Reference

Complementing Rikky Rooksby's bestselling How to Write Songs on Guitar (00330574), this easy-to-use reference book will teach you how to write better songs. It analyzes important issues including writing harmonies, melodies and lyrics, and how to improve your songs by redrafting. The reference section includes sequences from a variety of diverse songs, outlining 20 songwriting moments, recommended listening for songwriters, and quotes about songwriting from professional songwriters. The enclosed CD features examples of chords, chord progressions and harmonies featured in the book, with a case history illustrating how to develop a song.

The compelling saga of how one backwater music scene could produce such disparate mega-talents as the Ventures, Jimi Hendrix, Heart, Robert Cray, Queensryche, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Nirvana, and the legendary garage stompers, the Sonics. Includes 500-plus exclusive interviews with trailblazing DJs, sound engineers, label founders, and the luminaries of Northwest rock.

The creator of the unforgettable Girl from Ipanema tenor sax tone, this son of Ukranian immigrants took his unique sound through five decades of swing, cool, bossa and beyond. From Getz's teenage gigs with Dorsey, Goodman and Stan Kenton, fame with Woody Herman, years as a masterful bandleader, and struggles with drugs and the law, this biography tells the bittersweet story of one of our most beloved jazz musicians. This is the first book to focus on Getz's musical legacy, exploring the lightness of touch, lyricism and warm glow that marked his sound. It also gives insight into his skills as a consummate improviser, capable of playing with a musical, tonal and emotional range matched by few other musicians. We'd all sound like that if we could. - John Coltrane on Stan Getz

This book examines the life and music of Steve Earle, one of the most important and controversial singer-songwriters of our time. Through in-depth interviews with family members, producers, musicians, and with Earle himself, this volume traces Steve's journey from southeast Texas to his debut No. 1 country album, Guitar Town and his descent into drug addiction, and on to his triumphant comeback with Train a-Comin' and his subsequent challenging projects with co-producer Ray Kennedy. Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Peter Rowan, and Norman Blake are among the artists who offer insights into Earle's music.

Written by one of jazz journalism's best and most knowledgeable critics, this book explores the full swing spectrum from its origins in the 1920s through its current retro resurgence. Features intriguing capsule biographies of 400 of the best musicians, from classic artists like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman to retro swingers such as the Brian Setzer Orchestra and Lavay Smith and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers, with each artist's most notable CDs reviewed and rated, plus info on film appearances, books, and hard-to-find recordings. Includes insightful essays that explore this music's cultural impact, fun photos and swing memorabilia.

In this extensively researched ode to scandal, Peter Blecha recounts the travails of musicians who have dared to air inch.unacceptable inch. topics. Filled with several centuries' worth of raunchy sex ditties, morbid murder ballads, satanic songs, paeans to intoxication and radical political anthems, this book lays the censors' stories bare, and casts a much-needed spotlight on civil liberties and artistic freedom in our post-9/11 world. Highlights the work of hundreds of controversial musicians, including: The Beatles, Ray Charles, the Dixie Chicks, Dylan, Eminem, Billie Holiday, Nirvana, Elvis, Public Enemy, Sex Pistols, Springsteen, Zappa and others. inch.Blecha tells a story of how free we aren't. It's a story every music fan needs to know. inch. - Dave Marsh

Beginning their career as a popular surf band, The Beach Boys had emerged by 1966 as America's preeminent pop group, the only act able to challenge the success of The Beatles with both mainstream listeners and the critical community. This book reconstructs their evolution to one of the best-produced groups of the '60s, and also profiles Brian Wilson, one of the most gifted songwriters, producers, and arrangers in popular music. The book's easy-to-browse, day-by-day format details their entire concert history, all known recording sessions, their broadcast history, and all records issued in the U.S. and the U.K.

Why does an electric archtop sound so different from a solidbody guitar when they have the same strings and pickups? Why does Eric Clapton use a vibrato Stratocaster with the vibrato arm removed and the mechanism blocked off with a piece of wood? Why does a strings-though-body guitar sound brighter than an instrument with the strings anchored at the bridge? The sound of an electric guitar is the sum of many parts. Every component, from the wood in the neck to the metal in the tuners and everything in between - including the amount of air in the body - affects the overall tone of an instrument. In this book, Dave Hunter looks at the development of the electric guitar since the earliest instruments in the late 1930s, and how, since then, guitar makers and players have sought to define and refine all the elements that create a guitar's tone. This book includes: analysis of the different components that make up a guitar and how each affects the sound of an instrument chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the main body types, their characteristics, and their strengths and weaknesses in-depth specifications of over 70 guitars interviews with significant people in the guitar-making world accompanying CD with examples of many of the guitar sounds described in the book. By looking at all the variables involved, this book will set you, the player, on the road to achieving that sound you've always wanted.

New technologies are revolutionizing the music business. While these changes may be smashing traditional business models, eroding CD sales, and creating havoc among the major record companies, they are also providing new opportunities for unsigned artists, independent labels, and music entrepreneurs. This book provides a legal and business roadmap as well as practical tips for people looking to: sell music online * develop an online record company * create an Internet radio station * open an online music store * use peer-to-peer networks to promote and sell music * take advantage of wireless technologies * and much more. The accompanying CD-ROM includes a two-hour seminar, additional interviews, and hundreds of active links to legal, business, and technical resources, plus links to web pages updating the book so it will never be out of date.

This book tells the true story of The Kinks, one of the greatest pop bands of all time, through the facts about their daily professional lives as they wrote songs, appeared on stage, signed deals, performed for TV and radio stations, and made records in the studio. Author Doug Hinman lays out The Kinks' history in fascinating chronological detail, revealing new stories and fresh insights into the band started by brothers Ray and Dave Davies. Included in its 352 fact-packed pages are hundreds of photos, gig locations and on-the-spot reviews, detailed examinations of every known recording session, and thorough information about all the band's major record releases. This book is the result of Hinman's 20 years of deep research. He has been afforded personal recognition by the band members for his grasp of their history and has had their help and assistance in reconstructing this uniquely detailed story. (Hinman's) research ... takes popular music scholarship to a plateau of virtually unprecedented integrity. - Johnny Rogan, author of noted books on The Kinks, The Byrds, Neil Young and others