In all of the books about rock music, relatively few focus on the purely musical dimensions of the style: dimensions of harmony and melody, tonality and scale, rhythm and meter, phrase structure and form, and emotional expression. The Musical Language of Rock puts forth a new, comprehensive theoretical framework for the study of rock music by addressing each of these aspects. Eastman music theorist and cognition researcher David Temperley brings together a conventional music-analy...

Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred - with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt. This book documents Carl Wilson's ...

Teach yourself how to play piano with our easy piano lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free piano videos and audio demonstrating all examples. See and hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band. Also includes music score and piano animation for easy music learning.***"Okay, I am of a certain age [so] I decided to learn to play the Piano. You can actually play two handed within the first week! …Get ...

Teach yourself how to play harmonica with our easy harmonica lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free audio demonstrating all examples. Hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along.***"An excellent introduction to the chromatic harp. Each song is a little more complex and involves new techniques. This book is a great buy if you are serious about learning the chromatic harmonica.” - William A. Graham Jr. [Amazon]

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality has maintained remarkable historical status over several generations; it's a touchstone for the directionless, and common coin for young men and women who've felt excluded from the broader cultural economy. John Darnielle hears it through the ears of Roger Painter, a young adult locked in a southern California adolescent psychiatric center in 1985; deprived of his Walkman and hungry for comfort, he explains Black Sabbath as one might describe air to a fish...

For his 2007 critically acclaimed 33 1/3 series title, Let's Talk About Love, Carl Wilson went on a quest to find his inner Céline Dion fan and explore how we define ourselves by what we call good and bad, what we love and what we hate.At once among the most widely beloved and most reviled and lampooned pop stars of the past few decades, Céline Dion's critics call her mawkish and overblown while millions of fans around the world adore her “huge pipes” and even bigger feeli...

Even at four in the morning, the strip clubs and watering holes surrounding the Honolulu studio were still hopping. The recording engineer heard a car pull into the lot, and soon the biggest man he had ever seen walked in. When he stepped into the studio, the floated floor shifted beneath the engineer's feet. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole engulfed the engineer's hand in his and said, "Hi, bruddah."The product of that impromptu recording session, a delicate medley of "Somewhere Over the Rain...

Aja was the album that made Steely Dan a commercial force on the order of contemporaries like Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Chicago. A double-platinum, Grammy-winning bestseller, it lingered on the Billboard charts for more than a year and spawned three hit singles. Odd, then, that its creators saw it as an "ambitious, extended" work, the apotheosis of their anti-rock, anti-band, anti-glamour aesthetic. Populated by thirty-fi ve mostly jazz session players, Aja served up prewar song forms,...

In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape.Yet even if the album did cast its radical vision over the future of music, much of the record's artistic strength is actually drawn from the past. This book examines how Beefheart's incomparable opus, an album that div...

Dangerous is Michael Jackson's coming of age album. Granted, that's a bold claim to make given that many think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood-politically questioning, sexually charged-yet unable to convince a skeptical public who had, by this time, been wholly indoctrinated by a vicious media. Even though the record sold well, few understood or were willing to accept the depth and br...

The story of the Minutemen has been told before (Our Band Could Be Your Life, We Jam Econo), but this book focuses purely on their music - the punk ethic and the remarkable, enduring songs that comprise this, their greatest achievement. Including extensive interviews with Mike Watt and many others close to and inspired by the band, this is a great tribute to a classic piece of American underground music.Included are extensive interviews with Mike Watt, the band's bass play...

Teach yourself how to play guitar with our easy guitar lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free guitar videos and audio demonstrating all examples. See and hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band. Also includes music score animation for easy music learning.***"Great, and a fun way to learn. Very good well written easy to follow book […] this book would suit both young and old." - Driver [Amaz...