10 books like This Magical, Musical Night

This book makes a wonderful read-aloud for a music class or a library storytime. The main character, Mr. V the band director, introduces each instrument in the band. The best feature of this book? It’s funny! Kids will crack up as the young drummer keeps interrupting right before each instrument in the band is about to play. As a former clarinetist, my favorite line is, “Listening to a clarinet is like eating rich chocolate cake, bold and sweet at the same time.” Warning to parents: any reader who hasn’t yet chosen their just-right instrument will ask to after reading this book! (If your little readers love Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein or Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham and Paul O. Zelinsky, I bet they’ll love this one, too.)

This book starts with one trombone, all alone, and adds another instrument on each page until there’s a chamber group of ten. The text swirls and twirls in happy harmony with the illustrations. It’s quite a feat to describe instruments and their sounds in rhyming verse, but this flows along seamlessly. Listen to this oboe description: “Gleeful, bleating, sobbing, pleading, through its throbbing double-reeding.” In addition to introducing orchestra instruments, this book teaches counting (1-10) and terms like “duo,” “trio,” and “quartet,” so it works well for a wide age range of picture book readers. My favorite illustration is the silliest one, where the musicians have become so enthused by the music that the violinist is playing the violin on his head, and the clarinet has attached itself to the clarinetist’s nose.

Play This Book is a rhyming, rhythmic read-aloud with plenty of fun-to-say onomatopoeia. With full-spread illustrations of instruments and text that encourages readers to “play” the instruments, toddlers will be tapping on the book and hopping around to their own beat! I love the bright colors and energy of the illustrations. Toddlers who enjoy this book can explore more instruments in the board book, Hello, World! Music by Jill McDonald.

I included this picture book because it was one of my daughter’s favorites. Through Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, the book introduces orchestral concepts such as “concertmaster,” “pitch,” and “dynamics” and teaches readers about the various sections that make up an orchestra. Newer books like How to Build an Orchestra by Mary Auld and illustrated by Elisa Paganelli, also do a wonderful and comprehensive job introducing all things orchestra-related, but what my daughter loved about Welcome to the Symphony was the button panel on the side of the book. With a push of a button, she could listen to the sound of different instruments playing snippets from Beethoven’s Fifth. Pair Welcome to the Symphony with classical music pieces like Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra or Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf for additional fun identifying musical instruments!

This is a great little book for introducing younger readers to their first pieces of classical music. Although it is meant for a younger audience, there are many anecdotes that slightly older readers will also enjoy. The accompanying music is available in both a CD and an online version. The recordings are from Naxos which has an excellent music library of top-notch performances. A great value!

Making a guitar is something many woodworkers aspire to, but are often stymied by what seems to be the daunting nature of the work. Actually, it’s fairly simple; something the average woodworker can easily do. All you need is the right advice. This is the best comprehensive book on guitar making you can find. It will give you straightforward information, step by step, to help you successfully build your own guitar.

This is very nice a two-volume set, written by Trevor Gore, an accomplished guitar maker with an extensive technical background, and Gerard Gilet, a builder of fine acoustic guitars. This is required reading for people who are interested both in how to make guitars and how they work.

This comprehensive account traces the instrument makers, the instruments, and the social and scientific factors that resulted in the burgeoning European scientific instrument trade during the 17th and 18th centuries. Huge scientific advances were made during this period, and these would not have been possible without corresponding advances in the capabilities and accuracy of the available scientific instruments, and the development of new types of instruments. M. Daumas describes the scientific challenges faced by scholars, practical astronomers, surveyors, navigators, and others, and the close collaboration between them and the artisans who developed and produced the required instruments. Translated from the French by the science historian Dr. Mary Holbrook, this is a fascinating, and highly informative book.

For anyone who is performing at any level really, this book will help them enhance their performance and manage the stress that sometimes seems to appear in the performance situation. The book looks at ways to approach the music that we have decided to perform a variety of practice strategies and some particularly interesting techniques for all-around improvement taking in both the physical side of playing and the musical side. It’s a serious and quite academic book but well worth the effort.

You've read it all before. The standard trope of a rockstar genius turned slow-motion trainwreck through drug-fueled self-indulgence has become all too common in music fiction. The truth is a successful career in the music business requires lots of hard work and smart decision-making. This is especially so in today's world of rapidly shifting technological and social dynamics. Herstand, in plain language, tells it like it is, offering both a sobering assessment of the many challenges you'll face, but also practical real-world advice on how to overcome them. Even if you have no intention of becoming a musician, it's an eye-opener into how the modern business works.