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Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives
by Tom C. OwensThis volume of 453 letters written by and to composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) provides an insight into one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. This book opens a direct window on Ives's complex personality and his creative process.
The Rock Bible
by Henry OwingsLike Moses delivering forth the Ten Commandments, Chunklet magazine presents you with The Rock Bible--the complete rules for living an authentic life of rock 'n' roll. Here are hundreds of wise and witty guidelines for Drummers: "If you're one of those drummers who sets up at the front of the stage, back the hell up. You are the goalies of rock; play your position." Singers: "When you feel like stage-diving, first make sure the people in the front like your music enough to catch you." Guitarists: "No one's looking at your guitar strap. Don't ever spend more than the cost of an average meal on something that can be replaced by a particularly hearty piece of string." Keyboardists: "There's only one person who will look more ridiculous and offensive in leather pants than the lead singer: the keyboard player." Onstage Antics: "Being wasted onstage works for only about 5 percent of bands, and yours isn't one of them." Fans: "Fans that dress like the band are just asking to be pummeled. If you want to be in the band that badly, you might as well bring your gear to the show and play along from the audience." And unholy words on much, much more.
The Mixing Engineer's Handbook (2nd edition)
by Bobby OwsinskiAppropriate for both novice and experienced recording engineers, this guide walks through the six elements of a mix--balance, panorama, frequency range, dimension, dynamics, and interest--and provides interviews with 22 professional mixers working in different genres. The second edition adds sections on gating, hypercompression, MP3 encoding, and surround sound mixing.
Music 4. 1: A Survival Guide for Making Music in the Internet Age
by Bobby OwsinskiToday's music industry is constantly changing at a dizzying pace, and this book is fully equipped to help you navigate it. Written for artists overwhelmed by the seemingly endless options of the quickly evolving Internet, this is the only book that offers a comprehensive strategy for online success. In this book, the author includes an in-depth look at the economics of streaming music, with the real information about royalties that distributors and record labels don't want you to know and that simply can't be found anywhere else. The book also looks at how revenue is generated from YouTube and other video streaming services, and it provides techniques for optimizing both videos and channels for maximum success. Also included are lists of effective tips (both high- and low-tech) and checklists with every chapter, as well as a reference list of online tools for inexpensive music and merchandise distribution, sales, marketing, and promotion. With fresh interviews from several of today's successful music industry innovators, The book reveals new and proven pathways to success in the new paradigm of the modern music world.
The Recording Engineers Handbook
by Bobby OwsinskiBobby Owsinski's The Recording Engineer's Handbook has become a music industry standard, and this fully updated fourth edition once again offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the art of audio recording. Written with special emphasis on today's technology and the evolving marketplace, The Recording Engineer's Handbook Fourth Edition includes a complete overview of recording as it's done by most musicians and producers today in their home studios. In the book's first section, you'll learn everything from how microphones work to specific techniques for recording drums, individual instruments, vocals and much more. In the second section you'll benefit from the wisdom and down-to-earth practical advice offered by a host recording professionals including all-time greats like Al Schmitt, Eddie Kramer, Frank Filipetti and many other others. <P><P>Topics covered include: An overview of recording elements, including microphones, preamps, compressors and DAWs, Recording techniques and placement guidance for just about any musical instrument or vocal, Prepping and recording drums and percussion, Basic tracking and overdub advice and strategies, and stereo and immersive audio recording techniques, Interviews with some of the world's best hit-making engineers, and much more. <P><P>Learn the art of recording with renowned author, teacher, producer and engineer Bobby Owsinski, and, in the interviews, explore the creative processes behind not only today's hits but the classic cuts we've enjoyed for years. See for yourself why The Recording Engineer’s Handbook, Fourth Edition is the book that's a standard text in college courses all over the world.
The Recording Engineer's Handbook (2nd edition)
by Bobby OwsinskiWorking as a recording engineer presents challenges from every direction of your project. From using microphones to deciding on EQ settings, choosing outboard gear to understanding how, when and why to process your signal, the seemingly never-ending choices can be very confusing. Professional Audio's bestselling author Bobby Owsinski (The Mixing Engineer's Handbook, The Mastering Engineer's Handbook) takes you into the tracking process for all manner of instruments and vocals-- providing you with the knowledge and skill to make sense of the many choices you have in any given project. From acoustic to electronic instruments, mic placement to EQ settings, everything you need to know to capture professionally recorded audio tracks is in this guide.
St. Louis Jazz: A History
by Dennis C OwsleyExplore the history of the artists who contributed to the Gateway City&’s jazz scene and the world of music.In the early twentieth century, St. Louis was a hotbed for ragtime and blues, both roots of jazz music. In 1914, Jelly Roll Morton brought his music to the area. In 1919, Louis Armstrong came to town to play on the &“floating conservatories&” that plied the Mississippi. Miles Davis, the most famous of the city&’s jazz natives, changed the course of the genre four different times throughout a world-renowned career. The Black Artists Group of the 1970s was one of the first to bring world music practices into jazz. Author Dennis C. Owsley chronicles the ways both local and national St. Louis musicians have contributed to the city and to the world of music.
Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994–2007)
by Dan OzziA raucous history of punk, emo, and hardcore’s growing pains during the commercial boom of the early 90s and mid-aughts, following eleven bands as they “sell out” and find mainstream fame, or break beneath the weight of it all <p><p> Punk rock found itself at a crossroads in the mid-90’s. After indie favorite Nirvana catapulted into the mainstream with its unexpected phenomenon, Nevermind, rebellion was suddenly en vogue. Looking to replicate the band’s success, major record labels set their sights on the underground, and began courting punk’s rising stars. But the DIY punk scene, which had long prided itself on its trademark authenticity and anti-establishment ethos, wasn’t quite ready to let their homegrown acts go without a fight. The result was a schism: those who accepted the cash flow of the majors, and those who defiantly clung to their indie cred. <p> In Sellout, seasoned music writer Dan Ozzi chronicles this embattled era in punk. Focusing on eleven prominent bands who made the jump from indie to major, Sellout charts the twists and turns of the last “gold rush” of the music industry, where some groups “sold out” and rose to surprise super stardom, while others buckled under mounting pressures. Sellout is both a gripping history of the music industry’s evolution, and a punk rock lover’s guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era, featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of modern punk’s most (in)famous bands.
The Indian Drum of the King-God and the Pakhāvaj of Nathdwara (SOAS Studies in Music)
by Paolo PacciollaThe book studies the evolution of the ancient drum mṛdaṅga into the pakhāvaj, crossing more than 2,000 years of history. While focusing on the Nathdwara school of pakhāvaj, the author joins ethnographic, historical, religious and iconographic perspectives to argue a multifaceted interpretation of the role and function of the pakhāvaj in royal courts, temples and contemporary stages. Furthermore, he offers the first analysis of the visual and narrative contents of its repertoire.
Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy: Bright Futures, Dark Pasts (Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900)
by Ian Pace Nigel McBrideThe composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is an unmistakeable presence in the British and international new music scene, both for his immeasurable generosity as prolific composer for many different types of musicians, major advocate for the works of others, and performer and conductor who has also been a driving force behind ensembles; he was also President of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1990 to 1996. His vast and enormously varied output confounds those who seek easy categorisations: once associated strongly with the ‘new complexity’, Finnissy is equally known as composer regularly engaged with many different folk musics, for working with amateur and community musicians, for a long-term engagement with sacred music, or as an advocate of Anglo-American ‘experimental’ music. Twenty years ago, a large-scale volume entitled Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy gave the first major overview of the output of any ‘complex’ composer. This new volume brings a greater plurality of perspectives and critical sensibility to bear upon an output which is almost twice as large as it was when the earlier book was published. A range of leading contributors – musicologists, composers, performers and others – each grapple with particular questions relating to Finnissy’s music, often in ways which raise questions relating more widely to new music, and provide theoretical foundations for further of study both of Finnissy and other composers.
Worship and the World to Come: Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship (Dynamics of Christian Worship)
by Glenn PackiamChristians sing because we are people of hope. Yet our hope is unlike other kinds of hope. We are not optimists; nor are we escapists. Christian hope is uniquely shaped by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and by the promise of our own future resurrection. How is that hope both expressed and experienced in contemporary worship? In this volume in the Dynamics of Christian Worship series, pastor, theologian, and songwriter Glenn Packiam explores what Christians sing about when they sing about hope and what kind of hope they experience when they worship together. Through his analysis and reflection, we find that Christian worship is crucial to both the proclamation and the formation of Christian hope.
Living from Music in Salvador: Professional Musicians and the Capital of Afro-Brazil (Music / Culture)
by Jeff PackmanLiving from Music in Salvador is an examination of music as labor, and musicians as laborers, in Salvador da Bahia, an urban state capital widely regarded as Brazil's most African city. Drawing on fieldwork that spans sixteen years, the book explores local musicians' lives and labors as members of a flexible work force in a setting that is culturally rich but economically poor. Often hidden in plain sight, these musician-workers are crucial participants in the economy of a city of nearly three million people that relies heavily on the commodification of Afro-diasporic expressive culture. Performing in clubs and restaurants, during Carnaval parades and festival celebrations, and on concert stages and recordings (at times backing marquee artists), they support themselves and their families and also serve as public representatives of Bahian culture to residents and tourists alike. Yet such audibility and the wages they earn from it are contingent on their ability to navigate complex and often contradictory industry and societal conditions that are profoundly informed by the entrenched legacies of colonization, the African slave trade, and the plantation system.
Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life
by Ruth PadelA fascinating poetic journey into the mind and heart of a musical genius, from the author of the celebrated Darwin: A Life in PoemsRuth Padel's new sequence of poems, in four movements, is a personal voyage through the life and legend of one of the world's greatest composers. She uncovers the man behind the music, charting his private thoughts and feelings through letters, diaries, sketchbooks, and the conversation books he used as his hearing declined. She gives us Beethoven as a battered four-year-old, weeping at the clavier; the young virtuoso pianist agonized by his encroaching deafness; the passionate, heartbroken lover; the clumsy eccentric making coffee with exactly sixty beans. Padel's quest takes her into the heart of Europe and back to her own musical childhood: Her great-grandfather, who studied in Leipzig with a pupil of Beethoven's, became a concert pianist before migrating to Britain; her parents met making music; and Padel grew up playing the viola, Beethoven's instrument as a child. Her book is a poet and string player's intimate connection across the centuries with an artist who, though increasingly isolated, ended even his most harrowing works on a note of hope.
Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time
by Ray Padgett“A music-snob’s dream come true . . . One of the best multi-subject music books to come down the pike in years . . . a fresh and deeply informed approach.” —VarietyA great cover only makes a song stronger. Jimi Hendrix’s version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” The Beatles rocking out with “Twist and Shout.” Aretha Franklin demanding “Respect.” Without covers, the world would have lost many unforgettable performances. This is the first book to explore the most iconic covers ever, from Elvis’s “Hound Dog” and Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help from My Friends” to the Talking Heads’ “Take Me to the River” and Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love.” Written by the founder of the website covermesongs.com, each of the nineteen chapters investigates the origins of a classic cover—and uses it as a framework to tell the larger story of how cover songs have evolved over the decades. Cover Me is packed with insight, photography, and music history. “Delves into the complicated legacy of artists performing other people’s music . . . his research adds fresh context and intriguing background to many of these songs . . . Astute ruminations on evolving cultural perceptions of the cover’s place in the music canon.” —AV Club“This engaging nostalgia trip is sure to appeal to discophiles and cultural historians.” —Library Journal
Ramones (Band Records #Volumen)
by Joe Padilla Soledad Romero MariñoLos Ramones explicados a tus hijos. La increíble historia de cuatro amigos que se convirtieron en leyendas del punk rock. Si hay una historia universal de superación esa es la de los Ramones. Y sirve y gusta a todo el mundo. Cuatro chavales de Queens lograron el éxito sin saber apenas tocar un instrumento. ¿Su secreto? El amor por la música y la cultura de serie B. Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee y Tommy Ramone son los nombres artísticos de estos cuatro «hermanos» del barrio de Forest Hills, en Queens, que montaron en 1974 su primera formación sin saber que estaban a la vanguardia musical mundial. Tras dos años de tocar en garitos de mala muerte y medio triunfar en la sala de moda neoyorquina, el CBGB, los fichó la discográfica Sire para grabar su primer álbum, el homónimo Ramones. De ahí al mítico concierto en la sala Roundhouse de Londres en julio de 1976 mediaron unos pocos meses. Podría decirse que dieron el pistoletazo mundial al punk: recibieron en el backstage a grupos que por entonces empezaban, como los Clash o los Sex Pistols. Los inicios de la banda, hasta su primera consagración, están contados en este álbum al alcance de todos los niños y mayores. Una historia de amistad y superación como nunca la has visto. Y más cool que nunca. Reseña:«Abrir el libro Ramones (ilustrado y de pequeño formato) es abrir el baúl de los recuerdos de aquellos chavales que en los 70 llevaban un característico corte de pelo. Flequillo largo que tapaba los ojos. Un peinado que marcó a una tribu: los punk.»Carmen Carbonell, Libertad Digital
Musical Performance and Reception: The Guitar in Tudor England
by Christopher PageFew now remember that the guitar was popular in England during the age of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare, and yet it was played everywhere from the royal court to the common tavern. This groundbreaking book, the first entirely devoted to the renaissance guitar in England, deploys new literary and archival material, together with depictions in contemporary art, to explore the social and musical world of the four-course guitar among courtiers, government servants and gentlemen. Christopher Page reconstructs the trade in imported guitars coming to the wharves of London, and pieces together the printed tutor for the instrument (probably of 1569) which ranks as the only method book for the guitar to survive from the sixteenth century. Two chapters discuss the remains of music for the instrument in tablature, both the instrumental repertoire and the traditions of accompanied song, which must often be assembled from scattered fragments of information.
Musical Performance and Reception: A Social and Musical History (Musical Performance and Reception)
by Christopher PageThis is the first history of the guitar during the reign of the Stuarts, a time of great political and social upheaval in England. In this engaging and original volume, Christopher Page gathers a rich array of portraits, literary works and other, previously unpublished, archival materials in order to create a comprehensive picture of the guitar from its early appearances in Jacobean records, through its heyday at the Restoration court in Whitehall, to its decline in the first decades of the eighteenth century. The book explores the passion of Charles II himself for the guitar, and that of Samuel Pepys, who commissioned the largest repertoire of guitar-accompanied song to survive from baroque Europe. Written in Page's characteristically approachable style, this volume will appeal to general readers as well as to music historians and guitar specialists.
Convent Music and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Vienna
by Janet K. PageJanet Page explores the interaction of music and piety, court and church, as seen through the relationship between the Habsburg court and Vienna's convents. For a period of some twenty-five years, encompassing the end of the reign of Emperor Leopold I and that of his elder son, Joseph I, the court's emphasis on piety and music meshed perfectly with the musical practices of Viennese convents. This mutually beneficial association disintegrated during the eighteenth century, and the changing relationship of court and convents reveals something of the complex connections among the Habsburg court, the Roman Catholic Church, and Viennese society. Identifying and discussing many musical works performed in convents, including oratorios, plays with music, feste teatrali, sepolcri, and other church music, Page reveals a golden age of convent music in Vienna and sheds light on the convents' surprising engagement with contemporary politics.
Music as a Way of Knowing
by Nick PageNick Page loves to make and share music with his students, and it's likely that you will too by the time you've finished his passionate, thought-provoking book. You will also have developed a new understanding of and appreciation for the role music can play in supporting learners. A music educator and song leader who has devoted his professional life to helping people of all ages realize that they are "capable of great miracles through the simple, yet powerful, act of singing," Nick is particularly devoted to multicultural music and works diligently to promote music of diverse cultures. Rich with ideas on how to use music in the classroom, Music as a Way of Knowing will appeal especially to classroom teachers who are not musicians, but who enjoy and learn from music and want to use it with their students. Indeed, Nick reveals the truth of the Zimbabwean adage: "If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance. " Nick provides simple instructions for writing songs, using music to support learning across the curriculum, teaching singing effectively, and finding good songs. He assures you that with time, all students can sing well. The good news is that once you've read this book, you'll have the confidence to trust yourself-and your students-to sing and learn well through the joy and power of music.
Virgil Thomson: Library of America #277
by Tim Page Virgil ThomsonAn unprecedented collection of polemical and autobiographical writings by America's greatest composer-critic. Following on the critically acclaimed 2014 edition of Virgil Thomson's collected newspaper music criticism, The Library of America and Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page now present Thomson's other literary and critical works, a body of writing that constitutes America's musical declaration of independence from the European past. This volume opens with The State of Music (1939), the book that made Thomson's name as a critic and won him his 14-year stint at the New York Herald Tribune. This no-holds-barred polemic, here presented in its revised edition of 1962, discusses the commissions, jobs, and other opportunities available to the American composer, a worker in a world of performance and broadcast institutions that, today as much as in Thomson's time, are dominated by tin-eared, non-musical patrons of the arts who are shocked by the new and suspicious of native talent. Thomson's autobiography, Virgil Thomson (1966), is more than just the story of the struggle of one such American composer, it is an intellectual, aesthetic, and personal chronicle of the twentieth century, from World War I-era Kansas City to Harvard in the age of straw boaters, from Paris in the Twenties and Thirties to Manhattan in the Forties and after. A classic American memoir, it is marked by a buoyant wit, a true gift for verbal portrait-making, and a cast of characters including Aaron Copland, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Paul Bowles, John Houseman, and Orson Welles. American Music Since 1910 (1971) is a series of incisive essays on the lives and works of Ives, Ruggles, Varèse, Copland, Cage, and others who helped define a national musical idiom. Music with Words (1989), Thomson's final book, is a distillation of a subject he knew better than perhaps any other American composer: how to set English--especially American English--to music, in opera and art song. The volume is rounded out by a judicious selection of Thomson's magazine journalism from 1957 to 1984--thirty-seven pieces, most of them previously uncollected, including many long-form review-essays written for The New York Review of Books.From the Hardcover edition.
Virgil Thomson: Music Chronicles, 1940-1954 - The Musical Scene; The Art Of Judging Music; Music Right And Left; Music Reviewed; Other Writings (Library of America Virgil Thomson Edition #1)
by Tim Page Virgil ThomsonRevisit the Golden Age of classical music in America through the witty and adventurous reviews of our greatest critic-composer: For fourteen memorable years Virgil Thomson surveyed the worlds of opera and classical music as the chief music critic for the New York Herald Tribune. An accomplished composer who knew music from the inside, Thomson communicated its pleasures and complexities to a wide readership in a hugely entertaining, authoritative style, and his daily reviews and Sunday articles set a high-water mark in American cultural journalism. Thomson collected his newspaper columns in four volumes: The Musical Scene, The Art of Judging Music, Music Right and Left, and Music Reviewed. All are gathered here, together with a generous selection of Thomson's uncollected writings. The result is a singular chronicle of a magical time when an unrivaled roster of great conductors (Koussevitzky, Toscanini, Beecham, Stokowski) and legendary performers (Horowitz, Rubinstein, Heifetz, Stern) presented new masters (Copland, Stravinsky, Britten, Bernstein) and re-introduced the classics to a rapt American audience.
Mahler and His World (The Bard Music Festival #49)
by Karen PainterFrom the composer's lifetime to the present day, Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. Poised between the Romantic tradition he radically renewed and the austere modernism whose exponents he inspired, Mahler was a consummate public persona and yet an impassioned artist who withdrew to his lakeside hut where he composed his vast symphonies and intimate song cycles. His advocates have produced countless studies of the composer's life and work. But they have focused on analysis internal to the compositions, along with their programmatic contexts. In this volume, musicologists and historians turn outward to examine the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. Peter Franklin takes up questions of gender, Talia Pecker Berio examines the composer's Jewish identity, and Thomas Peattie, Charles S. Maier, and Karen Painter consider, respectively, contemporary theories of memory, the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siècle politics, and the impinging confrontation with mass society. The private world of Gustav Mahler, in his songs and late works, is explored by leading Austrian musicologist Peter Revers and a German counterpart, Camilla Bork, and by the American Mahler expert Stephen Hefling. Mahler's symphonies challenged Europeans and Americans to experience music in new ways. Before his decision to move to the United States, the composer knew of the enthusiastic response from America's urban musical audiences. Mahler and His World reproduces reviews of these early performances for the first time, edited by Zoë Lang. The Mahler controversy that polarized Austrians and Germans also unfolds through a series of documents heretofore unavailable in English, edited by Painter and Bettina Varwig, and the terms of the debate are examined by Leon Botstein in the context of the late-twentieth-century Mahler revival.
Music Saved Them, They Say: Social Impacts of Music-Making and Learning in Kinshasa (DR Congo)
by Lukas PaironMusic Saved Them, They Say: Social Impacts of Music-Making and Learning in Kinshasa (DR Congo) explores the role music-making has played in community projects run for young people in the poverty-stricken and often violent surroundings of Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The musicians described here – former gang members and so-called "witch children" living on the streets – believe music was vital in (re)constructing their lives. Based on fieldwork carried out over the course of three-and-a-half years of research, the study synthesizes interviews, focus group sessions, and participant observation to contextualize this complicated cultural and social environment. Inspired by those who have been "saved by music", Music Saved Them, They Say seeks to understand how structured musical practice and education can influence the lives of young people in such difficult living conditions, in Kinshasa and beyond. "... a tribute to the persistence, engagement and courage of the people in these projects, who can be proud that their work is now exposed to a global audience, not just of researchers but also to practitioners around the world who could learn from and be inspired by these hitherto unknown projects." —John Sloboda, Research Professor, Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Musical Agency and the Social Listener
by Cora S. PalfyMusic as a narrative drama is an intriguing idea, which has captured explicit music theoretical attention since the nineteenth century. Investigations into narrative characters or personae has evolved into a sub-field—musical agency. In this book, Palfy contends that music has the potential to engage us in social processes and that those processes can be experienced as a social interaction with a musical agent. She explores the overlap between the psychological processes in which we participate in order to understand and engage with people, and those we engage in when we listen to music. Thinking of musical agency as a form of social process is quite different from existing theoretical frameworks for agency. It implies that we come to musical analysis by way of intuition—that our ideas are already partially formed based on our experience of the piece (and what it makes us feel or how it makes us sense it as any other) when we choose to analyze and interpret it. Palfy’s focus on social processes is a very effective way to pinpoint when and why it is that our attention is captured and engaged by musical agents.
Urban Spectacle in Republican Milan: Pubbliche feste at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Elements in Music and the City)
by Alessandra PaliddaAt the turn of the nineteenth century, Lombardy and its capital Milan lived through a season of intense social and political change, especially in the passage between Austrian Monarchy and Napoleonic republics (1796-1799, and 1800-1802). While affecting cultural production on all levels, this passage occasioned a significant change in terms of public celebration, with republican festivals and other celebratory occasions coming from revolutionary France being reframed amongst Milanese specificities. After establishing a solid historical and aesthetic background to Lombardy in this delicate period, to the revolutionary models and to the Milanese substrate, this Element aims at reconstructing and describing the main features of the French republican festivals in Milan, and their impact on the city's landscape, soundscape and self-representation. It will also conclude by offering some reflections on these events' consequences on the following century's patriotism/nationalism and cultural production, reinstating them as an interesting, albeit forgotten case study.