This is the ideal guide for those who wish to get to grips with music to a greater depth, to learn to play faster, more complicated scores, to compose and arrange music - the possibilities are endless. This guide provides everything you need to know, explaining pitch, the treble clef, the bass clef, rhythm, accidentals, key signatures, scales and chords, along with a compendium of additional information. Then practise what you have learnt with the 'Play Along' sections containing simple, well-known examples of music, from 'Scarborough Fair' to 'Jerusalem'. With helpful diagrams, clear accessible text and a practical ringbound format.

This book has been written for those submitting compositions as part of their coursework, and although the projects have been chosen to be suitable for AS Music, they offer useful guidance to anyone wishing to take composing to a higher level. The book offers essential generic advice and five composing projects, covering composing for choir, composing expressively and using a storyboard, writing for rock and pop instruments with verse-chorus form, and writing for piano and keyboard in rondo form. A useful glossary is included.

Apollo Cokkinis worked to exhaustion as a Lt-Colonel in World War Two to organise British Military Hospitals in North Africa and Italy and perform hundreds of operations on wounded men. This was the supreme test of his skill as a surgeon, ability to get things done and get on with people, his several languages, his resilience and courage. His two homelands - Odessa in Ukraine and Smyrna - were smashed in 1919 and 1922. His parents lost everything in these disasters. Touring as opera singers, they had previously taken him as a child around the opera houses and concert halls of Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa. He retained their love of music and regaled British troops, his friends and medical colleagues with his repertoire. He was a mason in several lodges for over 50 years, founding the Hellenic Lodge in London. While retaining contact and supporting his family in Greece, Apollo became British in 1920 and loved the country, right down to cricket and the old British songs. He founded a family in Britain whose grandchildren remember him as a warm, positive, fun and colourful man who enriched their lives, including those born of a daughter outside his marriage. He lived life to the full, and what a life it was!