Musik

A guide to advances in microphone technology, application and technique. It features: information on microphone arrays and wireless microphones; material on digital models; developments in surround; and, advice on studio set up, recording and mic selection.

The life story of the outstanding jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin sheds light on South African jazz history, women in jazz, and American music as a transnational art form.

A naturalistic philosophical theory of musical representation that argues that important varieties of experience afforded by Western tonal art music since 1650 arise through the feeling of tone, the sense of movement in musical space, cognition, emotional arousal, and the engagement, by way of specific emotional responses, of deeply rooted human ideals.

Hagar, one of rock music's most successful and notorious singers, tells the story of his life in music--from his raucous solo career to his to his decade-long journey as lead singer for Van Halen and everything in between.

Shows how, from the mid eighteenth century onward, sublime feeling is, instead, constantly rearticulated in a complex interaction with musicality. This book rewrites musically the history and philosophy of the sublime. It presents a sublime of matter, rather than form-performative rather than representational.

One autumn evening, not long after ending a stint as a pop music critic, Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites. There, he fell deeply in love with the music. Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, this title unravels three centuries of mystery, intrigue, history, politics, and passion.

The autobiography of a legendary swing dancer

Offers a comprehensive history of stage musicals from the earliest accounts of the ancient Greeks and Romans, for whom songs were common elements in staging, to Jacques Offenbach in Paris during the 1840s, to Gilbert and Sullivan in the UK, to the rise of music halls and vaudeville traditions in America, and eventually to 'Broadway's Golden Age'.

The final word on the world's greatest rock band, Led Zeppelin.

Madonna is the biggest female pop star in the world yet there is no serious biography of her, and no biography at all by a woman. It will take an in-depth look at how - and, more to the point, why - Madonna has reinvented herself through her twenties, thirties, forties and will no doubt do so again in her fifties.

Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, this book identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world. Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved, it demonstrates how it gives tangibility to the values that underpin different communities.

This biography (first published in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach's death) presents a picture of the composer that demonstrates the intimate connection between Bach's life and his music, showing how the composer's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as a musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher.

Takes up the story of bands and their development from the end of the WWII to the start of the new millennium. Considering both local and regional contests and larger-scale national events, this title investigates the impact of the radio, television, and commercial recording on the brass band industry, and what the future holds for the genre.

This absorbing and award-winning biography tells the story of the tragedies and triumphs of Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896)-at once artist, composer, editor, teacher, wife, and mother of eight children.

Shortlisted for the NME Best Music Book Award 2018THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'The definitive book on Bowie' The Times Dylan Jones's engrossing, magisterial biography of David Bowie is unlike any Bowie story ever written.

Disco emerged from the fall-out of the Black Power Movement and an almost exclusively gay scene in a blaze of poppers, strobe lights, tight trousers, hysterical diva vocals and synthesized beats in the late sixties.

The essential biography of the Velvet Underground singer and New York legend

'You will not find a more devoted, thorough, loving and surprising book on the life of Leonard Bernstein - the most extraordinary man of extraordinary talents. Read it.' Lauren Bacall''Humphrey Burton has written a very detailed and candid account of his friend . . . The mass of material is superbly handled . . So much intelligence .

Opening with David Mancuso's seminal "Love Saves the Day" Valentine's party in February 1970, this title tells the definitive story of disco - from its murky subterranean roots in NoHo and Hell's Kitchen to its gaudy blossoming in midtown Manhattan to the out-of-town networks that emerged in the suburbs and alternative urban hotspots.

Bernard Herrmann is a music composer who in over 40 scores enriched the work of directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese. He scored for "Fahrenheit 451", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and "Psycho". This title is his biography exploring the inter-relationships between his music and his personal life.

Where did musical minimalism come from-and what does it mean? In this significant revisionist account of minimalist music, Robert Fink connects repetitive music to the postwar evolution of an American mass consumer society. Abandoning the ingrained formalism of minimalist aesthetics, Repeating Ourselves considers the cultural significance of American repetitive music exemplified by composers such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. Fink juxtaposes repetitive minimal music with 1970s disco; assesses it in relation to the selling structure of mass-media advertising campaigns; traces it back to the innovations in hi-fi technology that turned baroque concertos into ambient "e;easy listening"e;; and appraises its meditative kinship to the spiritual path of musical mastery offered by Japan's Suzuki Method of Talent Education.

In her provocative new book Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Nadine Hubbs looks at how class and gender identity play out in one of America's most culturally and politically charged forms of popular music. Skillfully weaving historical inquiry with an examination of classed cultural repertoires and close listening to country songs, Hubbs confronts the shifting and deeply entangled workings of taste, sexuality, and class politics. In Hubbs's view, the popular phrase "e;I'll listen to anything but country"e; allows middle-class Americans to declare inclusive "e;omnivore"e; musical tastes with one crucial exclusion: country, a music linked to low-status whites. Throughout Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, Hubbs dissects this gesture, examining how provincial white working people have emerged since the 1970s as the face of American bigotry, particularly homophobia, with country music their audible emblem. Bringing together the redneck and the queer, Hubbs challenges the conventional wisdom and historical amnesia that frame white working folk as a perpetual bigot class. With a powerful combination of music criticism, cultural critique, and sociological analysis of contemporary class formation, Nadine Hubbs zeroes in on flawed assumptions about how country music models and mirrors white working-class identities. She particularly shows how dismissive, politically loaded middle-class discourses devalue country's manifestations of working-class culture, politics, and values, and render working-class acceptance of queerness invisible. Lucid, important, and thought-provoking, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of American music, gender and sexuality, class, and pop culture.

Why Jazz Happened is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz's post-war styles. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz's evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more. In an absorbing narrative enlivened by the commentary of key personalities, Marc Myers describes the myriad of events and trends that affected the music's evolution, among them, the American Federation of Musicians strike in the early 1940s, changes in radio and concert-promotion, the introduction of the long-playing record, the suburbanization of Los Angeles, the Civil Rights movement, the "e;British invasion"e; and the rise of electronic instruments. This groundbreaking book deepens our appreciation of this music by identifying many of the developments outside of jazz itself that contributed most to its texture, complexity, and growth.

Horace Silver is one of the last giants remaining from the incredible flowering and creative extension of bebop music that became known as "e;hard bop"e; in the 1950s. This freewheeling autobiography of the great composer, pianist, and bandleader takes us from his childhood in Norwalk, Connecticut, through his rise to fame as a musician in New York, to his comfortable life "e;after the road"e; in California. During that time, Silver composed an impressive repertoire of tunes that have become standards and recorded a number of classic albums. Well-seasoned with anecdotes about the music, the musicians, and the milieu in which he worked and prospered, Silver's narrative-like his music-is earthy, vernacular, and intimate. His stories resonate with lessons learned from hearing and playing alongside such legends as Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young. His irrepressible sense of humor combined with his distinctive spirituality make his account both entertaining and inspiring. Most importantly, Silver's unique take on the music and the people who play it opens a window onto the creative process of jazz and the social and cultural worlds in which it flourishes.Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty also describes Silver's spiritual awakening in the late 1970s. This transformation found its expression in the electronic and vocal music of the three-part work called The United States of Mind and eventually led the musician to start his own record label, Silveto. Silver details the economic forces that eventually persuaded him to put Silveto to rest and to return to the studios of major jazz recording labels like Columbia, Impulse, and Verve, where he continued expanding his catalogue of new compositions and recordings that are at least as impressive as his earlier work.

For many fans, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era remains the most extraordinarily creative period in his career. As a member of Bowie's legendary band at the time - The Spiders From Mars - Woody Woodmansey played drums on four seminal albums: The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars and Aladdin Sane. Woody's memoir, which he started work on in 2014, focuses on this key period and brings it to glorious life. With the confidence of youth, Woody always thought he'd be in a famous band but the nineteen-year-old rocker from Hull never expected to be thrust into London's burgeoning glam rock scene, and also into a bottle-green velvet suit and girl's shoes. Playing with Bowie took him on an eye-opening and transformative journey. In Spider From Mars he writes candidly about the characters who surrounded Bowie, recalling the album sessions as well as behind-the-scenes moments with one of the world's most iconic singers. The result is an insightful, funny, poignant memoir that lovingly evokes a seminal moment in music history and pays tribute to one of the most outstanding and innovative talents of our time.

Considered one of the greatest composers-and music critics-of the Romantic era, Robert Schumann (1810-1856) played an important role in shaping nineteenth-century German ideas about virtuosity. Forging his career in the decades that saw abundant public fascination with the feats and creations of virtuosos (Liszt, Paganini, and Chopin among others), Schumann engaged with instrumental virtuosity through not only his compositions and performances but also his music reviews and writings about his contemporaries. Ultimately, the discourse of virtuosity influenced the culture of Western "e;art music"e; well beyond the nineteenth century and into the present day. By examining previously unexplored archival sources, Alexander Stefaniak looks at the diverse approaches to virtuosity Schumann developed over the course of his career, revealing several distinct currents in nineteenth-century German virtuosity and the enduring flexibility of virtuosity discourse.

'Through interviews with friends and colleagues, as well as detailed research, the writer has gained unprecedented knowledge of the true story behind the legend. This is a fascinating insight into one of the greatest artists of our lifetime.' Evening Standard'Through several interviews with Bowie she evocatively portrays his fascinating life, often with a tenderness you wouldn't expect.' Daily Express'An intriguing book. This is a personal friendship in writing. The knowledge divulged here is an endearing and powerful tale of a man who conquered the entire entertainment industry with his creative force.' VarietyA unique portrait of the globally revered artist and the extraordinary, complex man behind the legend.His music thrilled the generation it was written for, and has entertained and inspired every generation since. HERO: DAVID BOWIE is an intelligent exploration of the man behind the myths and the makeup told from the very beginning.Respected music journalist and biographer Lesley-Ann Jones knew David Jones from the days before fame, when he was a young musician starting out, frustrated by an industry that wouldn't give him a break and determined to succeed. Here she traces the epic journey of the boy from Bromley born into a troubled background to his place as one of the greatest stars in rock history.Jones has interviewed numerous friends and associates of Bowie, many of whom have never spoken publicly about him before. Drawing on this new material and meticulous research, the real story of Bowie's family background is told; the true inspiration behind the creation of Ziggy Stardust is revealed, and we learn how his marriage to Angie ended in agony following his comeback from a near fatal drug addiction. Jones also revisits Bowie's tragic relationship with his brother and his deep bond with T Rex frontman Marc Bolan. Bowie's rebellious nature, his many sources of inspiration and creativity, and his complex, intense personality are discussed here, creating a unique and compelling portrait of an extraordinary man. This is Bowie as you've never seen him before.

'A triumph' - Time OutTransformer is the only complete and comprehensive telling of the Lou Reed story.Legendary songwriter and guitarist Lou Reed passed away on the 27th October 2013, but his musical influence is assured. Now discover the true story of the Velvet Underground pioneer in this update of Bockris's classic biography.Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story follows the great songwriter and singer through the series of transformations that define each period of his fifty year career. It opens with the teenage electroshock treatments that dominated his memories of childhood and never stops revealing layer after layer of this complex and often anguished artist and man. Transformer is based on Lou's collaborations with the hardest and most romantic artists of his times, from John Cale, Andy Warhol, and Nico, through David Bowie, Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson and the ghost of Edgar Alan Poe. Rippling underneath everything he did are Lou's relationships with his various muses, from his college sweetheart to his three wives (and one drag queen).Leading Lou Reed biographer, Victor Bockris - who knew Lou throughout the Rachel Years, from Rock 'n' Roll Animal to the Bells - updates his original biography in the wake of Lou's death. Through new interviews and photos, he reveals the many transformations of this larger-than-life character, including his final shift from Rock Monster to the Prince Charming he had always wanted to be in the twenty years he spent with the love of his life, Laurie Anderson . Except with Lou, you could never really know what might happen next...Including previously unseen photographs and contributions from Lou's innermost circle and collaborators that include similarly esteemed artists such as Andy Warhol and David Bowie, Transformer is as captivating and vivid a read as befits an American master.

MAKING MICHAEL delves deep inside the career of one of the mostsuccessful, enigmatic and controversial entertainers of all time:Michael Jackson. Side-stepping sensationalism, journalist Mike Smallcombe enters uncharteredterritory as he takes you behind the scenes to reveal the real Jackson, a manfew people ever got to know. Interviewing over sixty of Jackson's associates including managers, lawyers,music executives, producers, musicians and engineers - many of whom arespeaking about their experiences publicly for the first time - he providesexclusive access to one of the biggest-selling recording artists in history. Featuring a foreword by Matt Forger, one of Jackson's longest serving andmost loyal collaborators, MAKING MICHAEL takes readers into thestudio with the King of Pop, charting the creation of record-breaking albumsincluding Thriller, Bad, Dangerous and HIStory and the twists and turnsthat occurred along the way. Untold stories, revelations and secrets finallysee the light of day as Jackson's career outside the studio is also examined. Smallcombe remains objective and doesn't shy away from exploringJackson's ruthless traits, his addictions, his fall outs, the relentless pursuit ofperfectionism, the financial chaos and those shocking final weeks. MIKE SMALLCOMBE is a British journalist living and working in theUK. www.makingmichael.co.ukTwitter: @mikesmallcombe1