Muzyka

How does a simple piece of wood become the king of instruments?

The violin does something remarkable, magical, and evocative. It is capable of bringing to life the mathematical marvels of Bach, the moan of a Gypsy melody, the wounded dignity of Beethoven's Concerto in D Major. No other instrument is steeped in such a rich brew of myth and lore--and yet the making of a violin starts with a simple block of wood. The Violin Maker takes the reader on a journey as that block of wood, in the hands of a master craftsman, becomes an instrument to rival one made by the greatest...

For the past half century, Ralph Emery's incredibly popular radio and television programs have allowed millions to tune into the newest hits and savor their old favorites. Now Ralph combines his unique perspective with an encyclopedic wealth of country lore as he examines the changing face of the music he loves. From Hank Williams, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and Johnny Cash to Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and the Dixie Chicks, he chronicles the lives and careers of the stars, many of them his close friends. He shows how country music has changed over the years, but also reveals how its...

Wedding the American oral storytelling tradition with progressive music journalism, Mitch Myers' The Boy Who Cried Freebird is a treatise on the popular music culture of the twentieth century. Trenchant, insightful, and wonderfully strange, this literary mix-tape is authentic music history . . . except when it isn't. Myers outrageously blends short fiction, straight journalism, comic interludes, memoirs, serious artist profiles, satire, and related fan-boy hokum--including the classic stories he first narrated on NPR's All Things Considered.

Focusing on iconic...

The members of Led Zeppelin are major deities in the pantheon of rock gods. The first and heaviest of the heavy metal monsters, they violently shook the foundations of rock music and took no prisoners on the road. Their tours were legendary, their lives were exalted--and in an era well known for sex and drugs, the mighty Zeppelin set an unattainable standard of excess and mythos for any band that tried to follow them. They were power, they were fantasy, they were black magic. No band ever flew as high as Led Zeppelin or suffered so disastrous a fall. And only some of them lived to tell the...

Elementary Acoustics and the Properties of Sound, Music Notation, Intervals and Scales, Chords, Symbolization, Expression Marks and Foreign-Language Terms, Tonality and Key Feeling, Melody Writing, Four-Part Vocal Texture (SATB), Chord Connection, Chord Choice, Harmonizing a Melody, Nonharmonic Tones, Seventh and Ninth Chords, Altered Chords and Chromaticism, Solving Figured Bass, Analysis and Score Reading, Foreign-Language Names for Orchestral Instruments, Range and Transposition of Orchestral Instruments, Homophonic Forms.

Also includes Illustrations, Diagrams, Review Questions,...

• The work is thoroughly grounded in music, rather than physics
• Provides an up-to-date presentation of auditory theory as it relates to music
• Presents a readable account of the scientific aspects of musical sounds