Humming is a ubiquitous and mundane act many of us perform. The fact that we often hum to ourselves, to family members, or to close friends suggests that humming is a personal, intimate act. It can also be a powerful way in which people open up to others and share collective memories. In religious settings such as Tibetan chanting, humming offers a mesmerising sonic experience. Then there are hums that resound regardless of human activity, such as the hums of impersonal objects and man-made or natural phenomena. The first sound studies book to explores the topic of humming, Humming offers a unique examination of the polarising categories of hums, from hums that are performed only to oneself, that are exercised in religious practice, that claim healing, and that resonate with our bodies, to hums that can drive people to madness, that emanate from cities and towns, and that resound in the universe. By acknowledging the quirkiness of hums within the established discourse in sound studies, Humming takes a truly interdisciplinary view on this familiar yet less-trodden sonic concept in sound studies.

Becoming Noise Music tells the story of noise music in its first 50 years, using a focus on the music's sound and aesthetics to do so. Part One focuses on the emergence and stabilization of noise music across the 1980s and 1990s, whilst Part Two explores noise in the twenty-first century. Each chapter contextualizes - tells the story - of the music under discussion before describing and interpreting its sound and aesthetic. Stephen Graham uses the idea of 'becoming' to capture the unresolved 'dialectical' tension between 'noise' disorder and 'musical' order in the music itself; the experiences listeners often have in response; and the overarching 'story' or 'becoming' of the genre that has taken place in this first fifty or so years. The book therefore doubles up on becoming: it is about both the becoming it identifies in, and the larger, genre-making process of the becoming of, noise music. On the latter count, it is the first scholarly book to focus in such depth and breadth on the sound and story of noise music, as opposed to contextual questions of politics, history or sociology. Relevant to both musicology and noise audiences, Becoming Noise Music investigates a vital but analytically underexplored area of avant-garde musical practice.

The 1960s saw the nexus of the revolution in popular music by a post-war generation amid demographic upheavals and seismic shifts in technology. Over the past two decades, musicians associated with this period have produced a large amount of important autobiographical writing. This book situates these works -- in the forms of formal autobiographies and memoirs, auto-fiction, songs, and self-fashioned museum exhibitions -- within the context of the recent expansion of interest in autobiography, disability, and celebrity studies. It argues that these writings express anxiety over musical originality and authenticity, and seeks to dispel their writers' celebrity status and particularly the association with a lack of seriousness. These works often constitute a meditation on the nature of postmodern fame within a celebrity-obsessed culture, and paradoxically they aim to regain the private self in a public forum.

The present volume is a double edition in English and Arabic about the art of ornamentations in the performance of the Arabic qanun (psaltery), and a historical document spanning more than one hundred years. It is based on George Sawa's experience as an artist and performer, as well as the experience of his teachers and their teachers. For the latter, Dr Sawa used his recollections of what his teachers said about their teachers, as well as recordings made by European companies that recorded their works on 78 rpm at the beginning of the 20th century. .

Life in ancient Greece was musical life. Soloists competed onstage for popular accolades, becoming centrepieces for cultural conversation and even leading Plato to recommend that certain forms of music be banned from his ideal society. And the music didn't stop when the audience left the theatre: melody and rhythm were woven into the whole fabric of daily existence for the Greeks. Vocal and instrumental songs were part of religious rituals, dramatic performances, dinner parties, and even military campaigns. Like Detroit in the 1960s or Vienna in the 18th century, Athens in the 400s BC was the hotspot where celebrated artists collaborated and diverse strands of musical tradition converged. The conversations and innovations that unfolded there would lay the groundwork for musical theory and practice in Greece and Rome for centuries to come. In this perfectly pitched introduction, Spencer Klavan explores Greek music's origins, forms, and place in society. In recent years, state-of-the-art research and digital technology have enabled us to decipher and understand Greek music with unprecedented precision. Yet many readers today cannot access the resources that would enable them to grapple with this richly rewarding subject. Arcane technical details and obscure jargon veil the subject - it is rarely known, for instance, that authentic melodies still survive from antiquity, helping us to imagine the vivid soundscapes of the Classical and Hellenistic eras. Music in Ancient Greece distills the latest discoveries into vivid prose so readers can come to grips with the basics as never before. With the tools in this book, beginners and specialists alike will learn to hear the ancient world afresh and come away with a new, musical perspective on their favourite classical texts.

The hitmakers behind Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" recount their rise to songwriting stardom while authoring the classic American R&B sound of countless chart-topping singles. In 1950 a couple of rhythm and blues-loving teenagers named Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met for the first time. They discovered their mutual affection for R&B and, as Jerry and Mike put it in this fascinating autobiography, began an argument that has been going on for over fifty years with no resolution in sight. Leiber and Stoller were still in their teens when they started working with some of the pioneers of rock and roll, writing such hits as Hound Dog, which eventually became a #1 record for Elvis Presley. Jerry and Mike became the King's favorite songwriters, giving him Jailhouse Rock and other #1 songs. Their string of hits with the Coasters, including Yakety Yak, Poison Ivy, and Charlie Brown, is a part of rock 'n' roll history. They founded their own music label and introduced novel instrumentation into their hits for the Drifters and Ben E. King, including On Broadway and Stand by Me. They worked with everyone from Phil Spector to Burt Bacharach and Peggy Lee. Their smash musical Smokey Joe's Cafe became the longest-running musical revue in Broadway history. Lively, colorful, and irreverent, Hound Dog describes how two youngsters with an insatiable love of good old American R&B created the soundtrack for a generation.