The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar


Book Description

2004 Silver Award Winner for Best Instructional Materials by Acoustic Guitar Magazine.Correct Practice is what all good players do, whether they know they are doing it or not! That's how they get to be good players. Whether you are a beginner or a player with the usual problems, here is your Foundation book, "The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar!"- for ALL styles and ALL levels. "The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar" is composed of three elements:Understandings: Concepts which you must understand in order to begin to practice effectivelyTools: Practice Approaches to be used to solve problems in playing. These approaches are based on certain key Understandings, such as Muscle Memory and Sympathetic Tension, as well as Attention and Awareness.Exercises: Specific routines to be done during practice, that will build technique, (playing ability) in a step by step fashion, each step building on the previous one, and preparing for the next.




Complete Warm-Up for Classical Guitar


Book Description

This book contains short and concise exercises for use in a warm-up before practice or performance, and for general technical advancement. The book is divided into four sections: I Arpeggios, II Scales, III Tremolo, and IV Slurs. Each section contains a description of the exercises and general instructions on how to play them. The exercises are intended for guitarists who are looking for a simple warm-up that does not require learning many complicated etudes, exercises or routines. In this book, only one etude is used for a variety of arpeggio and tremolo patterns. The scale warm-ups are based on a two-octave, one-position scale that is shifted up and down the fretboard, and a simple one-position chromatic scale. The pull-off and hammer-on slurs are combined into one exercise to save time. This same routine, when practiced with the metronome gradually increasing the tempo, can also double for technical work. With the exception of one chromatic scale exercise, the rest are on closed strings. Besides being able to move the scale up and down the fretboard, the first finger can be barred. This will increase the left hand difficulty and improve the left hand position and strength.There is close to an hour's worth of material if all the exercises are played with all of their variations at different tempos. Not everything needs to be played everyday, so the warm-up session can be as long as desired or as short as time allows.







This is Your Brain on Music


Book Description

From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review




Blues Guitar For Dummies


Book Description

Do you wish you could play your favorite blues music on guitar? Even if you don’t read music, it’s not difficult with Blues Guitar for Dummies. With this hands-on guide, you’ll pick up the fundamentals instantly and start jamming like your favorite blues artists! Blues Guitar for Dummies covers all aspects of blues guitar, showing you how to play scales, chords, progressions, riffs, solos, and more! It’s packed with musical examples, chords charts, and photos that let you explore the genre and play the songs of the great blues musicians. This accessible guide will give you the skills you need to: Choose the right guitar, equipment, and strings Hold, tune, and get situated with your guitar Play barre chords and strum to the rhythm Recognize the structure of a blues song Tackle musical riffs Master melodies and solos Make your guitar sing, cry, and wail Jam to any type of blues In addition to this must-have book, a bonus CD is included so that you can listen to famous songs, practice your riffs and chords, and develop your style as a blues musician. It also features a quick guide to musical notation and suggestions on albums, artists, and guitars for further enjoyment. With Blues Guitar for Dummies, you can re-create the masterpieces of the blues legend without the expensive lessons!




The Talent Code


Book Description

What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism. Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything. • Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice. • Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development. • Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students. These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished. Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.




200 Science Investigations for Young Students


Book Description

This book enables teachers to develop a complete range of basic investigations for science with students aged five to 11 years. It demonstrates how children can use hands-on activities to consolidate and extend their knowledge and understanding. Investigations are presented in a generic form, so that teachers can work through them and adapt them to meet the particular needs of their own classes. The presentation of activities ranges from highly-structured sequences of instructions and questions (with answers!), to more general discussions, depending on the approach needed and the likely variations in equipment and materials available. Each activity is aimed to help any teacher carry out significant scientific investigations with their class, and where necessary, to learn alongside them. - Almost every investigation and activity has been tested by the author. - Investigations use readily-available, non-specialist or recycled materials. The context of this book is children′s need to learn through first-hand experience of the world around them. This book is an essential resource for teachers planning an effective science programme, or for student teachers needing to broaden their scientific knowledge and understanding. 200 Science Investigations for Young Students is the companion volume of activities which demonstrate the theories in Martin Wenham′s Understanding Primary Science. The content has been guided by, but not limited to, The National Curriculum 2000 and the Initial Teacher Training Curriculum for Primary Science, issued by the Teacher Training Agency.




Melodic Banjo


Book Description

Tony Trischka presents his groundbreaking guide to the melodic (chromatic) Banjo style, made famous by the great Bill Keith. The technique allows the Banjo player to create complex note-for-note renditions of Bluegrass fiddle tunes, as well as ornamenting solos with melodic fragments and motives. Along with a full step-by-step guide to developing the skills of the melodic style, this book also featuresBill Keith's personal explanation of how he developed his formidable technique, in his own words and music.37 tunes in tablature, including a section of fiddle tunes.Interviews with the stars of te melodic style including Bobby Thompson, Eric Weissberg, Ben Eldridge and Alan Munde.




Guitar Exercises For Dummies


Book Description

A guitar-playing practice guide with hundreds of warm-up and technique-building exercises If you already play some guitar but need some practice, you're in the right place. Guitar Exercises For Dummies is a friendly guide that provides just enough need-to-know information about practicing scales, chords, and arpeggios in the context of specific skills and techniques to help you maximize its 400+ exercises and improve your guitar playing. (If you need instruction on topics like buying or tuning a guitar and playing basic chords, check out Guitar For Dummies.) This practical book starts off with warm-up exercises (on and off-instrument) and then logically transitions to scales, scale sequences, arpeggios, arpeggio sequences, and chords, with a focus on building strength and consistency as well as refining technique. Each section helps you to practice correct hand and body posture and experience variations, such as fingering options and hand positions, and then ends with a brief musical piece for you to try. You can also practice incorporating other facets of musical performance in your exercises, such as: Tempo Time signature Phrasing Dynamics The book wraps up with tips to help you maximize your practice time (like setting goals for each session), ways to improve your musicianship (such as studying other performers’ body language), and an appendix that explains the accompanying website (where you can find audio tracks and additional information). Grab your guitar, grab a copy of Guitar Exercises For Dummies, and start perfecting your finger picking today. P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you're probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Guitar Exercises For Dummies (9780470387665). The book you see here shouldn't be considered a new or updated product. But if you're in the mood to learn something new, check out some of our other books. We're always writing about new topics!




Language, Music, and the Brain


Book Description

A presentation of music and language within an integrative, embodied perspective of brain mechanisms for action, emotion, and social coordination. This book explores the relationships between language, music, and the brain by pursuing four key themes and the crosstalk among them: song and dance as a bridge between music and language; multiple levels of structure from brain to behavior to culture; the semantics of internal and external worlds and the role of emotion; and the evolution and development of language. The book offers specially commissioned expositions of current research accessible both to experts across disciplines and to non-experts. These chapters provide the background for reports by groups of specialists that chart current controversies and future directions of research on each theme. The book looks beyond mere auditory experience, probing the embodiment that links speech to gesture and music to dance. The study of the brains of monkeys and songbirds illuminates hypotheses on the evolution of brain mechanisms that support music and language, while the study of infants calibrates the developmental timetable of their capacities. The result is a unique book that will interest any reader seeking to learn more about language or music and will appeal especially to readers intrigued by the relationships of language and music with each other and with the brain. Contributors Francisco Aboitiz, Michael A. Arbib, Annabel J. Cohen, Ian Cross, Peter Ford Dominey, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Leonardo Fogassi, Jonathan Fritz, Thomas Fritz, Peter Hagoort, John Halle, Henkjan Honing, Atsushi Iriki, Petr Janata, Erich Jarvis, Stefan Koelsch, Gina Kuperberg, D. Robert Ladd, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen C. Levinson, Jerome Lewis, Katja Liebal, Jônatas Manzolli, Bjorn Merker, Lawrence M. Parsons, Aniruddh D. Patel, Isabelle Peretz, David Poeppel, Josef P. Rauschecker, Nikki Rickard, Klaus Scherer, Gottfried Schlaug, Uwe Seifert, Mark Steedman, Dietrich Stout, Francesca Stregapede, Sharon Thompson-Schill, Laurel Trainor, Sandra E. Trehub, Paul Verschure