now the victim of destructive professional and artistic forces, says Eric Nisenson. Corruption by marketers, appropriation by the mainstream, superficial media portrayal, and sheer lack of skill have all contributed to the demise of this venerable art form. Nisenson persuasively describes how the entire jazz "industry" is controlled by a select cadre with a choke hold on the most vital components of the music. As the listening culture has changed, have spontaneity and improvisation been sacrificed? You can agree or disagree with Nisenson's thesis and arguments, but as "Booklist" says, "his passion is engrossing."

'The thought behind this book is not just me wanting to tell my story in the standard autobiographical fashion but to create a kind of self-help book that includes my story. There are many things people don't know about me and maybe when they read about those things they will have an understanding of the journey I have been on, why I've made the mistakes I have and hopefully help other people overcome their adversities.' Life has presented its fair share of setbacks for James Arthur, from his disrupted childhood - during which he felt like a stray and a misfit, entering the care system in his teens - to a very public fall from favour just at the point when all his dreams should have been coming true. With an extraordinary comeback in 2016, starting with No. 1 single 'Say You Won't Let Go' and his Platinum album Back From The Edge, Back To The Boy shows the British singer and songwriter reflecting not only on his past but also on his return to the charts, and the phenomenal global success that followed. James shares his struggles with mental health issues which led to drug abuse, and how he dealt with the feelings of intense pressure and loneliness that accompanied his sudden rise to fame. Back to the Boy gives an insight into the life of one of the most exciting musicians of today, and how his experiences are reflected in the raw emotion and passion in his music. This is a story of hope and self-discovery to inspire those who have ever hit rock-bottom and managed to pick themselves up again.

(Lillenas Publications). Worship drama has become a viable tool for training and outreach. The Worship Drama Library Series has become a premier collection of sketches to use as sermon starters or anytime a thought-provoking dramatic presentation is needed. Variety is the key to this Cohagan collection. Themes are varied and scripts require no staging. Topics covered include: worship participation, materialism, moral outrage, gift of love, marriage, missions, prayer, gentle spirit, nursery attendants, church and secular world, Christian friendship, death.

(Lillenas Publications). Worship drama has become a viable tool for training and outreach. The Worship Drama Library Series is a premier collection of sketches to use as sermon starters or anytime a thought-provoking dramatic presentation is needed. While such scripts are often written without closure (allowing for a follow-up sermon), open-ended and resolved scripts are both provided, giving them greater versatility. Topics covered in this volume include: business, God's existence, materialism, friendship, interceding, healing, discouragement, prayer, abuse, self-righteousness, self-deception, and loneliness.

(Lillenas Publications). Worship drama has become a viable tool for training and outreach. The Worship Drama Library Series is a premier collection of sketches to use as sermon starters or anytime a thought-provoking dramatic presentation is needed. While such scripts are often written without closure (allowing for a follow-up sermon), open-ended and resolved scripts are both provided, giving them greater versatility. Topics covered in this volume include: physical healing, emotional healing, alcoholism, emotional abandonment, child abuse, generation gap, understanding your spouse, tabloid talk, betrayal, and loneliness.

Confused by today's music business? Did you ever wish that that some super-knowledgeable music attorney would sit you down and explain the whole thing to you? Well, that's what this book is all about. Get It in Writing is actually three books in one: 1) An overview of the entire music business and the players involved; 2) Interviews with top industry professionals; and 3) A huge collection of sample agreements with extensive commentary from the author. This indispensible book covers: recording contracts, demo deals, copyrights and trademarks, music publishing, performance rights, motion pictures and TV, artist management, producers, band partnerships, and plenty more. All of this info coupled with expert insider advice makes this book every musician's best tool for success in the music business.

Andile Gaelesiwe is the adored Khumbul' ekhaya host. She was raped by her father at the age of 11. The second rape was by a taxi driver who beat her up. Andile entered the music scene with the big hit of the late 90s, Abuti Yo. She started Open Disclosure for rape survivors. This fierce, at times funny memoir, an insight into Andile’s consciousness that keeps reviving her will reverberate in young and adult readers.