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All You Need to Know About the Music Business.
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I’ve been singing since before I could speak, and I found myself drawn to music even though there were no musicians in my family. From church choir to the SF Boys Chorus, through every choir and musical I could join, then onto the New England Conservatory of Music and the Tufts Beelzebubs, I hungrily digested every bit of music knowledge I could find, with a deep desire to become a musician upon graduation. These books are the best I have come across in more than 50 years, and I hope you’ll find great knowledge and insight in their pages.
I wanted to learn how to write melodies and countermelodies from the best, and Fux is the legend who taught the greats. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven all carefully studied these sage lessons.
Even though it was written in 1725, the book is enormously approachable, written in a series of conversations between a teacher and student. And yes, you don’t have to read it in Latin; it’s been translated into modern English.
The most celebrated book on counterpoint is Fux's great theoretical work Gradus ad Parnassum. Since its appearance in 1725, it has been used by and has directly influenced the work of many of the greatest composers. J.S. Bach held it in high esteem, Leopold Mozart trained his famous son from its pages, Haydn worked out every lesson with meticulous care, and Beethoven condensed it into an abstract for ready reference. An impressive list of nineteenth-century composers subscribed to its second edition, and in more recent times Paul Hindemith said, "Perhaps the craft of composition would really have fallen into decline…
I’ve been singing since before I could speak, and I found myself drawn to music even though there were no musicians in my family. From church choir to the SF Boys Chorus, through every choir and musical I could join, then onto the New England Conservatory of Music and the Tufts Beelzebubs, I hungrily digested every bit of music knowledge I could find, with a deep desire to become a musician upon graduation. These books are the best I have come across in more than 50 years, and I hope you’ll find great knowledge and insight in their pages.
After learning counterpoint from the greatest, why not learn harmony from the genius who took it so far it unraveled? Before diving headfirst into atonality (a mistake), Schoenberg was a master of Harmony (with a capital H!), and this book is filled with nuggets of wisdom that I gobbled up hungrily, albeit in small bites because it’s so dense and profound.
There is a new critical foreword by Walter Frisch, H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University, that expands this centennial edition. Frisch puts Schoenberg's masterpiece into historical and ideological context, delineating the connections between music, theory, art, science, and architecture in turn-of-the century Austro-German culture.
I’ve been singing since before I could speak, and I found myself drawn to music even though there were no musicians in my family. From church choir to the SF Boys Chorus, through every choir and musical I could join, then onto the New England Conservatory of Music and the Tufts Beelzebubs, I hungrily digested every bit of music knowledge I could find, with a deep desire to become a musician upon graduation. These books are the best I have come across in more than 50 years, and I hope you’ll find great knowledge and insight in their pages.
After filling my head with theories and practices, it was time for me to break everything down, which this book does brilliantly, and start writing my own melodies and harmonies.
Designed almost like a workbook, these very thoughtful and insightful steps helped me understand the fundamental process of writing. They started with exercises such as creating a simple five-note melody and built until I was crafting entire songs.
Aimed at those who have some knowledge of music but not formal training in composition, this concise introduction to composing starts right in with a brief composition exercise, then proceeds step by step through a series of increasingly complex and challenging problems, gradually expanding the student's musical grammar. "This is a wonderful book for anyone who is developing improvising skills or who would like a fun way to explore music."--Jim Stockford, Co-Evolution Quarterly
I’ve been singing since before I could speak, and I found myself drawn to music even though there were no musicians in my family. From church choir to the SF Boys Chorus, through every choir and musical I could join, then onto the New England Conservatory of Music and the Tufts Beelzebubs, I hungrily digested every bit of music knowledge I could find, with a deep desire to become a musician upon graduation. These books are the best I have come across in more than 50 years, and I hope you’ll find great knowledge and insight in their pages.
I found that once my brain was filled with enough information, I didn’t need more theories. I needed to dive headfirst into the greatest songs ever written and learn from them. A fake book doesn’t have any arrangements; it’s just the melody and chords, but that’s what a song is at its core. Along with recordings, I had everything I needed, and so will you. Feel free to swap in the Ultimate Jazz Fake Book or a classical fake book if you prefer.
(Fake Book). One of the bestselling fake books of all time has just been updated to include an even better assortment of 1001 essential songs from all genres that every musician should have in their library! Includes the melody lines, lyrics, and chords for: ABC * Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive * After the Love Has Gone * Aguas De Marco (Waters of March) * Ain't No Mountain High Enough * Another Brick in the Wall * Another One Bites the Dust * We Will Rock You * Autumn Leaves * Baby, It's Cold Outside * Begin the Beguine * Big Yellow…
I’m a historian of the senses. When I first traveled to the United States, I was fascinated and overwhelmed by the smell and sound of the streets entirely different from my hometown in Japan. Since then, every time I go abroad, I enjoy various sensory experiences in each country. The first thing I always notice is the smell of the airport which is different from country to country. We all have the senses, but we sense things differently—and these differences are cultural. I wondered if they are also historical. That was the beginning of my inquiry into how our sensory experience has been constructed and changed over time.
Why do certain tunes become popular and others fail? What is music that sells? In Selling Sounds, Suisman explains how the music industry has shaped the culture of listening to music and how they capitalized on it, creating an entirely new music culture in the early-twentieth-century United States. This emergence of the music industry and culture involved not just the creation of novel sounds by a genius musician, but rather commercial, technological, and cultural changes, which are still with us today.
From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman's "Selling Sounds" explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today's vast industry, with new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to coast. "Selling Sounds"…
I spent 34 years writing for daily papers, most of them at the News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. I’ve also freelanced for numerous magazines, primarily about music, while hosting a podcast and writing the occasional book. Through it all I’ve had a particular fascination for the music business and its peculiar ways, especially record companies. The industry’s darker side was the subject of my first book way back in 2000, the novel Off The Record, which was a notebook dump of thinly fictionalized war stories I’d accumulated over the years. The record business is the subject of my latest book, too, although it’s a much more positive story.
A century ago, the record industry sent representatives all over the country to do field recordings of vernacular artists playing folk, blues, and early country for “hillbilly” and “race” records (the sort that Rounder would start putting out in the 1970s).
One of these scouts was Ralph Peer from the Victor Talking Machine Company, for which he oversaw 1927’s legendary “Bristol Sessions.” It was the first time that Hall of Fame titans the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers recorded, generally cited as the beginning of the country music industry.
As explained in Barry Mazor’s excellent biography, Peer went on to become one of the giants of the recording and publishing industry, laying the groundwork that pretty much every record label including Rounder has followed since.
This is the first biography of Ralph Peer, the revolutionary A&R man and music publisher who pioneered the recording, marketing, and publishing of blues, jazz, country, gospel, and Latin music, and this book book tracks his role in such breakthrough events as the recording of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” the first country recording sessions with Fiddlin’ John Carson, his discovery of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, the popularizing of Latin American music during World War II, and the postwar transformation of music on the airwaves that set the stage for the dominance of R&B,…
As an author and educator, my work centers on the history, business, and art of the music industry and film industry. I don’t think my fellow historians use musical evidence enough as a primary document that reveals much about the society and time period one is writing about—just as much as the usual primary and secondary documents historians use. I try to ensure my books are entertaining as well as rigorously researched. I’m also a songwriter, with many years in the music biz, and have done much work in radio, especially crafting music shows. I’m always discovering amazing stuff from various eras, and it’s not much fun if you don’t share it, which is part of why I’m on Twitter.
The story of how Warner Bros Records, perhaps the best, most profitable yet artist-friendly record label in the 1970s and 1980s became heavily damaged when it was bought out in the 1990s and put under corporate auspices and expectations. Goodman communicates the financial details in a clear and accessible way, as well as the music executives’ singular personalities. Also offers a close-up view of how the corporate execs, especially with their short-term focus on quarterly results, failed to deal with the challenges of Napster and downloads at the turn of the century. An insightful view of the changing components of the music business in our time.
In 1999, when Napster made music available free online, the music industry found itself in a fight for its life. A decade later, the most important and misunderstood story-and the one with the greatest implications for both music lovers and media companies-is how the music industry has failed to remake itself. In Fortune's Fool, Fred Goodman, the author of The Mansion on the Hill, shows how this happened by presenting the singular history of Edgar M. Bronfman Jr., the controversial heir to Seagram's, who, after dismantling his family's empire and fortune, made a high-stakes gamble to remake both the music…
Music is a major passion of mine. I’m highly involved in making and promoting independent music both locally and internationally via social media. The primary focus of all my endeavors is promoting a do-it-yourself ethos. Whenever I work with musicians, I’m always fascinated by how their creativity allows them to do a lot with a little. Hence, I suppose, the story of Frankie Lumlit. It’s a story about falling in love with music and finding a way to make it even when the world says no.
Phil Ramone has been involved in producing records for some of the biggest acts in music, including Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Paul Simon. Ostensibly, his book is about record production, but really it’s about people. Yes, Ramone worked with some big names over the course of his long career, but at the end of the day (as he emphasizes throughout the book), they’re all human beings, and while some degree of technical expertise is necessary when it comes to making music, what really matters is knowing how to talk to people. At the end of the day, making music is all about making human connections.
Sinatra. Streisand. Dylan. Pavarotti. McCartney. Sting. Madonna. What do these musicians have in common besides their super-stardom? They have all worked with legendary music producer Phil Ramone.
For almost five decades, Phil Ramone has been a force in the music industry. He has produced records and collaborated with almost every major talent in the business. There is a craft to making records, and Phil has spent his life mastering it. For the first time ever, he shares the secrets of his trade.
Making Records is a fascinating look "behind the glass" of a recording studio. From Phil's exhilarating early days…
Richard Niles was born in Hollywood but grew up in London where his 50-year professional career as a composer, arranger, record producer led to work with some of the most acclaimed artists of our time, including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, James Brown, Tina Turner, Cher and jazz icon Pat Metheny. He has worked on 20 Gold and 28 Platinum records. He has published many books on music including The Pat Metheny Interviews, The Invisible Artist, From Dreaming to Gigging, Piano Grooves, Songwriting – The 11-Point Plan, Adventures in Arranging, Adventures in Jazz Composition, What is Melody?, and How to be an Employable Musician. Dr. Niles' PhD is from Brunel University and he has lectured internationally.
One of the most legendary producers in music history, Visconti enabled the talent and genius of ground-breaking artists such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, T Rex, Thin Lizzy, Wings, and U2.
This is an insider’s view from a brilliant musician and arranger, an intimate view from a man whose talent earned the trust of the talented. The book is filled with fascinating personal tales of his work, and photos from his private collection.
A name synonymous with ground-breaking music, Tony Visconti has worked with the most dynamic and influential names in pop, from T.Rex and Iggy Pop to David Bowie and U2. This is the compelling life story of the man who helped shape music history, and gives a unique, first-hand insight into life in London during the late 1960s and '70s.
This memoir takes you on a roller-coaster journey through the glory days of pop music, when men wore sequins and pop could truly rock. Featuring behind-the-scenes stories of big names such as Bowie, Visconti's unique access to the hottest talent, both…
I’m a used-to-be, going-to-be pianist, like Sarah, the protagonist in my book. Even though I didn’t take to the concert stage after studying music, I have integrated music throughout my career as a culture journalist and now as a novelist. I interviewed young bands as a radio host, presented German pop music as a TV host, spoke with A-level conductors as an online journalist, and have written two books about musicians who’ve had to rethink their life paths. Now as mom to three young children, including twins, I am known to sing either Schumann’s Dichterliebe or The Itsy Bitsy Spider too loudly during bathtime.
Like Sarah in my book (and me at one point, too), the mysterious German woman in the pea-green coat who faints in front of an eclectic London music shop has a broken relationship with music. Ironically, she’s good at fixing things and begins an awkward friendship with the shop’s owner Frank, who has a magical ability to match music with people. With its wonderfully flawed characters, this book is a tender tale of healing—both from music and with music—and a celebration of all musical genres.
BBC Radio 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME from 17-28 July. From the author of the world-wide bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a new novel about learning how to listen and how to feel; and about second chances and choosing to be brave despite the odds. Because in the end, music can save us all ... 1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk - as long as it's vinyl he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need. Then into his life…
