Music

• learn simple exercises to improve breathing, posture and pitch
• understand what might be holding you back
• get started with a few familiar songs
• compile the soundtrack to your life so far

Music is powerful and singing is cathartic. So, in the words of Bob Marley, let's get together and feel alright.

Winner of a National Book Critics Circle award, a rollicking and unforgettable memoir by the man who helped bring the music of the blues into the mainstream

“Without Lomax it’s possible that there would have been no blues explosion, no R&B movement, no Beatles and no Stones and no Velvet Underground.” —Brian Eno

A self-described “song-hunter,” the folklorist Alan Lomax traveled the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s and ’40s, armed with primitive recording equipment and a keen love of the Delta’s music heritage. Crisscrossing the towns and hamlets where the blues began, Lomax gave voice to such greats as Leadbelly, Fred MacDowell, Muddy Waters, and many others, all of whom made their debut recordings with him.

The Land Where the Blues Began is both a fascinating recollection of a pivotal time in American music history and an intimate portrait of the struggles blues musicians faced in the Jim Crow South. The blues were an organic expression of Black humanity in a place where slavery had been outlawed but where segregation, violence, and racial inequality were still the law of the land. Lomax’s role as a liaison to white America, relating the emotion and musical virtuosity displayed by those musicians, would change American popular music forever. Through candid conversations with bluesmen and vivid, firsthand accounts of the landscape where their music was born, Lomax’s “discerning reconstructions . . . give life to a domain most of us can never know . . . one that summons us with an oddly familiar sensation of reverence and dread” (The New York Times Book Review).

Artistic expression has always been a way for oppressed peoples to speak truth to power, assert their dignity, and simply live in a world rife with injustice. The Land Where the Blues Began is an enthralling chronicle of the journey to bring this irrepressible art out of the Delta where it began and into the ears of every American.

Beethoven’s Freude theme—or “Ode to Joy”—is perhaps the most iconic melody ever created. This book sets out to show why the Freude theme has acquired this almost mythic status and what its use in the finale of the Ninth Symphony reveals about the mechanics of tonal composition.

'Impressive in its scope... will provide instruction and delight to a wide range of readers.'
Calvin Stapert, Professor of Music, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Tim Dowley traces the story of Christian music from its earliest Jewish origins, through the Renaissance, Reformation and up to the present day, discussing various liturgical traditions as well as non-liturgical sacred music. He also covers the fascinating story of hymns and sacred songs, and Christian expressions in modern jazz, folk, rock and pop.

This comprehensive book ranges widely, with specialist chapters on Christian music worldwide, and covers such varied topics as Christmas carols, the music of Handel and Bach, spirituals and the blues, medieval polyphony, Hildegard of Bingen and contemporary Christian music.

'A beautiful book with many fascinating insights.'
Sir David Willcocks CBE, MC

'For anyone with an interest in Christian culture . . . not only music enthusiasts.'
The Tablet

'Demonstrates just how rich, wide and varied has been the music and song of Christians of all kinds over the centuries.'
Irish Catholic

The final word from one of popular music's greatest critics.

In the summer of 2020, acclaimed music critic and journalist Peter Goddard began work on a new book that would take readers on a journey back through his fifty-plus years spent writing professionally about rock music and the musical styles circling it—everything from blues and jazz to country and classical. His plan was to revisit his old haunts and their habitués, scenes and figures he first wrote about starting in the mid-1960s when he became Canada’s first on-staff popular music critic, to show how ongoing revisions continually reframe first impressions.

Tragically, Goddard died in 2022 before work on the manuscript was complete. But many of the core essays—on Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Who, k.d. lang, David Bowie, Liza Minelli, The Band, Neil Diamond, and others—are here. Accompanying these new essays is a collection of some of the best writing of Goddard’s career—ranging from interviews with B. B. King, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, and Janis Joplin to reviews of classic albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Neil Young, to close readings of Leonard Cohen, Anne Murray, Led Zeppelin, and Gordon Lightfoot. Taken as a whole, One Foot on the Platform represents more than fifty years of thought and writing by one of Canada’s foremost cultural critics.

The unlikely story of a bunch of small-town Canadian punks who conquered the global music industry.

After punk found commercial success in the ’90s, with bands like Green Day, the Offspring, and Blink-182, a new wave of punk bands emerged, each embodying the DIY spirit of the movement in their own way. While Southern California remained the spiritual home of punk rock in the early 2000s, an unexpected influx of eager punks from Canada took the world by storm, changing the genre forever.

Drawing on exclusive interviews and personal stories from nine artists of the era, In Too Deep explores how Canada became the improbable birthplace of a new age of punk icons. Covering the rowdy punk rock of Gob and Sum 41, the arena-sized ambitions of Simple Plan and Marianas Trench, the reinvention of the popstar by Avril Lavigne and Fefe Dobson, and the quest to bring hardcore into the mainstream by Billy Talent, Silverstein, and Alexisonfire, In Too Deep traces the evolution of a music scene that challenged notions of who and what should be considered punk while helping to define Millennial culture as some of their generation’s first superstars.

An unflinching look at the rise of one of the most recognizable names in pop music -The Police

The Police have sold more than 50 million albums, made Rolling Stone's Greatest Artists of All Time list, and finished a triumphant world reunion tour in 2008.

Now British journalist Chris Campion draws on extensive research and new interviews to trace the inside saga of this iconic group, including the unorthodox business strategies employed by manager Miles Copeland that took them to the top and the intense rivalry that drove Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland to split at the height of their success in the 1980s.

• The first comprehensive biography on the band and its music
• Based on extensive research and new interviews with people close to the band
• Traces the group and its members from their earliest days to the present
• Includes 26 black-and-white photographs

Whether you've been a fan of The Police for decades or are discovering their music for the first time, Walking on the Moon will give you new insights into the personalities behind this unique band and their role in the rise of 80s New Wave rock.

The first full-length history of the Shangri-Las, one of the most significant—and most misunderstood—pop groups of the 1960s.

Sisters Mary and Betty Weiss, together with twins Mary Ann and Marguerite Ganser, were schoolgirls when they formed the Shangri-Las in 1963, and had a meteoric rise to fame with songs like “Leader of the Pack” and “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” Their career was cut short for reasons largely beyond their control, derailed by the machinations of Mafia-linked record executives, and heartbreak and tragedy followed. Historian Lisa MacKinney marshals an impressive array of new evidence to tell the Shangri-Las’ story, dispelling many myths and long-standing mysteries along the way.

Equally importantly, Dressed in Black radically rewrites the accepted narrative of the Shangri-Las’ place in rock history. As young women, they were permitted little agency within a male-dominated industry that viewed teenagers as fodder to be manipulated and exploited by producers, songwriters, and label owners. For decades, this has served as an excuse for critics to deny the musical input of the group members, to trivialize the Shangri-Las as a "girl group," and to assign their work a lesser rank in the canon of "authentic" rock and roll. MacKinney’s great achievement here is to foreground the Shangri-Las’ considerable abilities and musicality, and establish the centrality of their performance of their songs to the group’s underappreciated artistic achievement.

This is not to deny the critical role in the group’s success of professional songwriters (including Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry) and writer/producer George ‘Shadow’ Morton, a pioneering and eccentric figure whose self-mythologizing has generated a level of obfuscation that rivals that of the Shangri-Las themselves. MacKinney’s clear-sighted account reveals Morton in a completely new light—and as part of a complex ecosystem of musical relationships. Morton wrote and produced highly emotional material specifically for the Shangri-Las because he knew they had the skills to make his mini-operas not only believable, but enthralling. The group members, particularly Mary Weiss, channeled personal anguish into their extraordinary performances, which are central to the songs’ impact—no less so than for such classic singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Elvis Presley, who also relied on producers and songwriters for their body of work. The Shangri-Las’ impassioned delivery elicited a massive response from their audience of fellow teenagers at the time and has continued to connect profoundly with audiences ever since. MacKinney backs up these arguments with in-depth analysis of key Shangri-Las’ recordings, and makes a powerful case that their achievements warrant a far more prominent place for the Shangri-Las in the history of popular music.

Now Is the Time to Invent offers a definitive portrait of the vibrant indie-rock scene that flourished in the mid-1980s and reached its creative peak in the 1990s. More than 60 profiles and interviews, taken from the pages of the acclaimed independent music magazine Puncture and illustrated with many rare photographs, cover all the major contributors to a lastingly influential musical movement.

It’s impossible to determine a single starting point for indie rock, but here it is found in the scintillating psychodramas Kristin Hersch conjured up for Throwing Muses and the deadpan, genre-busting, proto-slacker anthems of Camper Van Beethoven, and followed through to the critical triumphs of Sleater-Kinney and Neutral Milk Hotel more than a decade later. Along the way, it takes in such pioneering artists as P.J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Bikini Kill, Nick Cave, Beck, Cat Power, Fugazi, Mekons, Pavement, Belle & Sebastian, Meat Puppets, My Bloody Valentine, Sebadoh, the Breeders, Jeff Buckley, Guided by Voices, Will Oldham, Hole, Flaming Lips, the Magnetic Fields, and many more.

Toward a Materialist Conception of Music History makes a convincing case for the relevance, appropriateness, and usefulness of historical materialism to the musicological project.

The book interrogates the history of encounters between Marxism and music studies — both within and outside of the Soviet sphere — before staging the missed encounter between classical musicology and Second International Marxism. It concludes by constructing a new framework for understanding the history of style in terms of changes in the forces and relations of musical production.

"If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art."

In this sharp, uncompromising address, he defends the composer’s duty to the text: not to entertain, not to soothe, but to translate meaning with precision and depth. Music, he argues, must obey something higher than taste—something as exacting, and as rare, as truth itself.

Musicians have access to an ever-growing array of technological tools, creating a world rich with new artistic possibilities. Yet the incursion of automation technology into creative pursuits has long sparked panic about the threat to human creativity and authenticity. Relating a 120-year history of automation in music, this book provides a timely historical demonstration of how older technologies of automation gave rise to initial unease, which was then followed by integration and exploration of their generative potentials. Journeying from the player piano at the turn of the twentieth century, through the introduction of drum machines and synthesizers, to the holographic pop stars of the twenty-first century, Alyssa Michaud shows how musical subcultures have shifted the parameters of debate around the meaning of automation and creativity. In riveting prose, Automatic Artistry directly addresses the choices we now face as we adapt to the newest wave of automated musical tools.

Poets, literary critics, and lovers of poetry often speak of the “music of poetry.” The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music gives substance to the metaphor by building on recent research in linguistics and music theory to propose a theory of the sounds of poetry conceived in musical terms. It develops a rule-based methodology for assigning normative readings to the rhythms and contours of poetic lines. Each component of the theory is compared to earlier treatments both in traditional prosody and in generative metrics and intonational phonology. The theory’s predictions correspond well to recorded readings by poets and actors. The book also advances an original hierarchical treatment of syllabic rhyme, alliteration, and assonance.

The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music is a deeply interdisciplinary project. On one hand, it offers a detailed, rigorous treatment of the perceptual organization of poetic sounds. On the other, it supports Darwin’s claim that music and language have a common ancestry in expressive vocalization. This book will engage lovers of poetry, literary scholars, musicians, and philosophers and cognitive scientists interested in the intersection of the musical and linguistic capacities.

Rosalía en 100 palabras: una biografía no oficial.

Si un abecedario sirve para designar la serie ordenada de las letras con que se representan los fonemas o sonidos distintivos de una lengua, este libro quiere ofrecer una lista de elementos con los que Rosalía da forma a su lenguaje.

Marta Salicrú, periodista musical, te llevará a través de los conceptos más icónicos utilizados por la artista ―palabras como bizcochito, despechá, motomami o tra tra― en un viaje salvaje y emocionante por el fenómeno Rosalía.

Desde su estilo único y las fusiones musicales que la caracterizan hasta su impacto en la moda y las redes sociales, cada página es una inmersión en el universo de una artista que no conoce los límites y desafía el statu quo.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Rosalía in 100 Words: An Unofficial Biography.

If an alphabet serves to designate the ordered series of letters used to represent the distinctive sounds of a language, this book aims to provide a list of elements with which Rosalía shapes her unique language.

Marta Salicrú, a music journalist, takes you through the most iconic concepts used by the artist—words like bizcochito, despechá, motomami, or tra tra—on a wild and thrilling journey through the Rosalía phenomenon.

From her distinctive style and musical fusions to her influence on fashion and social media, each page offers an immersive dive into the universe of an artist who knows no limits and challenges the statu quo.

Oasis: The Band, The Breakup, and the Unbelievable Return

In this definitive inside account of one of the most important Britpop bands, Oasis, Iain Robertson chronicles the meteoric rise, chaotic reign, painful breakup—and stunning 2024 reunion—of one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

Oasis: What's the Story? delivers a front-row seat to the triumphs, tensions, and timeless music that defined a generation. Now updated with a brand-new introduction covering the band’s shocking 2024 reunion, this essential book revisits the early struggles, the sibling warfare, and the anthems that shook the world..

From the dusty stages of Manchester to sold-out stadiums, Oasis captured raw ambition, relentless rivalry, and pure rock and roll energy like no other band. Iain Robertson, one of the few with intimate behind-the-scenes access, delivers a candid portrait of how it all happened—and how it has come full circle today..

Inside, you’ll find:

• Exclusive new coverage of the 2024 Oasis reunion—how and why the Gallagher brothers finally put the past behind them.
• An insider’s perspective on the rise of Britpop, with vivid details from the early Manchester scene to global superstardom.
• Unfiltered stories about the backstage fights, fame, fallout—and ultimate redemption of one of rock's most iconic acts.

If you liked Faith, Hope and Carnage, Surrender, or Karma, then you'll love Oasis: What's the Story?

It’s 1975. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco dies and Spain begins transitioning to a democratic state. Spaniards are faced with a titanic task: they need to design a new democratic state after an almost forty-year-old dictatorship. What should this new state look like? What would make it a “democratic” one? These and similar questions triggered many heated discussions over the next few years. It is also during this time that punk culture developed in Spain and—as one would expect—the action of questioning and challenging the new state being created became a defining characteristic of the movement.

Taking the unique case of Spanish punk as its object of study, Spanish Punk: Screaming for Democracy in a Postdictatorial State explores the political relevance of the punk phenomenon in Spain and pays special attention to its connections with contemporary social and political movements and antiestablishment political identities. Combining textual, historical, philosophical, and musicological readings, this book shows that punk represents a determinant cultural glue that kept many political movements together and the cultural axis from which many of the contemporary social movements emerged. To do so, it studies punk through music, fanzines, testimonies from various people involved in Spanish punk culture, an analysis of the ways of life derived from it, and more. This long overdue study of Spanish punk fills an important gap in punk-related scholarship as well as in Spanish cultural studies.

The Complete Marching Band Resource Manual is the definitive guide to the intricate art of directing college and high school marching bands. Supplemented with musical arrangements, warm-up exercises, and over a hundred drill charts, this manual presents both the fundamentals and the advanced techniques that are essential for successful marching band leadership. The materials in this volume cover every stage of musical direction and instruction, from selecting music and choreographing movements to improving student memorization and endurance to the creation of striking visual configurations through uniform and auxiliary units.

Now in its third edition, The Complete Marching Band Resource Manual has been thoroughly updated to reflect new standards for drill design, charting, and musical arrangement. Offering a fresh approach to the essentials of good marching band design, this comprehensive resource shows both veteran and novice band directors how to prepare students to perform seamless and sophisticated musical formations.

In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know." Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s.

In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period. A few, like the Orioles, Cardinals, and Swallows from Baltimore and the Clovers from Washington, D.C., established the popularity of vocal rhythm & blues nationally. Dozens of other well-known groups (and hundreds of unknown ones) across the country cut records and performed until about 1960. Record companies initially marketed this music as rhythm & blues; today, group harmony continues to resonate for some as "doo-wop."

Focusing in particular on Baltimore and Washington and drawing significantly from oral histories, Group Harmony details the emergence of vocal rhythm & blues groups from black urban neighborhoods. Group harmony was a source of empowerment for young singers, for it provided them with a means of expression and some aspect of control over their lives where there were limited alternatives. Through group harmony, young black males celebrated and musically confounded, when they could not overcome, complex issues of race, separatism, and assimilation during the postwar period.

Group harmony also became a significant resource for the popular music industry. Goosman interviews dozens of performers, deejays, and industry professionals to examine the entrepreneurial promise of midcentury popular music and chronicle the convergence of music, place, and business, including the business of records, radio, promotion, and song writing.

Featured in the book's account of the black urban roots of rhythm & blues are the recollections of singers from groups such as the Cardinals, Clovers, Dunbar Four, Four Bars of Rhythm, Five Blue Notes, Hi Fis, Plants, Swallows, and many others, including Jimmy McPhail, a well-known Washington vocalist; Deborah Chessler, the manager and songwriter for the original Orioles; Jesse Stone, the writer and arranger from Atlantic Records; Washington radio personality Jackson Lowe; and seminal black deejays Al ("Big Boy") Jefferson, Maurice ("Hot Rod") Hulbert, and Tex Gathings.

A fun and easy way to learn to play the piano or keyboard, with helpful instruction on classic and favorite songs.

Written by the author of the best-selling Build It! series in collaboration with an experienced piano teacher, the Play It! books teach how to play the piano or keyboard in a simple, effective way. Using color-coded notes and character icons, the books include piano sheets of popular and favorite songs as well as a primer on how to read sheet music and some basic techniques. For beginners ages 5 and up, Play It! is the perfect companion on your musical journey.

Features these classic songs and includes color labels inside the book:

1. Mary Had a Little Lamb
2. Oh When the Saints Go Marching In
3. The Itsy Bitsy Spider
4. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
5. Clock Chimes
6. Row, Row, Row Your Boat
7. Yankee Doodle Dandy
8. Skip to My Lou
9. This Land is Your Land
10. London Bridge is Falling Down
11. Are You Sleeping?
12. Old MacDonald Had a Farm
13. It’s Raining, It’s Pouring
14. For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow
15. Oh! Susanna
16. If You’re Happy and You Know It
17. Three Blind Mice
18. Baa Baa Black Sheep
19. Hickory Dickory Dock
20. The Wheels on the Bus
21. I’m a Little Teapot
22. B-I-N-G-O
23. The Muffin Man
24. Pop Goes the Weasel
25. Happy Birthday To You
26. Five Little Ducks
27. Home on the Range
28. When Johnny Comes Marching Home

A fun and easy way to learn to play the piano or keyboard, with helpful instruction on classic and favorite songs.

Written by the author of the best-selling Build It! series in collaboration with an experienced piano teacher, the Play It! books teach how to play the piano or keyboard in a simple, effective way. Using color-coded notes and character icons, the books include piano sheets of popular and favorite songs as well as a primer on how to read sheet music and some basic techniques. For beginners ages 5 and up, Play It! is the perfect companion on your musical journey.

A fun and easy way to learn to play the piano or keyboard, with helpful instruction on classic and favorite songs.

Written by the author of the best-selling Build It! series in collaboration with an experienced piano teacher, the Play It! books teach how to play the piano or keyboard in a simple, effective way. Using color-coded notes and character icons, the books include piano sheets of popular and favorite songs as well as a primer on how to read sheet music and some basic techniques. For beginners ages 5 and up, Play It! is the perfect companion on your musical journey.

Features these classical songs and includes color labels inside the book:

1. Ode to Joy
2. Lullaby
3. Spring from The Four Seasons
4. Serenade No. 2 in A Major
5. Jimbo's Lullaby
6. Largo from Symphony No. 9
7. Symphony No. 8
8. Can-Can from Orphée aux Enfers
9. Rondo from Orchestral Suite No. 2
10. Air on a G String
11. Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin
12. Cradle Song (Wiegenlied)
13. Fantaisie Impromptu
14. Song of the Toreador from Carmen
15. Die Fledermaus
16. Glockenspiel from The Magic Flute
17. Minuet in D Minor
18. Allegro from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
19. Symphony No. 5
20. Swan Lake
21. Turkish March
22. Gavotte
23. Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
24. The Blue Danube
25. Intermezzo No. 1
26. Minuet from Don Giovanni
27. La Donna è mobile
28. Sonata Pathetique
29. Over the Waves
30. Morning from Peer Gynt
31. Bagatelle in G Minor, Op. 119, No.1
32. Minuet in G (Beethoven)
33. Minuet in G (Bach)
34. William Tell Overture
35. Moonlight Sonata
36. Habanera from Carmen

A fun and easy way to learn to play the piano or keyboard, with helpful instruction on favorite jazz pieces.

Written by the author of the best-selling Build It! series in collaboration with an experienced piano teacher, the Play It! books teach young readers how to play the piano or keyboard in a simple, effective way. Using color-coded notes and character icons, the books include piano sheet music of favorite popular songs, as well as a primer on how to read sheet music and some basic techniques. With this method, you'll go from simply pressing colors on the keyboard to reading and playing music in no time! 

In Play It! Jazz and Folk Songs, learn to play songs like “The Entertainer,” “Scarborough Fair,” and more beloved pieces from the jazz and traditional song libraries. For beginners of all ages, the Play It! series is the perfect companion on your musical journey.