'Dan is a national treasure and one of America s great songwriters. Elvis Costello. 'Dan s songs were funny, serious, and entertaining, and the combo of old-timey folk, country, and jazz knocked me out. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. 'Dan Hicks is like lightning in a bottle. Bette Midler. Dan Hicks didn t have his heart set on a career in music. It all just sort of happened to him. It didn t hurt, of course, that he was in the right place at the right time San Francisco, 1966 and had a front-row seat for the birth and death of the counterculture. Among other things, this is a classic story of the 60s. More importantly, it s a story of musical genius. By the time the Summer of Love limped to a close in the fall of 67, Hicks had quit the Charlatans the pioneering psych-rock band with whom he played the drums and turned to jazz, the music he d secretly loved all along, as he began building his own band, the Hot Licks. 'I just started taking ingredients I liked and putting them together to see what came out, Hicks writes. What came out was an amazing blend of complex time signatures, unusual instrumentation, and intricate vocal harmonies that took him to the top of the 70s rock world but also into a downward spiral of drink and drug abuse. Emerging from a long wilderness, which he writes about here with wit and candour, the man described by Tom Waits as 'fly, sly, wily, and dry eventually returned to recording and performing, making a number of acclaimed albums, including Beatin The Heat, a set of duets with Waits, Costello, Rickie Lee Jones, and more. Along the way, his music continued to subtly permeate the culture, turning up everywhere from The Sopranos to commercials for Levi s and Bic. Hicks passed away in early 2016, but his music, and the stories he tells here, remain as fresh and irresistible as ever. I Scare Myself takes readers on a journey behind the music, and into the life and mind of the fantastic artist who created it.

(Book). The Jazz Guitar Handbook is a step-by-step guide to jazz guitar playing. It takes you from the basics through to advanced harmony and soloing concepts, and teaches you the music theory a jazz guitarist needs to know. Along the way it covers a wide range of styles, including jazzy blues, swing, bebop, modal, jazz-funk, Gypsy, and more. The handbook features over 120 exercises in notation and tab and includes a 96-track CD of examples, play-alongs, and backing tracks. It also presents the history of the jazz guitar and its great players. Easy to use and useful for players at various levels, this volume is a must-have reference for players looking to expand their jazz skillset.

A contemporary of Handel and Bach, Scarlatti is best remembered now for his 555 keyboard sonatas. Distinctive and playful, the sonatas are testament to Scarlatti's great skill and show the influence of his time spent as a composer in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Featuring over twenty pieces by the Baroque composer, Domenico Scarlatti: Sheet Music for Piano gathers some of his best works and are suitable for a range of abilities. With difficulty levels indicated and fingerings clearly marked, these books are designed for easy reading and are the ideal resource of any piano or keyboard player.

It is most interesting to know that nowadays the recorder has more admirers than ever before. Especially the treble recorder is most suited to be played in the home circle. There exists a lot of music for this particular instrument already, mainly of the period from Bach to Mozart. The works of the great masters during the above mentioned period, such as Bach, Handel, Telemann, Mattheson, etc., require a high technical proficiency. The object of this booklet is to familiarize the player with this technical proficiency, by means of special exercises.

First Published in 1994. In their quest for new sound materials, avant-garde musicians often produce sounds which accidentally bear a strong resemblance to traditional instruments. While conventional Western instruments have taken on a functional role, instruments such as the shakuhachi are still closely associated with their cultural, religious, and historical roots. The colorful and unique shakuhachi has become the most widely known and used Japanese instrument. This collection provides a comprehensive historical overview of the shakuhachi, its technical aspects and its relationship to the flute.

The revised edition for Suzuki Violin School, Volume 5 is now available. Like the other revised violin books, the music has been edited by the International Violin Committee. Other features include:
* New engravings in a more easily readable 9 x 12 format
* New editing of pieces, including bowings and fingerings
* Available together with a newly recorded CD for $19.95
* CD recorded by William Preucil, Concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra
* Piano accompaniments recorded by Linda Perry

This comprehensive survey shows how the larger scale works relate to Beethoven's chamber music and how the composer evolved an increasing freedom of form. Beethoven's Chamber Music in Context provides professional and amateur musicians, and music lovers generally, with a complete survey of Beethoven's chamber music and the background to each individual work - the loyalty of patrons, musicians and friends on the one hand; increasing deafness and uncertain health on the other. Attention is paid to the influence of such large-scale compositions as the Eroica Symphony and Fidelio on the chamber music of his middle years and the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony on his late quartets. The author also lays stress on Beethoven's ever-increasing freedom of form - largely a result of his mastery of improvisationand a powerful symbol of the fusion of classical discipline with the subversive spirit of romantic adventure which characterises his mature music. Beethoven's friends were not shy about asking him what his music meant, orwhat inspired him, and it is clear that he attached the greatest importance to the words he used when describing the character of his compositions. 'The tempo is more like the body,' he wrote when commending Malzel's invention ofthe metronome, 'but these indications of character certainly refer to the spirit.' Angus Watson, a violinist and conductor, has been Director of Music at Stowe School, Winchester College and Wells Cathedral School, one of Britain's specialist music schools. From 1984-1989 he was Dean of Music at the newly founded Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

This book explores the history of keyboard instruments from their fourteenth-century origins to the development of the modern piano. It reveals the principles of their design and describes structural and mechanical developments through the medieval and renaissance periods and eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, as well as the early music revival. Stewart Pollens identifies and describes the types of keyboard instruments played by major composers and virtuosi through the ages and provides the reader with detailed instructions on their regulating, stringing, tuning and voicing drawn from historical sources.

This piano course has been specifically written to help students progress through the tricky intermediate stages of learning the piano. Through carefully chosen repertoire, quick studies, key technical information and musicianship activities, students will develop the skills that they require. Note-reading will be improved, technique developed and a greater understanding of style and music theory will be gained. The Intermediate Pianist Book 1 is suitable for Grade 3 level pianists and forms part of the Piano Trainer series.

The Faber Music Soundtracks Piano Anthology is an essential collection of some of the best-loved music from film and television, specially arranged for solo piano for the intermediate pianist. Featuring music from television favourites such as Sherlock, Downton Abbey, Killing Eve and Planet Earth, and movies including Lord of the Rings, Pan's Labyrinth, The Piano, The Favourite and Manchester by the Sea.

Pipers takes the reader inside the world of the performer community of Scottish piping, introducing the instrument itself and the various different repertories. It also discusses piping techniques as well as information on some of the great piping dynasties and individual pipers. Dr Willie Donaldson shows how 'traditional music', often assumed to be the anonymous product of a dim and distant past, is the creation of gifted individuals operating in a sophisticated and vigorously ongoing enterprise. Since pipers have often been skilled also on the fiddle, keyboards and small-pipes, or as singers or dancers, their story offers fascinating insights into the whole traditional music and song repertoire of Scotland. Pipers is a well-informed and highly readable account by a prize-winning author who is a piper and composer of pipe music as well as an internationally recognised historian of Scottish tradition.

Andras Schiff is one of the most important pianists of our time. This stimulating account of his life and work, told in two parts, takes readers on an intimate journey from Schiff's childhood in Hungary through to the present day. In conversationw with Martin Meyer, Schiff discusses a diverse range of topics from his experiences with anti-Semitism and communist rule to his musical training with maestros such as Pal Kadosa and Ferenc Rados, as well as his thoughts on playing techniques and musical interpretation. In a collection of Schiff's writings we are enthralled by a guided tour of Bach's 'Goldberg' Variations, sobered by Schiff's public defiance against nationalistic and racist attitudes - to the extent that he refused to perform in Haider's Austria or Orban's Hungary - and delighted by the playful 'Ten Commandments' for concertgoers. More than a memoir, this is a seminal compilation of the thoughts and experiences of one of the greatest musicians of our time, of his inimitable art of making music out of silence.

Film Themes: The Piano Collection brings together 30 favourite themes and songs from such films as Star Wars, Frozen, Hunger Games, How To Train Your Dragon and Twilight, plus several pieces from the Harry Potter film series and "Mia and Sebastian's Theme" from the acclaimed new movie La La Land. All pieces have been arranged for the intermediate pianist.

This book will guide students through everything they need to know to become a confident sight reader, working up towards exam-standard practice tests. The accompanying CD demonstrates every piece in the book, offering spoken hints and encouragement along the way. It is designed to help students check and improve their own playing when they are working away from their teacher,and has been written and composed by two experienced teachers and examiners.

Taking account of Bach scholarship of the past twenty-five years, the first two volumes of Peter Williams's classic study of Bach's organ works are fully revised. This work is a piece-by-piece commentary on this ever-popular repertoire, demonstrating the music's unique qualities and how we might hear and play it today. The book follows the order of the Bach catalog (BWV): beginning with the sonatas, followed by the "free works" and the chorales, and ending with the doubtful works, including the "newly discovered chorales" of 1985.