Take your ukulele playing to the next level - fast - with hundreds of fun exercises, drills and practice tunesYou have a ukulele, you know just enough to be dangerous, and now you're ready to do something with it. You're in luck: "Ukulele Exercises For Dummies" helps you become a better player. This practice-based book focuses on the skills that entry-level players often find challenging and provides tips, tricks and plenty of cool exercises that will have you creating music in no time that include: - Creating rock-steady strumming patterns and rhythms- Becoming a better fingerpicker with patterns, arpeggio exercises, and solo fingerpicking pieces- Expanding your fretboard knowledge and crafting your own rock, blues and jazz riffs and solos- Playing actual songs on the ukulele - everything from the classic ukulele tunes to the 12 bar blues - Downloadable audio files of the exercises found in the book, providing you with a self-contained practice packageNo matter if you're a beginning ukulele player or you're wanting to stretch and improve your chops, "Ukulele Exercises For Dummies" puts you on your way to becoming a ukulele extraordinaire

Practicing Music by Design: Historic Virtuosi on Peak Performance explores pedagogical practices for achieving expert skill in performance. It is an account of the relationship between historic practices and modern research, examining the defining characteristics and applications of eight common components of practice from the perspectives of performing artists, master teachers, and scientists. The author presents research past and present designed to help musicians understand the abstract principles behind the concepts. After studying Practicing Music by Design, students and performers will be able to identify areas in their practice that prevent them from developing. The tenets articulated here are universal, not instrument-specific, borne of modern research and the methods of legendary virtuosi and teachers. Those figures discussed include: Luminaries Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin Renowned performers Anton Rubinstein, Mark Hambourg, Ignace Paderewski, and Sergei Rachmaninoff Extraordinary teachers Theodor Leschetizky, Rafael Joseffy, Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, and Ivan Galamian Lesser-known musicians who wrote perceptively on the subject, such as violinists Frank Thistleton, Rowsby Woof, Achille Rivarde, and Sydney Robjohns Practicing Music by Design forges old with new connections between research and practice, outlining the practice practices of some of the most virtuosic concert performers in history while ultimately addressing the question: How does all this work to make for better musicians and artists?

The piano works of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) are among the most treasured musical compositions of the twentieth century. In this volume, pianist and Russian music scholar Sofia Moshevich provides detailed interpretive analyses of the ten major piano solo works by Shostakovich, carefully noting important stylistic details and specific ways to overcome the numerous musical and technical challenges presented by the music. Each piece is introduced with a brief historic and structural description, followed by an examination of such interpretive aspects as tempo, phrasing, dynamics, voice balance, pedaling, and fingering. This book will be an invaluable resource for students, pedagogues, and performers of Shostakovich's piano solos.

Superstart Violin is a break-through for beginner violinists, full of exciting music and fun activities from the very first lesson to inspire and stimulate pupils and teachers. Mary Cohen is one of Britain's leading string teachers and this new edition is a distillation of her many years of teaching and research - a core method now in one book. Complete violin technique is introduced from the start, providing a solid foundation and taking the player up to grade one level. Carefully structured, each unit covers a clear technical point through expertly written pieces, providing the student with a true musical experience at each tiny step. Mary takes an imaginative child-orientated approach throughout, encouraging interaction and the exploration of new sound worlds through a superb variety of music. The accompanying CD provides all the piano accompaniments, with unique cue entries to help beginners get started. A separate accompaniments book for violin is also available. For extra flexibility, most of the pieces in Superstart Violin, Superstart Viola and Superstart Cello book are compatible, making this a great resource for individual or group teaching. **ABRSM selected piece (Violin 2012-2015): Rondeau (Purcell)

(Educational Piano Library). 120 color-coded cards to review musical terms, scales, key signatures, and chord progressions in C, Am, G, Em, F, Dm and rhythm patterns in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 3/8, and 6/8. Also includes interval cards prime through octave.

Notes Become Music: A Guidebook from the Viennese Piano Tradition addresses the many unwritten nuances of dynamics, articulation and agogics as an expression of fundamental principles of a common European musical language. It treats the score as an incomplete musical shorthand that outlines the compositional and interpretive imperatives implicit within it, drawing on historical records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and detailed comparisons of works to underline the author's presentation of Viennese tradition. This book is not primarily concerned with questions of style or interpretation. Rather, it explains the many facets of musical notation that were taken for granted by composers who assumed a knowledge of the piano tradition of their day. Notes Become Music informs not only those students in countries where the central European music tradition is still unfamiliar, but also a younger generation of Europeans who have grown up without a living connection to their musical past.

Book & CD. Performance and recital repertoire for the aspiring guitarist. Comprising of original music with fully annotated scores and CD backing tracks with and without click tracks. Ideal for the intermediate or graduate level popular music performer, or for those just wanting a new and exciting musical challenge.

The Original Guitar Case Chord Book has long been considered the essential reference for guitarists. Now the Silver Anniversary Edition includes a specially recorded, full-length audio CD.

The use of technology in music and education can no longer be described as a recent development. Music learners actively engage with technology in their music making, regardless of the opportunities afforded to them in formal settings. This volume draws together critical perspectives in three overarching areas in which technology is used to support music education: music production; game technology; musical creation, experience and understanding. The fourteen chapters reflect the emerging field of the study of technology in music from a pedagogical perspective. Contributions come not only from music pedagogues but also from musicologists, composers and performers working at the forefront of the domain. The authors examine pedagogical practice in the recording studio, how game technology relates to musical creation and expression, the use of technology to create and assess musical compositions, and how technology can foster learning within the field of Special Educational Needs (SEN). In addition, the use of technology in musical performance is examined, with a particular focus on the current trends and the ways it might be reshaped for use within performance practice. This book will be of value to educators, practitioners, musicologists, composers and performers, as well as to scholars with an interest in the critical study of how technology is used effectively in music and music education.

This new, user-friendly course means you can take up the piano at any age! Whether you're learning from scratch, or starting again, these three books will guide you gently into the pleasure of piano playing. You learn as you play. The course is based on familiar favorites from the classical repertoire, themes from opera and ballet, folksongs and blues, music by contemporary classical composers, and original pieces by Carol Barratt herself. The books include fascinating items of musical history and biography, an easy-to-follow introduction to the theory of music, and suggested listening to enhance your musical appreciation.

Lavish musical soundtracks contributed a special grandeur to the new widescreen, stereophonic sound movie experience of postwar biblical epics such as Samson and Delilah, Ben-Hur, and Quo Vadis. In Epic Sound, Stephen C. Meyer shows how music was utilized for various effects, sometimes serving as a vehicle for narrative plot and at times complicating biblical and cinematic interpretation. In this way, the soundscapes of these films reflected the ideological and aesthetic tensions within the genre, and more generally, within postwar American society. By examining key biblical films, Meyer adeptly engages musicology with film studies to explore cinematic interpretations of the Bible during the 1940s through the 1960s.

Improvisation rattles some listeners. Maybe they're even suspicious of it. John Coltrane's saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix's feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar's sitar extrapolations--all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. "Just" improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett's A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation provides a how-to manual for the most extreme example of spontaneous improvising: music with no pre-planned material at all. Drawing on over three decades of writing about, presenting, playing, teaching, and studying freely improvised music, Corbett offers an enriching set of tools that show any curious listener how to really listen, and he encourages them to enjoy the human impulse-- found all around the world-- to make up music on the spot. Corbett equips his reader for a journey into a difficult musical landscape, where there is no steady beat, no pre-ordained format, no overarching melodic or harmonic framework, and where tones can ring with the sharpest of burrs. In "Fundamentals," he explores key areas of interest, such as how the musicians interact, the malleability of time, overcoming impatience, and watching out for changes and transitions; he grounds these observations in concrete listening exercises, a veritable training regime for musical attentiveness. Then he takes readers deeper in "Advanced Techniques," plumbing the philosophical conundrums at the heart of free improvisation, including topics such as the influence of the audience and the counterintuitive challenge of listening while asleep. Scattered throughout are helpful and accessible lists of essential resources--recordings, books, videos-- and a registry of major practicing free improvisors from Noel Akchote to John Zorn, particularly essential because this music is best experienced live. The result is a concise, humorous, and inspiring guide, a unique book that will help transform one of the world's most notoriously unapproachable artforms into a rewarding and enjoyable experience.

Berklee GuideThe definitive text used for the time-honored Chord Scales course at Berklee College of Music, this book concentrates on scoring for every possible ensemble combination and teaches performers and arrangers how to add color, character and sophistication to chord voicings. Topics covered include: selecting appropriate harmonic tensions, understanding jazz harmony, overcoming harmonic ambiguity, experimenting with unusual combinations and non-traditional alignments, and many more. The accompanying CD includes performance examples of several different arranging techniques.A no-nonsense, meat and potatoes source of basic and not-so-basic information about everything relating to jazz writing covers several courses worth of information. Kenny WernerPianist, Composer and Author of Effortless Mastery

Hal Leonard proudly presents new "mini" editions of its bestselling Real Books. These 5.5 x 8.5 little books pack a big jazz punch; they include all 400 fantastic songs found in the 9 x 12 versions: Air Mail Special * Birdland * Bye Bye Blackbird * Caravan * Doxy * Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words) * Georgia * Girl Talk * I Remember You * I Thought About You * In Walked Bud * The Jodi Grind * Just the Way You Are * Killer Joe * Little Sunflower * Mercy, Mercy, Mercy * Moanin' * The Nearness of You * Now's the Time * Old Devil Moon * Phase Dance * St. Thomas * Speak Low * Stardust * Tangerine * Tenor Madness * Watch What Happens * Whisper Not * Willow Weep for Me * Yardbird Suite * and more.