Traditional aural training is heavily biased towards the perception and identification of pitch and rhythm. But George Pratt argues in this book that in these days of CDs and cassette recorders much of this area of the subject can best be worked on alone. He demonstrates how, by tailoring tasks to individual needs, every student can make some encouraging progess in these aspects of music. But this also makes time available for developing the perception of other musical elements just as significant yet often neglected because of their more abstract and qualitative nature-elements such as timbre, texture and density; compass, range, and tessitura; dynamics and articulation; ordering music in structures and placing it in space. The chapters on these areas break new ground. They demonstrate how these `elements', once perceived and analysed, are incorporated into the skills which musicians need-to notate sound quality accurately, to read or `image' the implications of notation beyond though including pitch and rhythm; to play and sing by ear; to improvise and to memorize, not only 'right notes' but the subtle qualities and nuances which bind them into coherent music. This book was first published by Open University Press, and at that stage was primarily addressed to groups of music students and their teachers, in universities, colleges, conservatoires, and sixth forms. But, by a happy accident of timing, George Pratt was then invited to be a member of the National Curriculum Music Working Group, and many of the ideas here, in particular the identification and codification of musical 'elements', were fed into their thinking. The present book has been substantially revised to take account of what are now the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum in Music. Much of the material in it is either already accessible for pupils in the earlier years at school or is easily adapted by imaginative teachers. In addition, every section leads towards open-ended `do-it-yourself' exercises and experiments which can be used by individuals. This follows the pattern established in Professor Pratt's The Dynamics of Harmony: Principles and Practice (OUP, 1996), and is designed to encourage open-ended exploration generated by musicians's individual needs and enthusiasms. This freedom to adapt exercises includes using them in any musical context. Timbre is as important to a rock group as to a classical orchestra playing on period instruments; performing by ear and from memory are as essential for handing down the un-notated music of some non-Western traditions as for a concert soloist; everyone who owns a CD can enhance their enjoyment of it by recognising the artistry and technical skills which have created it. So the book encourages self-reliance and the confidence to begin to discover for oneself music of any age, of any culture.

The qualitative aspects of music--what it sounds like, how expressively it is played--are every bit as important as quantitative matters--form, key, pitches, and note-values. George Pratt focuses on music's expressive nature, with games, experiments, and exercises to open our ears without being overburdened with terms and technicalities. Although primarily aimed at music students and their teachers in sixth-forms, universities and conservatoires, this book contributed to, and reflects, the National Curriculum in Music, while relevant to any inquisitive listener, at home or in the concert hall. Previously published by Open University Press, this new edition has been fully revised for publication by Oxford.

An interconnected web of lives in one midwestern city captures the surprising humanity of people searching for their authentic selves amid the 1990s drug crisis. Amy Taylor finds the inner-city streets around her high school vibrant and animated compared to the bland middle-class neighborhood where she lives with her career-driven mother. In these streets, she meets the people of the city, among them a wayward boy named Jonathan, a struggling drug dealer, and Paul Lewis, a documentary photographer who becomes Amy's mentor. Under his inspiration, she attempts to capture their world through the lens of her camera. From the multiple perspectives of Amy and the expansive group of people she meets, award-winning novelist Michael Henson presents a heartbreaking portrait of the effects the Reagan-initiated drug war had on the young.

Set in Appalachian Ohio amid an epidemic of prescription opiate abuse, Michael Henson's linked collection tells of a woman's search for her own peculiar kind of redemption, and brings the novel-in-stories form to new heights. Maggie Boylan is an addict, thief, liar, and hustler. But she is also a woman of deep compassion and resilience. The stories follow Maggie as she spirals through her addictive process, through the court system and treatment, and into a shaky new beginning. In these masterful stories, we rarely occupy Maggie's perspective, but instead gain a multilayered portrait of a community as we see other people's lives bump up against hers-and we witness her inserting herself into their spheres, refusing to be rebuffed. The result is a prismatic view of a community fighting to stay upright against the headwinds of a drug epidemic: always on edge, always human.