Teaching Music Through Composition


Book Description

This book is a full multimedia curriculum that contains over 60 Lesson Plans in 29 Units of Study, Student Assignments Sheets, Worksheets, Handouts, Audio and MIDI files to teach a wide array of musical topics, including: general/basic music theory, music appreciation and analysis, keyboarding, composing/arranging, even ear-training (aural theory) using technology.




Horror Stories


Book Description

The two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter behind the groundbreaking album Exile in Guyville traces her life and career in a genre-bending memoir in stories about the pivotal moments that haunt her. “Honest, original and absolutely remarkable.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year) When Liz Phair shook things up with her musical debut, Exile in Guyville—making her as much a cultural figure as a feminist pioneer and rock star—her raw candor, uncompromising authenticity, and deft storytelling inspired a legion of critics, songwriters, musicians, and fans alike. Now, like a Gen X Patti Smith, Liz Phair reflects on the path she has taken in these piercing essays that reveal the indelible memories that have stayed with her. For Phair, horror is in the eye of the beholder—in the often unrecognized universal experiences of daily pain, guilt, and fear that make up our humanity. Illuminating despair with hope and consolation, tempering it all with her signature wit, Horror Stories is immersive, taking readers inside the most intimate junctures of Phair’s life, from facing her own bad behavior and the repercussions of betraying her fundamental values, to watching her beloved grandmother inevitably fade, to undergoing the beauty of childbirth while being hit up for an autograph by the anesthesiologist. Horror Stories is a literary accomplishment that reads like the confessions of a friend. It gathers up all of our isolated shames and draws them out into the light, uniting us in our shared imperfection, our uncertainty and our cowardice, smashing the stigma of not being in control. But most importantly, the uncompromising precision and candor of Horror Stories transforms these deeply personal experiences into tales about each and every one of us.




The Story of Island Records


Book Description

From its beginnings bringing Jamaican music to a broader stage, Island Records has brought a global audience to the works of Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens, Steve Winwood, John Martyn, and Nick Drake among many others. Mixing cultures and influences from reggae to pop, hip hop, and punk, Island has shaken up artistic tastes and introduced new categories to mainstream music. This book, produced in collaboration with the label, moves chronologically from Island's origins in founder Chris Blackwell's passionate mission to bring Jamaican reggae to the mainstream, to the label's rise in popularity in the late 1960s and its acquisition of Traffic, Elvis Costello, U2, Roxy Music, and other era-defining acts, and finally to the new millennium and Island's continuing presence in the music industry. Included are photographs and album art from such acts as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Steve Winwood, Brian Eno, Grace Jones, Tom Waits, Eric B & Rakim, Tricky, Keane, Amy Winehouse, and many others. Heavily illustrated with a comprehensive retrospective of album covers, artist portraits, and photo shoots from the Island archive, and accompanied by essays from the founder of the company Chris Blackwell as well as ten of contemporary music's most esteemed writers, including Chris Salewicz, Jon Savage, Joe Boyd, and Richard Williams, Keep on Running: The Story of Island Records is a celebration of one of the most influential record labels of the twentieth century.




The Secret of Music


Book Description

What is this fleeting experience that sometimes hits us when we listen to music? Through several short essays adapted from lectures given at Vanderbilt University between 2008 and 2012, author Joshua McGuire answers this question while exploring what it takes to become better listeners of music. McGuire's premise is that listening to music in a fuller way shows us a fuller way to live, clarifying the way we listen to everything. Ironically, better listening involves a recognition of the absence of time experienced amidst profound silence. After all, the purpose of music is to bring us to silence. “As we listen, we become the silence in which music happens. We disappear.”




Measuring the Music: Another Look at the Contemporary Christian Music Debate


Book Description

Though the acceptance of popular culture (and in the case of music, pop music) within the Christian church is now an established fact, its very normality across the face of virtually every variety of Christian theological persuasion is telling. In a climate of extreme multi-culturalism, pluralism, and relativism satiated with the notion that music is value-neutral and worldview-free, church music has been cut off from history, tradition, theology, aesthetic norms, and ultimately the Word. The result has been a breakdown of church music standards along with a collateral weakening in other areas of life as well.




Let's Make Music


Book Description

From shaking a tambourine to strumming a ukulele to beating a drum, early readers are introduced to common musical instruments, the way they are played, and the sounds they make.




Five Hundred 45s


Book Description

The 45 record sleeve has long been viewed as a medium for design experimentation, a blank slate onto which designers could unleash their creativity and ingenuity. From the 1950s to the 1980s, before the 45 was replaced by the CD, and then in the 1990s, when grunge became the rage and 45s enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, 45 record–sleeve design combined photography, illustration, color, and typography with innovative bravado. For this reason, vintage 45 record sleeves today are sought-after collectibles by music buffs and designers alike. Compiled by well-known designers and authors Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz, Five Hundred 45s contains more than 500 examples of striking seven-inch record sleeve design across every genre of music and its great musicians—all reproduced at full size. This gorgeous book includes a foreword by Lenny Kaye, music critic and guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, as well as essays offering diverse perspectives on the subject by avid collectors, industry insiders, and designers. The book is organized into thematic chapters, with a mix of dynamic, visually inspiring pairings on every spread. A discography at the back provides complete information for each sleeve, rounding out this highly collectible volume.




Music on the Move


Book Description

A dynamic multimedia introduction to the global connections among peoples and their music




Never Play Music Right Next to the Zoo


Book Description

A lively and lyrical picture book jaunt from actor and author John Lithgow! Oh, children! Remember! Whatever you may do, Never play music right next to the zoo. They’ll burst from their cages, each beast and each bird, Desperate to play all the music they’ve heard. A concert gets out of hand when the animals at the neighboring zoo storm the stage and play the instruments themselves in this hilarious picture book based on one of John Lithgow’s best-loved tunes.




Look, Look!


Book Description

Striking and stylish, Look Look! is the ideal first board book for babies just beginning to look and learn and a perfect gift for little hands. Look, look! Children run, fish swim, stars shine . . . all for baby's eyes to see. This sturdy board book, full of high-contrast black-and-white cut-paper art perfect for staring at, is just the thing for the eyes of the youngest babies. A few words in curving red type on each spread describe the scenes—a car races, a cat stretches, flowers bloom—and extend the book's age appeal so that it will be fascinating to older babies, too.