Here are 100 books that Zen Guitar fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been immersed in playing and teaching guitar and in rock culture all my life. Since graduating from The Guitar Institute of Technology in 1987, I’ve been a full-time guitar professional. So, I’m known in my hometown of Baltimore as the go to guy for rock guitar chores of all kinds. I play for companies like Johns Hopkins, Center Stage and The Baltimore Ravens. I taught Guitar at The Gilman School for thirteen years. I’ve played every venue from the biggest stadiums to the smallest clubs. My publications include fifteen guitar books internationally distributed by Alfred Publications and features in most major trade journals. Endorsements: Paul Reed Smith Guitars, Ernie Ball Strings and Fractal Audio.
This is the coolest Hendrix book ever because it is all written by Jimi himself! Peter Neal has transcribed all know statements, letters, lyrics, interviews, audio clips or quotes into chronological order and makes it read like an autobiography. The lyrics and letters are included where they belong in the timeline. I learned more about Hendrix from this very personal account than from anything else. It’s a brilliant idea and a one of a kind read!
It took just four years in the spotlight for Jimi Hendrix to become an international cultural icon. The sheer impact and originality of his music and his unique mastery of the guitar placed him for ever amongst musical giants. But what of the man behind the public image?
Modest and intensely private by nature, Jimi was shrouded in intrigue from the moment he first came into the public eye, and the mystery has only grown with time. Much has been written about him by experts, fans and critics, some of it true and some of it not. He did, however,…
I’ve been a music fan–especially pop and rock and roll–since I was a toddler, thanks to my dysfunctional family upbringing that led me to spend the bulk of my time attached to my transistor radio! Not only did I listen to rock radio stations, but I also learned about musicians, including the Beatles, thanks to magazine articles and books once I started to read at an early age–I went to my local library daily and continued to do so all the way through my school years!
Pamela Des Barre's incredible history as rock and roll’s number one famous groupie helped her create her incredible memoir! Her extremely well-written book features many super cool personal stories about her involvement with several famous musicians/rockstars that nearly all of us women who are rock fans would have loved to have been in close, loving contact with ourselves!
Pamela was definitely my biggest inspiration when it came to memoir writing. She digs my book as well, writing a complimentary comment that appears on its back cover!
Pamela Des Barres was a regular on the Sunset Strip, where she knocked on rock stars' backstage doors and immersed herself in the drugs, danger, and ecstasy of the freewheeling 1960s. Over the next 10 years she had affairs with Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon and Jim Morrison, among others. As a member of the GTO's, a girl group masterminded by Frank Zappa, she was in the thick of the most revolutionary renaissance in the history of modern popular music. Warm, witty, and sexy, this kiss-and-tell-all stands out as the perfect chronicle of one of rock 'n' roll's most…
I’ve been immersed in playing and teaching guitar and in rock culture all my life. Since graduating from The Guitar Institute of Technology in 1987, I’ve been a full-time guitar professional. So, I’m known in my hometown of Baltimore as the go to guy for rock guitar chores of all kinds. I play for companies like Johns Hopkins, Center Stage and The Baltimore Ravens. I taught Guitar at The Gilman School for thirteen years. I’ve played every venue from the biggest stadiums to the smallest clubs. My publications include fifteen guitar books internationally distributed by Alfred Publications and features in most major trade journals. Endorsements: Paul Reed Smith Guitars, Ernie Ball Strings and Fractal Audio.
The Beatles didn’t know how to read music, and typically, rock musicians don’t read and write music. So therefore it’s a challenge to us, the people who learned to play around campfires, at the beach, and in the roadhouse, just cause we wanted to. Instead of merely presenting an increasingly difficult set of examples, Oaks teaches us how to think about reading music. He’s a great guy and it’s the best book of its kind I’ve come across.
(Musicians Institute Press). Starting at the elementary level and progressing to advanced techniques, this comprehensive method is like a complete two-year guitar course in book form. It includes over 450 songs and examples, and covers: notes, rhythms, keys, positions, dynamics, syncopation, chord charts, duets, scale forms, phrasing, odd time, and much more. Designed from an MI core curriculum program.
I’m a Professor of Cultural Sociology at Edinburgh, UK, and have written extensively on contemporary culture and particularly technological mediations of popular music. I have undertaken empirical research on cultures of popular music in places like Iceland, Japan, and the UK, and I have supervised around 25 doctoral students to successful completion. My work is widely cited in the field of cultural sociology, and I am regularly interviewed by national broadcasters and the press. I’m also an amateur musician, making homespun electronic music in my bedroom and releasing it under the monikers Sponge Monkeys and Triviax.
This book will change your idea of the place and importance of synthesizers in music history. I had the privilege to be taught by Trevor Pinch as an undergraduate and have followed his work closely since. His passing in late 2021 left a massive hole in the field of Science and Technology Studies and he is sorely missed.
The book is based on primary research on the genesis and development of the Moog synthesizer, perhaps the most important instrument in electronic music history. Unlike most texts on the instruments of electronic music, which dig into the technical details of synthesis, I love the fact that this book gives you the human stories and socio-technical processes behind how an iconic synthesizer was designed, circulated, and adopted by rock musicians from Rick Wakeman to The Beatles.
There is delight in the details, such as how salesmen packed the unwieldy Moog synth into…
Though ubiquitous today, available as a single microchip and found in any electronic device requiring sound, the synthesizer when it first appeared was truly revolutionary. Something radically new--an extraordinary rarity in musical culture--it was an instrument that used a genuinely new source of sound: electronics. How this came to be--how an engineering student at Cornell and an avant-garde musician working out of a storefront in California set this revolution in motion--is the story told for the first time in Analog Days, a book that explores the invention of the synthesizer and its impact on popular culture.
I enjoy finding science in places where you might not expect it. Science really is everywhere. It's tempting to think of it as its own category of news or its own shelf in the bookstore. But science is a way of thinking about every aspect of the world, including our passions and daily lives. I love finding the spaces where these lines are blurred, and these books are such great examples of finding science in surprising places.
I enjoyed reading about Gary Marcus's journey of learning guitar because I know what it's like to try to master an instrument. I didn't know, at least not back when I was taking violin lessons, that neuroscientists have been studying what happens in our brains when we learn to play music.
Marcus is a neuroscientist, so he followed his musical progress through a scientific lens and created this entertaining and educational book about the science of music.
On the eve of his fortieth birthday, renowned cognitive scientist Gary Marcus decided to fulfil a lifelong dream and learn to play the guitar. He had tried many times before - failing miserably. This time, he decided to use the tools of his "trade" to see if he might suceed. On his quest he jams with twelve-year-olds and takes master classes with guitar gods. A groundbreaking exploration of the allure of music, Guitar Zero is also an empowering case for the mind's ability to grow throughout life.
I’ve been playing the guitar since I was ten years old. From then until now it has been my life’s focus, my friend and delight, my consolation, companion, and frustration. While I am reconciled to never being the world’s most famous guitarist, I still have a career, make a living, and, hopefully, contribute positively to the Universe. I have recorded albums of previously unheard music, performed throughout the world, and edited and published books for guitar. In spite of decades of study and practice, I find my enthusiasm undimmed and enjoy nothing more than sharing my expertise and guiding those less experienced to discover the delights of playing music.
Classical music is often seen as being unapproachable, demanding, and difficult, the domain of geniuses and prodigies not for ordinary mortals. This delightful book makes available some of the greatest guitar music ever written in a form that is accessible yet recognisable. It enables the intermediate-level guitarist to advance their abilities while playing pieces that will transfix any audience, impress friends and family and render great satisfaction to the performer.
(Guitar). This collection of 55 well-known masterpieces of classical music offers arrangements that are well suited to the guitar, while remaining as faithful as possible to the original setting. This includes widely known classical melodies through to South American tangos - music for entertainment that suits the guitar particularly well. Some historical arrangements by prominent musicians of their time such as Mertz, Coste and Tarrega are a valuable addition to this collection. This collection is a treasure trove for tuition purposes, concert performance and just for fun, with pieces presented in order of increasing difficulty.
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.
I knew that Phil Spector had a reputation for being mercurial (and that he was in prison for murder), but I never realized how off the rails he really was. I also never realized how many people he’d worked with—both as a producer and just as a guy who was trying to network his way into the business. I knew about his “girl groups,” about his work with the Beatles and some of their solo projects, and about his work with the Ramones, but I didn’t realize that he was very good friends with Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records and that he saw Berry Gordy of Motown as one of his biggest competitors. Overall, a bizarre, tragic life, but an interesting read with a lot of information about some of the big names in rock history that Spector encountered.
A stunning biography of "pure self-interest and cruelty, tempered only slightly by the great musical achievements of Mr. Spector's golden age in the early 1960s" (The New York Times).
He had a number one hit at eighteen. He was a millionaire with his own record label at twenty-two. He was, according to Tom Wolfe, “the first tycoon of teen.” Phil Spector owned pop music. From the Crystals, the Ronettes (whose lead singer, Ronnie, would become his second wife), and the Righteous Brothers to the Beatles (together and singly) and finally the seventies punk icons The Ramones, Spector produced hit after…
I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.
From the 1960s but still one of the greatest books on how being creative means trying everything, trusting no one, and listening to everybody and everything. After you read this you will know that you can be an artist, that is, if you are meant to be one.
Silence, John Cage's first book and epic masterpiece, was published in October 1961. In these lectures, scores, and writings, Cage tries, as he says, to find a way of writing that comes from ideas, is not about them, but that produces them. Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching. Fifty years later comes a beautiful new edition with a foreword by eminent music critic Kyle Gann. A landmark book in American arts and culture, Silence has been translated into more than forty languages and has…
Laurie grew up in a rural community and had the good fortune of working with kind and dedicated teachers who were both skillful pedagogues and encouraging mentors. Their passion for quality teaching and high-level musicianship instilled in Laurie the powerful relationship between teaching and artistic performance. Cornelia dreamed of playing the cello beautifully but didn’t have a real teacher until she was twenty. While the work required relearning almost everything she thought she knew, she was old enough to observe her own transformation, guided by a thoughtful and dedicated teacher, and teaching and performing became the inseparable “two sides of the same coin.”They've worked together ever since, writing, teaching, presenting, and sharing great ideas.
Neurologist Frank Wilson wrote this smart, funny, insightful book to connect his understanding of neuroscience to his own experience learning to play the piano as an adult.
While sharing his expertise about neural pathways and auditory perception, he pokes fun at himself, offers amusing anecdotes about other “experts” in various fields, writes lymmerics, and makes jokes when you least expect it: “We all know about biceps, triceps, deltoids, and ‘pecs’ but who ever heard of somebody having a knockout set of abductor digiti quinti minimi, or a breathtaking flexor pollicis brevis?”
His light touch creates an engaging and enlightening balance of science and music, and one can’t help but be encouraged by his enthusiasm and love of learning.
A neurologist and amateur musician explores the connections between neurology and music and provides an informative look into how and why people make music, how human beings hear music, and how musicians remember what they're playing
Writing about history came to me rather late in life and I suppose it’s because the past now looks more inviting than the future. But there’s more to it than that. Everything has a history; it’s a bottomless topic. I became fascinated with the history of my own geographic environment and began exploring areas that were basically in my own backyard, which led to the inception of my first book. And, after years working as a graphic artist, I decided to help the narrative along by adding illustrations. A second book soon followed, then a third, a fourth, and now I’ve just finished my fifth book.
This is an absolute must for anyone interested in almost any musical genre.
Now in its fifth edition, it takes on the arduous task of sifting through the back stories of over 1,000 of the most familiar tunes through 500 years of musical history.
A more recent, albeit still antique reference, is the story of how “Jingle Bells” came to be, and the controversy regarding where it was actually, written; the snow-covered streets of Medford, Massachusetts, or the live oak-lined thoroughfares of Savanah, Georgia.
This classic, painstakingly researched compilation of music information, newly revised and enlarged, analyzes nearly 1,000 of the world's most familiar melodies, tracing them back to their original printed sources. Here in one convenient volume are the composers, lyricists, copyright date, first lines of music, lyrics, physical condition of first editions, and other data on a tremendous range of compositions, including We Shall Overcome, Haydn's Surprise Symphony, The Well-Tempered Clavier, There's No Business Like Show Business, Silent Night, Pictures at an Exhibition, Schubert’s Ave Maria, and many more. 30 black-and-white illustrations.
