Timbre is among the most important and the most elusive aspects of music. Visceral and immediate in its sonic properties, yet also considered sublime and ineffable, timbre finds itself caught up in metaphors: tone "color", "wet" acoustics, or in Schoenberg's words, "the illusory stuff of our dreams." This multi-disciplinary approach to timbre assesses the acoustic, corporeal, performative, and aesthetic dimensions of tone color in Western music practice and philosophy. It develops a new theorization of timbre and its crucial role in the epistemology of musical materialism through a vital materialist aesthetics in which conventional binaries and dualisms are superseded by a vibrant continuum. As the aesthetic and epistemological questions foregrounded by timbre are not restricted to isolated periods in music history or individual genres, but have pervaded Western musical aesthetics since early Modernity, the book discusses musical examples taken from both "classical" and "popular" music. These range, in "classical" music, from the Middle Ages through the Baroque, the belcanto opera and electronic music to saturated music; and, in "popular" music, from indie through soul and ballad to dark industrial.

Alfred's Basic Prep Course, Levels A through F, was written to answer a demand for a course of piano study designed especially for students who are five years old and up. This course offers a careful introduction of fundamentals, music that fits comfortably under the young student's normal hand span, plus constant reinforcement--all leading to results beyond those generated by other piano methods. After Lesson Book D, the student may progress to Prep Course, Lesson Book E or choose to go directly into the faster paced Level 2 of Alfred's Basic Piano Library. The complete Prep Course consists of six books (Levels A through F).