This e-z rhythm interpretation has a lot of info
919528
This book as a lot of good info on ecg arrhythmias. Easy to read and retain information once read. Helpful diagrams on heart rhythms.
3038716
I got this and took it home (from my local used book store) and read the whole thing last night. It *is* centered around Mickey Hart. It *is* a bit "precious" at times (African Bushmen used to take a green banana with them when going out hunting and when it was ripe they knew it was time to return ... really? In the desert where there are no bananas?) But there are essential ideas in here. How recently the modern drum kit came to be. The world of rudimental drumming, which is a lot more serious than the name sounds. How universal it is for drums to be used for spiritual reasons, people entering into trance states ... and why, unusually, this is not so much so in Western culture. Yes, he's all over the place, like a good drum solo, but it's so enjoyable you'll probably read it all in one go too.
3999331
This book is excellent and includes the so many popular jazz tunes. It is mostly vocal/piano format with some solo piano tunes such as Take Five. It is a variety ranging from medium to difficult level. Chords in right hand with 4 notes are common, many accidentals, and octaves in left hand. Some 10ths also. For level 7. Some ambitious level 5 players may be able to tackle many of the tunes though. I recommend it and I am a piano teacher 16+ years.
3944525
This DVD really worked for me.  I play much better now that I've used this DVD.

I love the way he shows you how to play different sounds with your zils.  Even better, he explains how to use these different sounds to enrich your playing.

This DVD is very easy to follow along.  I love the way Tobias explains and breaks down each rhythm.  I like the way he increases the tempo in stages.  I like the way the camera is often over his shoulder so you can see him playing from his perspective.

The two songs he teaches are fun, and they give you a chance to feel how these rhythms are used in a song, and how to transition between rhythms.

The dances are great too.  Yes, the sound isn't the best, and it's a bit dark, but the dances are great.  The camera is steady and there are no "art cuts" to distract.  My favorite part is the second song where you get to see Mardi's interpretation, then Rachel's.  This helped me see the different ways to move to these rhythms.

This is an awesome DVD for any dancer who wants to improve her zils.  Good for both beginners and those with intermediate zil skills.
2471275
Since many musical terms are used in this book it might be confusing for one who did not understand.  Worth a read!
1487462
It is very useful to a drumer who want to improve his advanced tech or feeling of groove. Trust it. Enjoy it.
792353
I think what's great about this book is that it puts a logical understanding off all the famous clues in the past as well as even some of the newly discovered clues over the course of the internet. It also gets into a "positive outlook" and reasonable explanation over freemasonry and the obsession of certain 6s (or in john's case 9 obsessions) -- It also points out how so many backmasking clues later found are truly coincidental  from this Billy Shears perspective. Only the obvious sounds that sound backwards are the ones to really be backmasked. Any other lyrics that happened to say something else in reverse they claim is coincidence even though after they heard certain lines backwards, they would record those lines in both directions just to make the vocals sound richer for either direction. But  Let it Be and Strawberry Fields are truly what they mean FORWARDS. At least according to this book which is just fiction, right? :)
3291530
I can't say enought positive things about this book/cd set.  It introduces rhythm patterns and counts in an easily understandable format.  It teaches styles applicable to all forms of guitar, including the common rhythms of jazz, country, ragae, and rock.  The CD has helped my ability to follow complex rhythm and pick patters immensely.  The CD is very user friendly.  As an added bonus, I discovered the guitar track is on the right channel, so you can turn it off and play with the drum sequence.  The ability to play with the drum tracks has helped my timing greatly and has been a great break from the metronome.  The book explains as much theory as you need in order to understand what you are doing, but no more, which I really appreciated.  Too many of the music books I have used previously either ignore theory totally or bog you down with it.  For children, I would expect a 9 or 10 year old to be able to use this program well, so long as they know the basic chords and are able to make basic changes.
I would recommend basic familiarity with chords before using this book.  It provides diagrams of the chords but immediatly begins presenting rhythm patterns, so you should be familiar with the basic fingerings.  This book was worth the money just for the alternate chord fingerings which facillitate rapid chord changes.
This is a very general book, but the company puts out several geared to specific types of music, which I hope to progress to shortly.
1710630
This can appear confusing at first because it contains so much information, but looking at it for a few minutes makes everything clear and understandable.  The guitar wheel is on one side and the piano/music theory is on the other side.  Colors help to separate the sections and make it faster to locate what you want.
186922
Perahia's explanation of his understanding of the technical aspects of the Goldbergs, in the liner notes, is exemplified amply in his playing. Unlike some commentators, he makes little of the canons occurring at every third variation, and instead emphasizes how the variations mirror the structure of the Aria itself in four groups of eight - groups of eight measures in the Aria, groups of eight variations in the piece as a whole. And he points out how the last few variations express increasing excitement until the last variation, the Quodlibet, then followed by the repose of the repeat of the Aria at the very end.
However, the point is not the technical analysis, but the playing itself. There are many, many felicities in his playing: the fairly rare but generally playful embellishments, the rock-solid fingers, the lightness of the fleet variations, the gravity of the slower variations, including the palpable grief of the last great slow variation, the onward rush at the end.
This is a great recording from a great artist.
4148794
I also have Bobby's tapes, Techniques for 1 & 2 Congas, and Techniques for 2 & 3 Congas.  Bobby loves what he does, and possesses natural teaching skills.  He communicates beautifully in both English & Spanish.  He is as scholarly about Afro-Cuban music as he is passionate about it.  In his videos, he doesn't just teach you to beat your hands on a drum.  He teaches you the history of these wonderful instruments and the beautiful culture and heritage from which the emerge.  He also teaches you about the concept of "clave", which is essential to understanding afro-cuban rhythms.  Not only that, he does it all well.
Bobby was born with a remarkable brain.  He can speak to you while playing three congas and tapping out a clave with a foot block. As if that were not enough, toss in that he flows back and forth from Spanish to English as if there were no difference at all.
What does bother me is his choice to make one bilingual tape rather than two separate tapes, one for English speakers, and one for Spanish speakers.  My reason for this is simple:  Bobby moves slowly on these tapes, especially the first two.  He explains the history, the rhythms, the claves for those rhythms, and so forth.  It goes slowly enough.  That I have to listen to every word twice becomes frustrating.  I would enjoy the tapes in either language, but the bilingual version is frustrating to me because it becomes so time consuming to listen to.  When you go back to listen again for practice, or to catch points which you may have forgotten, it just gets more frustrating.
But other than that, they are well worth the money for beginning conga players.
1799092
I found this book very helpful in understanding the Mother Goose Suite. There is a lot of analysis and thinking that is required of the reader, and perhaps this was why some people didn't rate it highly. Understanding the form structure and instrument combinations allowed me to apply some of these principles to my own compositions. I'd love to see this author deconstruct some popular film music in a similar manner.
1265351
I recently purchased this item for study of vihuela music and some repertoire. It is a nice collection of some very beautiful music.

The introduction is packed with information, quite scholarly, and helps to give some background on the instrument, its music, and methods of transcription. It is very well annotated as well, so you'll have some original source material to refer to if you wish.

The music itself presents some challenges in terms of measure and rhythm, which is also explained in the introduction- it is simply different from modern music.

What I did not like was the use of a detuned 3rd course nearly throughout the book- this makes the music an order of magnitude more difficult to play from the standpoint of a guitarist. Instead of G on the third course it is F#.  After playing through some of it in this tuning, I decided to abandon it and go back to standard guitar tuning, and have been making my own notes for fingerings, changing a position here and there. While the alternate tuning is excellent for authenticity, my personal take is that it feels awkward about 90% of the time where in standard tuning it feels awkward only about 10% of the time, maybe less. As a side note, the final pages of the book are devoted to tablature facsimiles from the original works- it is all pretty clear, though for tuning reasons mentioned above I'm not sure how much I will use them. Great to have though.

Again, editorial choices are all explained in the introductory chapters, so you can choose your own way in working through this. Ironically, were it not for these fingering difficulties, I might not be getting so deeply involved with the music and working out my own method with it, so actually that is pretty great!

I'd consider myself a low intermediate player, having made it all the way through Fredric Noad's first book a decade ago, and recently coming back to the guitar after a long hiatus. This is not a book for a beginner, but I think an intermediate player with some determination, a pencil, and some patience, will get quite a lot out of working with this book. These days with YouTube, Spotify, and such as performance references to help you with these texts, there was never a better time to get into early music!
3008253
Nice tips and trics in this one...

All you need to know about beats and dj stuff :)
1686328
I'm not an accomplished musician, but this to me has remnants of Copeland (i.e., a Chinese version of...) and also some elements of Phillip Glass (only in a few spots). It is rousing, and as nationalistically rousing music goes, I think it is fantastic. Also very interesting,
 especially in terms of thoughts about Mao's China re: American nationalism. Amazon--please make it available.
3435983
I may not be able to ever go through all of it, but there's definitely a lot to learn musically by studying what's in here. The ragtime and stride eras of music generally speaking were definitely some of my favorites.
4702774
David Schiff, who studied composition with Elliott Carter, produced a study of his mentor's music in 1983. Carter's longevity and immense productivity occasioned a second edition in 1998. In the years since, Carter has produced dozens of more pieces, but for the time being those wanting a serious introduction to Carter's mighty oeuvre will have to be content with this 1998 edition.

Schiff goes through every piece that Carter had written to date, but instead of a strictly chronological presentation, the author divides the oeuvre into eleven sections: 1) String Quartets, 2) Chamber Music for Wind Instruments, 3) Chamber Music for Piano and other Mixed Ensembles, 4) Short Instrumental Works, 5) Choral Works, 6) Songs with Piano (or Guitar), 7) Works for Solo Voices and Instruments, 8) Piano Music, 9) Ballets, 10) Concertos and 11) Symphonic Works.

Schiff's analysis of the mature works focuses mainly on two aspects of this music. One is Carter's derivation of pitches from certain chords, and an appendix contains Carter's own listing of all these chords. The other aspect is Carter's polyrhythms and "metric modulation". It is the latter that is really distinguishes Carter's music, with its dizzying interaction between parts that accompany each other but rarely meet. Besides the analysis, there's plenty of interesting facts about the contexts in which the works were written. The "Symphonia" turns out to have provoked a nasty spat between the composer and the New York Philharmonic, for example. Also, Schiff talks about Carter's taste in literature and his ideas of what poems are suitable for setting to music.

While Schiff's book demands a good knowledge of music, I must say that I don't think that Elliott Carter's music requires a knowledge of the theory behind it. With his interest in presenting a dialogue in the form of music between the various instruments, he is one of the more accessible high modernists. Certainly, one can fall in love with certain pieces at first hearing, before one has any idea what is going on beneath the surface (for me these were the Symphonia and "A Mirror on Which to Dwell", YMMV). However, with any composer there's bound to be some harder nuts to crack, and for those with a knowledge of music theory, Schiff's analysis may help you gain an appreciation for works that were formerly elusive (for me these were the String Quartet No. 3 and the Triple Duo, but again YMMV).

Incidentally, what this Amazon listing title means by "photos not included" is that this edition lacks a section in the middle with photos. I've seen the "photos included" edition at libraries, and the few photos turn out to be only things like facsimiles of blurry sketches and a letter from Igor Stravinsky to Carter. That is, minor trivia, not anything worth worryting about.