Musicals Books

I discovered this book at my local library and after I read a few pages I knew I had to own it. I purchased it new and received it in pristine condition. The book has everything you need to know as a beginning musician and some tips for the professionals as well. Denyer covers lots of ground including artist profiles, guitar construction and repair, music theory, guitar scales and chords, the list goes on. The book is something I will keep in my music room near my gear and other favorite music books and periodicals. This is a rare find. You won't be disappointed!

I took up guitar playing back in India in the 80's and taught myself how to play using this book, then life took its course and brought me to the US and I quit playing till last month. I picked up this book again (photocopies of most sections as it was not available except in the library in my hometown) and started playing again. The book is timeless and covers scales, triads and chords systematically by building the right theoretical underpinnings allowing one to play melody and rhythm while having a solid understanding of how to compose for the guitar.

It covers tremendous ground that I have not found in any other book since encountering it in terms of playing guitar.

If you want to learn guitar from the very basics to the most advanced concepts in order to play your own music, buy this book! You will not regret it! I am buying this book today at long last!

This book is laid out in a very easy to approach format. Most items are a page or two long with tones of illustrations. You could print out most sections and they would stand on their own as a handout. I've been told this is THE book for music instructors (of which I'm not), and I couldn't agree more! Beyond that, it gives great direction to what to learn for us self educated guitar players. The book explains not only concepts but popular opinions on those concepts. It tries not to focus or narrow your options, and I think it succeeds. Awesome book with an appropriate title.

This is one of the few guitar books I've seen that is well rounded without lacking substance. It has a good amount of material covering the history of the guitar, how it is amplified, how things like materials, neck length, string action, etc, can effect tone, and playability on all sorts of axes. It even includes brief histories on some of the larger manufacturers and what to look for when buying a guitar. Likewise, it has sections dedicated to tuning and adjusting your guitar...basic information that doesn't seem readily available in many beginner books. What's nice about this, especially for the new player, is that it enlightens you as to what a guitar really is and helps you to learn your instrument, aside from your basic chords. On that note, it has great recommendations for the beginning guitarist, including which chords to learn, how to make progressions, and basic solo licks. It explains in very nice illustrated/photographed details some of the more advanced methods, including trills, hammer-ons, bends, etc. I've played guitar for many years, now, and I think this is a great book that finds focus in the right areas, and I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to know more about guitars and playing them.

I have been playing guitar for nearly 50 years. Back when I bought my first electric, there were very few choices of "quality" electrics. Gibson and Fender dominated the field, and Epiphone, Guild, and Rickenbacker were smaller players in the field. Since then, the guitar market has exploded with innumerable choices of truly fine guitars. Who plays what (and who played what) has become muddied in my mind. What was George Harrison playing in 1960? What did Keith Richards play in those first few albums? What is out there now that has the sound I like? Finding answers to these questions has been difficult, even with Wikipedia and Google to help me. I read 5 books on the Beatles and found out everything I really didn't want to know (their personal experiences but not their music making).

This book includes a lot of information that I already knew, but finding that information was not easy nor was the information authoritative, much of it coming from people's posts on forums. This beautiful and very reasonably-priced book is all about the fine guitars of the last half century and the people who played them. It is the book that musicians want, and probably would appeal less to non-musician rock fans. Why all of the attention to the instruments? Unlike pianos, flutes, and trumpets, different electric guitars sound very, very different. I can think of no other musical instrument that takes on so many different shapes, sizes, looks, forms, sounds, weights, and sounds. And those guitars can be tweaked to sound a bit different (as John Lennon did to his Epiphone Casino, sanding off the finish and applying only a protective layer of lacquer).

This is the ultimate coffee table book for me. While not as large or thick as some guitar "encyclopedias", I can pick this book up and read through the descriptions and histories again and again, and they evoke fond memories of music that has surrounded me for 5 decades. One omission that surprised me was the lack of mention of Mosrite, the guitar of the Ventures after they switched from Fender. But those guitars are barely in production now and are more likely to be collector's items, so I guess I can forgive the author on this one.

I happened across this book quite by accident but, as a budding guitarist, purchased a copy because I thought it might help me better understand the wide variety of electric guitars out there and their unique sounds. Not only did it fulfill this objective but it also provided me with hours of enjoyment. This was a real page turner. One after another, the reader gets beautiful photography and an excellent description of the best guitars we've all heard as far back as the 50's. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in guitars. Thank you, Neville. I've read a lot of books about guitars and I regard this to be one of the best. Thoroughly enjoyable!

The photography of the instruments in this book is phenomenal and better still, a lot of great Rock 'n Roll moments have been captured. The information is good-I wanted to know the differences between an ES-335, 345 and 355; it's in there, like Prego. I was impressed that the guitar that Chris Spedding played on the Dutch Robert Gordon DVD [Duesenberg] was mentioned and described. Oh, and the best thing of all; how much is this book? $75? $50? $30? Amazon.com sold it to me for less than $20[!] I have bought four of these books and given three out to friends.

Guitar Heaven: The Most Famous Guitars to Electrify Our World
I bought this book for my husband as a Christmas gift and he absolutely loves it! The pictures are terrific. I would recommend this book to anyone who is a guitar fanatic!

Very good product for the beginner guitar player. The workbook approach engages you in the note archectecture

If this ole cowboy with all the hits and kicks to the head he's gotten can learn to read music and "remember" guitar fret positions,trust me you can too !

Some old guitar books from other people who had tried the guitar, led me to the Shearer method. Many, varieties of tutorials were avoided by blind luck. Aaron Shearer, his musical credentials not withstanding, presents a systematic approach to the guitar. The Note Speller, gives the rudimentary lessons in relating the written notes to the guitar keyboard(fretboard). The succeeding lessons instruct in a clear manner from the elementary method on up to a good level of intermediate skill. By that time a professional teacher would benefit the serious student. The Shearer Guitar system accentuates the necessary patience and time to practice the rudiments.

This note speller does an extremely good job of teaching the student to read music on the treble staff, and the position of the notes on the first position of the guitar (the first four frets). The book is meant to be used in conjunction with Shearer's "Classic Guitar Technique" series, so if you are looking to learn higher positions on the fingerboard then you will find that information in volume 2.

Fantastic!

This sheet music book is almost perfect - it features guitar chords for all songs, and the piano music is not too easy and not too hard.

However, the lyrics of some songs are different to those on the CD of the original London production.

The book itself is just like a program of the show, and the first few pages have many colour pictures of the London stage production.

Awesome show, great price, wonderful music!

The play Miss Saigon alone is definitley one of the most heart felt and amazing produtions ever to be created for the stage. Having most of the songs to own in this piano/vocal book is fantastic, except I dont really like the lyrics for "Now That I've Seen Her," for I much prefer the ones Claire Moore sings on the original london cast soundtrack. Each song is unique, and there is something for pretty much every voice range in here. I am proud to own these choral selections and am so happy they were available to buy. Truly the some of the best music ever to hit broadway.

I saw Miss Saigon on Broadway, and it was a wonderful experience, the best musical i've ever seen. The music is very great, and being able to play it on the piano and sing it is simply wonderful.

Miss Saigon contains some of the most beautiful music ever to be performed on a Broadway stage. This book contains most of the music from the show, but considering the whole thing is sung, it would be impossible to contain it all at a resonable price.
The music is wonderful, and is an essential for many singers of musical theatre. Especially for mezzos.

I have not perused the section on historical instruments in depth, so none of my comments apply to it. However, the section regarding modern instruments impresses me continuously each time I open the book to look for references. I am a bass trombone player as well as a composer, and although the section on the trombone is rather brief (although accurate enough; and the listing of trombone family members, i.e. soprano, alto, tenor, tenor-bass, bass, and various contrabasses, grossly underdeveloped), Everything Else offers unparalleled information for the modern composer or arranger. Particularly useful is the citation of examples in contemporary music of instrumental prominence (where although certain composers are favored, this is perhaps done out of necessity given the slew of living composers today; and Stiller's choices of examples are superlative).
Dr. Stiller may underestimate the availability of certain instruments, however. The market for contrabassoons and contrabass trombones has increased greatly in recent years, and more slightly so for bass and tenor trumpets. As a rule, orchestral principal trombonists almost ALL own alto trombones (in alto clef, overtone series based on the Eb2 fundamental), and as aforementioned, the alto trombone is erroneously omitted from this book.
To create an inpenetrable weapon of scholarship, combine this book with Samuel Adler's "Study of Orchestration" and Kurt Stone's "Music Notation in the Twentieth Century", which is available at NPCimaging.com.

Stiller has created a fabulous reference source for the contemporary composer. He accurately covers information on almost every instrument and gives both detailed information as well as quick chart summaries. He spends a great deal of time dealing with modern and experimental techniques for many instruments, something which is not often dealt with in these kind of volumes. Its easy to use indexing system also makes it a wonderful "quick reference" source for when you might quickly need to know a piece of information like instrumental ranges. In my opinion, this is one of the best books of its kind available today.

unlike other orchestration texts, this states pretty much the facts and just the facts. very handy for impatient young composers or arrangers who just need to read about an instrument and not dig through endless examples of an instrument's usage through the ages (although that's always nice too). the information is quick and easy to find for the most part, but does not skimp in the least on detail. my only disappointment (and this is for an older edition, it may have been corrected since) in is in the slightly skimpy coverage of electronics and electric guitar while instruments like the crumhorn get comparatively massive coverage given their relative modern importance. worth every penny, and then some.

This is simply the best book of its kind I have ever seen. Each family of instruments receives an exhaustive chapter on its features amd capabilities. Impeccably accurate line drawings (with rulers showing the scale) illuminate the text in ways that no photographs could. Precise range charts include extended ranges, with a percentage estimate of how frequently the extended range can be produced, and maximum and minimum dynamics for each portion of the range. Detailed fingering charts for woodwinds are provided, including alternate trill fingerings. The book is oriented strongly to the contemporary composer. All musical examples are from contemporary or late 20th century pieces, and extended techniques receive thorough examination. If I have any complaint at all, and this is quite minor, it is that sometimes the author is rather aggressive in stating instrumental possibilities. The given maximum or minimum ranges are occasionally not universally accepted by all professional players, or the charts showing the maximum reaches for string double-stops include reaches that some players with smaller hands will refuse to execute. These are minor points. In most cases the book clearly distinguishes mainstream practice from advanced or extended practice, and personally I prefer a book that errs on the aggressive side. If you need to know how orchestral instruments work, including a wide array of percussion, look no further. The author rarely mixes opinions or dogma with facts (a rare feature for this kind of book), and when he does he clearly delineates which is which.

This book is exactly what it says it is. There are no lessons here - just a wonderful variety of excercises. They are clearly organized so that the harper or harpist can select the drills that are needed or a beginner can start at the beginning and work his or her way through.

Like the previous reviewer, I am a beginner. Harp Exercises is exactly what I was looking for: a book that would develop the skills that the lesson books touch upon in the pieces they present. This book will be useful long after I graduate from the introductory lesson books.

I'm a beginning harper, and have been picking up books for someone my level as they come my way. I saw this one and thought it might be useful. When I showed it to my teacher, she wasn't too certain about it at first--then she began looking through it. She was very impressed, thought it was a great addition to my little collection, and worth every cent. I haven't gotten very far into the book yet, but there are great exercises on intervals, changing intervals, etc. I suspect that I won't be outgrowing this one any time soon, there's so much good stuff in it.

The exercises in this book help strengthen the fingers and hands and improve agility. The expercises are good for all levels of experience. The expercises are a good way of warming up and will bring ones playing ability to a greater level of accomplishment. I highly recommend this book for ones music book library.

I bought this book for my Mom. She has been
involved with music for many years. She plays
a number of instruments and is now learning to play
the harp. This book is an asset to her and she
thinks it would be excellent for all harp students.

I'm a great Harry Potter fan and I think the soundtrack for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the best of all the Harry Potter series, along with the first one's. I bought the score right away when it came out. It is such a pleasure to discover the score of a piece of music you like and I wanted to know, to see what were the notes I heard in the music ! The music is so beautiful, so inventive, sometimes hard to play but worth the training ! A Winter's Spell doesn't appear in the soundtrack, but you can hear it in the film in the scene at Hogsmeade. My favourites ? I haven't any, they're all great !

This song book has made me feel good because I can play most of it. Double Trouble is fun to play because it also has the lyrics that you can sing with it. Hedwig's Theme is in there with more rhythm and they have Buckbeak's Flight which in my opinion is the best song in this book.

I bought this music book a few years ago, and it is (so far) the only Harry Potter music book that I have. While some of the songs are a bit difficult to play, actually hearing what the pieces sound like when a really advanced person plays them is really beautiful. The book has some difficult parts in it, with sharps and flats, but other pieces are easier to play, such as A Window the Past, and A Winters Spell, which isn't really featured in the movie and is not on the soundtrack (in the movie, it where harry knocks down the carrolers in Hogsmead), and the Harry Potter theme (called Hedwigs Theme). The book itself is on good quality paper, but has staples holding the book together instead of the normal music book binding. If you are an intermediate player, then this book will be fun, and a little challenging, but very worth the effort once you can play through the pieces.

This book is a great piano book. The song selection is great, espescially if you have the first to piano books, beacuase it only has one song repeated. My favorite song in the book is Buckbeak's Flight.

This book has tons of great pics, covers all styles and major players. Highly recommended for musicians and collectors of electric basses. It packs a wealth of info, ideas and illustrations into its modest size. A MUST for bassists!!

Jim Roberts really wrote a winner with this book. The pictures are great, but one picture in particular of a store display of three new custom color mid-fifties Precisions is worth the price of the book. Bravo.

This book is extremely entertaining and educational. I have been playing bass over 25 years, and have enjoyed it completely. Jim Roberts covers a wide range of electric bass guitar history, and also identifies some classic albums and bassists as examples of electric bass history in the making. This is also a wonderful book for beginners, who want to learn how the bass guitar changed the sound and texture of music since the 1950s. Fantastic photographs and memoribilia throughout. I highly recommend it!

New to playing bass, I was thrilled to discover this book. Roberts doesn't assume any pre-existing knowledge on the part of the reader, yet even if you've been playing rock and roll for decades, you will learn a ton and have fun in the process. If you have any interest at all in the electric bass, buy this book. It covers the history of the instrument, its manufacturers, and its most famous players, in detail. Tons of great photos. Yet, the most important feature of this book is how it puts the electric bass in its proper place in the history of rock and roll--a far more important place than you might think, prior to what you'll learn in these pages. Not to be missed!

Six years ago, I wrote my first review for Amazon, of Richard N. Frye's "Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement". Frye's work, concentrating mostly on the 10th and 11th centuries, described in detail how Turkic-speaking nomads combined with Iranian city dwellers and Arab bringers of a new religion to create a new synthesis in Islam in Central Asia, particularly in the city of Bukhara. That syncretic Islam later became most instrumental in the development of the Muslim faith in the Indian subcontinent. Levin's THE HUNDRED THOUSAND FOOLS OF GOD mainly describes the condition of music and musicians in the 1990s in the modern republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. That same Richard N. Frye provides a strong endorsement on the back cover. I too find that this volume is a worthy successor in the on-going "project" of bringing Central Asian history and culture before Western eyes. The musical world of Central Asia still involves synthesis and syncretism---between the West and tradition, between new conservatism and older tolerance, between Soviet atheism and local spirituality, between Islam and older religions which we might label shamanistic, and between so-called ethnic groups like Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Levin travelled around the region with a musical companion, Otanazar Matyakubov, who provided endless contacts and insights. Together they interviewed and listened to all the varied performers of Central Asian music, from a female pop singer to humble performers of classical styles, from healers in remote villages who used music in their rituals to performers at schmaltzy Jewish weddings in the transplanted Bukharan Jewish community in Queens, New York. Levin describes the surroundings in which he found each musician, tells of his travels in decrepit cars between ancient cities or by donkey through the dramatic mountain scenery of remotest Tajikistan. While a certain amount of detail may be of interest chiefly to fellow ethnomusicologists, those specialized observations are spaced throughout the text in such a way that the non-professional reader never feels overwhelmed. Levin provides a number of excellent photographs, maps, and most importantly, a brilliant CD which illustrates all the styles and instruments he discusses. The effect of 70 years of Soviet policies is often mentioned, and a reader can deduce the results of this assault on local culture, though I would have liked more direct comment. Moscow's insistence on creating discrete "nationalities" created virulent brands of Uzbek and Tajik (and so many other) nationalism where none had existed. It created separate, ethnic-based countries where none had ever existed. It even created "Uzbek" and "Tajik" music out of a formerly seamless Central Asian tradition. This Soviet policy ultimately resulted in the squeezing out of Bukharan Jews-prominent in the Central Asian musical world for centuries---because they were deemed insufficiently "Uzbek" by newly nationalistic authorities.

In short, this is one of the best books of ethnomusicology I have ever read. It would be of interest to anyone trying to learn more about Central Asia and must be required reading for anthropologists concerned with the area. THE HUNDRED THOUSAND FOOLS OF GOD also brings the region to life and underlines the difference between the materialistic, narrowly nationalistic present and the past in which musicians played out of devotion and love of God without trying to fit into some culture apparatchik's idea of "national music".

Mr. Levin writes about cultural survival and cultural decay in Transoxiana, as seen from the vantage point of traditional musicians. Combining his own traveler's tales with detailed but accessible musicological analysis, he examines the role of the traditional performing arts in the modern world of Uzbekistan, and the way that they have been subverted by the Soviet and successor governments. Engagingly written, without condescension towards the reader or the people of whom he writes, this book will reward readers interested in the cultural life of the region.

Mr. Levin has truly accomplished something noteworthy in this book. It is perhaps the best book from the often boring realm of ethnomusicological research that I have read in recent years. The breadth of understanding and acute cultural awareness brought out in the book is fantastic. It should find an audience among music scholars as well as the average reader, especially given the uncomplicated way Levin tells his tale. The addition of the CD to the book is truly complimentary unlike many of the other "multi-media" gimmicks so often offered to entice the buyer. This book is essential for anyone who seeks a clarity in writing about the musics of another culture.

This book is a many faceted report on the state of music in the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union, especially Uzbekistan. The author did his Ph.D. research in ethnomusicology in Tashkent on traditional court music called Shash maqam in 1977-1978. At the time, Levin was not as interested in this music as he had expected, which he later attributed to the Soviet cultural policies which extinguished the spark of vivacity from the Uzbek music. This book details many of the author's subsequent travels to Central Asia in search of traditional musicians who managed somehow to develop their unique talents within the stifling socialist milieu.

Levin provides much information about the artists, their music, and their poetry, which can all be heard on the accompanying CD. In the text itself, he rarely describes the instruments played by the musicians, referring to them merely with their local names. However, descriptions of the instruments can be found in the glossary at the end of the book, which I unfortunately didn't notice until I had finished reading. Occasionally, Levin's musicology terms get a little too thick for the general reader, but on the whole, the book is quite accessible.

The strongest aspect of the book is its description of the culture history of music in the Soviet Union. In my own brief travels to the Soviet Union, I was struck by how many people there were acquainted with classical music--how an appreciation of classical music stretched across the entire society. I never saw the dark side of this, however. In this book, Levin describes how centralized state policies governed even the field of music, changing and obliterating centuries' old traditions.

"I Want to be in the Show!" is a rare "Blue's Clues" book based directly one of the stories from the show. This is a version of "Blue's Big Musical Movie" and featuring Sidetable (Drawer)'s story. Everyone's holding a big music show. Sidetable wants to sing in the show, but she keeps getting stuck with boring jobs. She just needs a little help to speak up for herself.

This book has a bit different feel from some of the others. For one thing, the font being used a bit larger and more stylized than the normal font used in the books. Something about the overall look of the coloring feels a bit different and the story starts on the same page as the Note to Parents. None of this detracts from the story, though, which is quite enjoyable.

In the Note to Parents, it says that the book stresses empowerment and they hope it will teach kids "they can be anything they want to be." Certainly a nice lesson, and very Blue's Clues.

Any BluesClues book is wonderful..you can't go wrong. Deciding which one to buy is difficult. I bought so many for my 36 mo old daughter and like them all.

My two boys (5&2) enjoy Blues Clues books. This book teaches them not to be shy and to speak up when it is needed. It is very illustrated and colorful for all ages.

This is such a sweet story, a real lesson in how shy children can make good friends, and fulfill their dreams. The best thing about Blue's Clues is the spirit of friendship and respect among all of the characters. My daughter absolutely loves this book.