The Moog synthesizer "bent the course of music forever" Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation--suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Beatles, The Doors, The Byrds, and Stevie Wonder discovered his synthesizer, and it came to be featured in seminal film scores including Apocalypse Now and A Clockwork Orange. The Moog's game-changing sounds saturated 60's counterculture and burst into the disco party in the 70's to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and become a star in the process. But he was also going broke. Imitators copied his technology, the musicians' union accused him of replacing live players, and Japanese competitors started overtaking his work. He struggled to hang on to his inventions, his business, and his very name. Bob's story upends our notions of success and wealth, showing that the two don't always go together. In Switched On, author Albert Glinsky draws on exclusive access to Bob Moog's personal archives and his probing interviews with Bob's family and a multitude of associates, for this first complete biography of the man and his work. Switched On takes the reader on a roller coaster ride at turns triumphant, heart-breaking, and frequently laugh out loud absurd--a nuanced trip through the public and private worlds of this legendary inventor who altered the course of music.

‘Whatever I did, at least I meant it . . .’ Gary Moore White Knuckles chronicles the personal and professional journey of one of rock’s most influential musicians: Gary Moore. Born in Belfast and rising to conquer some of the world’s biggest stages, the guitarist-singer-songwriter enjoyed spells with the likes of rock giants Thin Lizzy before becoming a successful solo artist in his own right. Moore’s solo career spanned three decades and millions of album sales until his untimely passing in 2011. Balancing biography with a critical analysis of Moore’s songs and guitar style, White Knuckles explores the evolution of Gary Moore’s music, from progressive rock and jazz fusion to metal and pure blues. It also examines his friendships and artistic collaborations with the likes of George Harrison, Philip Lynott, Peter Green, Rory Gallagher, Cream’s Jack Bruce and many more. Based on interviews with Moore’s friends, colleagues and fellow musicians, this definitive work catalogues the life and oeuvre of a true legend.

English rock ruled the airwaves in the 60s and 70s The fuse was lit by the Beatles with their Mersey sound in Liverpool. In London, the Rolling Stones played the blues as if their lives depended on it. Then came the Yardbirds, the Who, the Kinks, heralding inventive prog rock bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes, unleashing the fury of heavy metal with bands like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. As the 70s progressed, the androgyny of David Bowie and bands like T-Rex launched glam rock to the world. These two decades of freedom and creativity are captured in this book with photos by the best photographers, and text by top French music writer Philippe Margotin.

Founded in 1917, Paramount Records incongruously was one of several homegrown record labels of a Wisconsin chair-making company. The company pinned no outsized hopes on Paramount. Its founders knew nothing of the music business, and they had arrived at the scheme of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive phonograph cabinets they had recently begun manufacturing. Lacking the resources and the interest to compete for top talent, Paramount's earliest recordings gained little foothold with the listening public. On the threshold of bankruptcy, the label embarked on a new business plan: selling the music of Black artists to Black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the "race records" era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by Black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong, Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly Roll Morton. Scott Blackwood's The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music etched into the shellacked grooves of a 78 rpm record. With Paramount Records, Black America found its voice. Through creative nonfiction, Blackwood brings to life the gifted artists and record producers who used Paramount to revolutionize American music. Felled by the Great Depression, the label stopped recording in 1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is among the most treasured and influential in American history.

The most pedagogically sophisticated text on the market, The Musician's Guide is the most complete resource for the theory curriculum that anyone can use. Successful online Know It? Show It! pedagogy and a comprehensive workbook help students develop theory skills inside the classroom and out. With a wider, more inclusive, repertoire than ever, the text explores music that will be relevant to every musician with clear, accessible prose.

The first performance of Handel’s 'Messiah' in Dublin in 1742 is now legendary. Gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home and ladies to come without hoops in their skirts in order to fit more people into the audience. Why then, did this now famous and much-loved oratorio receive a somewhat cool reception in London less than a year later? Placing Handel’s best-known work in the context of its times, this vivid account charts the composer’s working relationship with his librettist, the gifted but demanding Charles Jennens, and looks at Handel’s varied and evolving company of singers together with his royal patronage. Through examination of the composition manuscript and Handel’s own conducting score, held in the Bodleian, it explores the complex issues around the performance of sacred texts in a non-sacred context, particularly Handel’s collaboration with the men and boys of the Chapel Royal. The later reception and performance history of what is one of the most successful pieces of choral music of all time is also reviewed, including the festival performance attended by Haydn, the massed-choir tradition of the Victorian period and today’s ‘come-and-sing’ events.

Provides a wide range of case studies of music in film scenes, allowing instructors to pick and choose examples to focus on. Each case study is accessibly written and follows the same format, breaking down elements of the scene for students in a clear manner that invites comparisons. Organized by the type of musical use, allowing instructors to readily find examples of different types of music functions, and compare across different films.

Canadian performer k.d. lang broke new ground in the 1980s by blending the genres of punk and country, dubbed “cowpunk,� with her band, the Reclines. Despite Grammy-award-winning recordings and frequent North American TV spots, mainstream country radio excluded lang from airplay due to her unconventional gender presentation and perceived sexuality. Not until lang’s 1992 pop album Ingénue, the release of the single “Constant Craving,� and her subsequent coming out in The Advocate did lang earn critical acclaim worldwide. The book addresses lang’s rise to fame after switching genres, the successful reinvention of her sound and persona, and how she found herself immersed in the whirlwind of MTV and the "lesbian chic" aesthetic of 1990s pop culture. As an LGBTQ author, Joanna McNaney Stein discusses her adolescence and sexual development by weaving in short narrative prose pieces with her analysis of lang and Ingénue. Also included are interviews with lang's musical collaborators: Ingénue co-writer Ben Mink, drummer Fred Eltringham, pianist Daniel Clarke, and singer-songwriter Laura Veirs.

With a huge reward on the line, the Stockwell Park Orchestra will need to play on a whole new scale to win big... After a brief and disastrous Resident Poet episode, Stockwell Park Orchestra is invited to take part in a TV competition for classical music. For a GBP50,000 prize some competitors are tempted to stretch the genre to 'crossover' and beyond. Can a full concert orchestra compete with jazz bands, horn quartets, harp ensembles, and Mrs Ford-Hughes singing in Portuguese with nine cellos? Or will the competition be derailed by the poet's return, this time sporting live Ambient Sounds? The TV producers aren't worried: they know a good fight means great ratings. What was supposed to be a quirky diversion threatens to take over the orchestra's rehearsals for their own concert, but discovering a voting scam means they must fix things in the TV studio first. What people are saying about Life, Death and Cellos: "I was charmed... a very enjoyable read." Marian Keyes "Life, Death and Cellos is a witty and irreverent musical romp, full of characters I'd love to go for a pint with. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the Stockwell Park Orchestra and can't wait for the next book in the series." Claire King, author of The Night Rainbow "Life, Death and Cellos is that rare thing - a funny music book. Rogers knows the world intimately, and portrays it with warmth, accuracy and a poetic turn of phrase. Sharp, witty and richly entertaining." Lev Parikian, author of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? "With its retro humour bordering on farce, this novel offers an escape into the turbulent (and bonkers) world of the orchestra." Isabel Costello, author of Paris Mon Amour "Dodgy post-rehearsal curries, friendly insults between musicians, sacrosanct coffee-and-biscuit breaks, tedious committee meetings: welcome to the world of the amateur orchestra. Throw in a stolen Stradivarius, an unexpected fatality and the odd illicit affair and you have Life, Death and Cellos, the first in a new series by Isabel Rogers." Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine "...a very funny tale of musical shenanigans set in the febrile atmosphere of the Stockwell Park Orchestra" Ian Critchley

Book by book, year by year, the ultimate literary trip through Bowie's greatest decade. It is 1973. David Bowie is finally a superstar. All he has to do to remain there is to keep pretending he's Ziggy Stardust, keep playing to thousands, keep selling to millions and keep on staying relatively sane ... As glam rock crashes and burns in a sleazy scandal-ridden Britain, a world tour convinces David to make radical changes with devastating consequences for Ziggy, his fans and his band. However, his planned 'retirement' is anything but quiet - now a friend of the Jaggers, with more lovers than he can count on one hand, more appetites than he can satisfy with one nose and still more success. But at what cost? Continuing his vivid real-time journey through the decade David changed pop forever, the fourth volume of the Bowie Odyssey series sees Simon Goddard mainline to the dark heart of Seventies sex, drugs and debauched rock'n'roll - a gripping, unsentimental portrait of inspiration, insanity and the thin line that divides. PRAISE FOR THE BOWIE ODYSSEY SERIES 'My god, it's brilliant. A delicious romp.' MIKE SCOTT, THE WATERBOYS 'The best book written about its subject... Stupendous.' CLASSIC ROCK 'The wonderful Bowie Odyssey series ... Goddard's prose is like an all-seeing eye.' RECORD COLLECTOR 'A full-on sensory immersion in Bowie's universe.' SUNDAY TIMES 'It's as if we were there.' 4**** MOJO 'Goddard's scintillating series... with its meticulous fact-checking and almost poetic prose, paints a beautifully written portrait that's almost as otherworldly as its subject... [it] strikes the perfect balance... granting us an all-access-areas pass to accompany Bowie to every gig, every engagement and to some of the most important moments in rock' 4*** Classic Pop 'The project's ambition is matched only by the sumptuousness of Goddard's writing... At times as I read Bowie Odyssey 73 I felt like his shadow.' Chris Charlesworth

How do contemporary audiences engage with sacred music and what are its effects? This book explores examples of how the Christian story is still expressed in music and how it is received by those who experience that art form, whether in church or not. Through conversations with a variety of writers, artists, scientists, historians, atheists, church laity and clergy, the term post-secular emerges as an accurate description of the relationship between faith, religion, spirituality, agnosticism and atheism in the west today. In this context, faith does not just mean belief; as the book demonstrates, the temporal, linear, relational and communal process of experiencing faith is closely related to music. Music and Faith is centred on those who, by-and-large, are not professional musicians, philosophers or theologians, but who find that music and faith are bound up with each other and with their own lives. Very often, as the conversations reveal, the results of this 'binding' are transformative, whether it be in outpourings of artistic expression of another kind, or greater involvement with issues of social justice, or becoming ordained to serve within the Church. Even those who do not have a Christianfaith find that sacred music has a transformative effect on the mind and the body and even, to use a word deliberately employed by Richard Dawkins, the 'soul'. JONATHAN ARNOLD is Dean of Divinity and Fellow of MagdalenCollege, Oxford. Before being ordained, he was a professional singer and made numerous recordings with The Sixteen, Polyphony, the Gabrielli Consort and The Tallis Scholars, among others. He has previously published Sacred Music in Secular Society (2014), The Great Humanists: An Introduction (2011) and John Colet of St. Paul's: Humanism and Reform in Pre-Reformation England (2007).

Get your backstage pass to the world-famous Rockfield Recording Studios in Monmouth, Wales. Featuring frank and funny interviews with the artists who recorded there and studio staff, Rock Legends at Rockfield reveals the fascinating stories behind some of the world's best-known and loved rock albums and records, including Oasis's What's the Story (Morning Glory), a number of Queen songs including Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody, and Motoerhead's first recordings. This new edition will be fully revised and updated with new chapters on the artists who have recorded at Rockfield since 2007, including new interviews with bands such as Thunder, The Dirty Youth, Gun and YES; the Studios' recent appearances in film and television such as the Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody film and the Rockfield: the Studio on the Farm documentary; and a section on Rockfield's neighbouring rehearsal studio, Monnow Valley, which later became a recording studio in its own right and has hosted bands such as Black Sabbath. A must-read for anyone interested in rock music and music history.

Guitar Basics is a landmark method for young guitarists. It starts at absolute beginner level and progresses to Initial/Preparatory Grade. The method is set out in sixteen stages and contains original pieces and traditional tunes in an array of styles including classical, folk and world music as well as well-known favourite film and TV themes such as James Bond, Batman and The Flintstones. There is a thorough introduction to standard notation, with sections on chords and TAB, whilst ensemble pieces are ideal for group teaching, including 'Wider Opportunities'. Accompaniment parts and teachers' notes are available in Guitar Basics Teacher's Book, and the fun backing tracks are available to download online. The companion book, Guitar Basics Repertoire, provides over 40 fun solos and ensemble pieces for both individual and group learning. It is designed to consolidate material learnt in the Guitar Basics Tutor and present new topics, including accidentals, moving up the neck, two-part music, arpeggios and plucked chords.

This collection of essays offers a historical reappraisal of what musical modernism was, and what its potential for the present and future could be. It thus moves away from the binary oppositions that have beset twentieth-century music studies in the past, such as those between modernism and postmodernism, between conceptions of musical autonomy and of cultural contingency and between formalist-analytical and cultural-historical approaches. Focussing particularly on music from the 1970s to the 1990s, the volume assembles approaches from different perspectives to new music with a particular emphasis on a critical reassessment of the meaning and function of the legacy of musical modernism. The authors include scholars, musicologists and composers who combine culturally, socially, historically and aesthetically oriented approaches with analytical methods in imaginative ways.

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.

An black Iraq war veteran and an Iraqi-American Muslim teenager form an unlikely friendship through their shared love of John Coltrane. A supreme coming-of-age story of friendship, forgiveness - and jazz. Tariq is is a young Iraqi-American Muslim man, beset by danger on the streets and conflict at home. Music is his only consolation. When he forms a friendship with the volatile but intriguing record-store owner and Iraq war veteran, Jamal, Tariq discovers the world of jazz - and the man he could become. Jamal is exciting, eloquent, and troubled. He suffers from PTSD, is always on edge. Tariq wants to learn from Jamal's knowledge of music, but can he afford to get close to this volatile veteran? When violence that has long threatened finally erupts, things suddenly clarify for Tariq. He takes the ultimate risk - not on behalf of his friend but his enemy - and the disparate worlds of modern America and traditional Islam come together in an unexpected and gripping resolution.

Barbara Hanning's Concise History of Western Music offers students a manageable introduction to the forces that shaped music. Combining concision with the imaginative pedagogy that her text pioneered, Hanning focuses on an essential repertoire of 109 characteristic works-from the Middle Ages to the present-providing students with the cultural and historical context to illuminate the music and remember its significance. The new Total Access programme unlocks a full suite of media resources with every new book, including instant access to streaming recordings of the complete Norton Anthology of Western Music repertoire, an ebook, audio for nearly every short example in the text and stunning Metropolitan Opera video.

A time-honored tradition just got better! The John W. Schaum Piano Course has been newly revised with 100 percent new engravings and typesetting, color highlighting for concept emphasis, updated song titles and lyrics, and full-color illustrations.

(Faber Piano Adventures ). Book B of the Fabers' method for the young beginner moves the student into staff-reading. Music notation is explored through stepwise directional reading, pattern recognition, and changing hand positions, all in the context of engaging songs, games and creative exploration at the piano. Maintaining the child-centered philosophy of the series, the "friends at the piano" from the A Books introduce students to the music of two new composer friends Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Classic themes share the stage with contemporary pop and jazz sounds for young ears to absorb and enjoy. The Book B CD presents a vibrant mix of sounds, from boogie to Beethoven. It serves as a listening CD which educates and as an accompaniment CD for play-along.

Model answers for practice papers for ABRSM's Grade 1 Theory exams