Best Music Books - The Indie Bible - Market Your Music to the World

As a parent and former elementary school teacher, one of my favorite authors is Joe Hayes. And one of my favorite books is Tell Me A Cuento/Cuéntame Un Story, a collection of four of his most popular tales in both English and Spanish. If you are not familiar with Joe Hayes, he is the author of numerous bilingual folktales for children, and has earned a distinctive reputation as a master storyteller of southwestern tales.

In this 64 page paperback, Joe Hayes encourages children to interact with the stories through his colorful language, and teams up with illustrator Geronimo Garcia to provide vivid illustrations that brighten every page.

4 Stories in English and Spanish

The first tale, Mariposa, Mariposa is the story of the Butterfly who sews herself a fancy new dress and attracts attention from many suitors. Written in pattern so listeners can predict what comes next, it eventually explains why butteflies look and behave the way they do.

The second story, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Oh!, is similar in style to an Irish tale. The elves dance and sing in the forest at night, and when the kind-hearted poor woman helps them with their song, she is rewarded. This makes the rich woman jealous and you can see where this goes. A great story for exploring the common theme of kindness vs. greed and a lovely book for music and art curriculum connections as well.

Next, No Way, José! tells the story of a bossy rooster who wants to sing at the wedding of his Uncle Perico but he gets his handsome beak dirty eating a berry. He tries to tell others what to do but gets the same response from each one. This cumulative tale builds into a chant with each new encounter and allows all students to get involved and build language.

And finally, in The Terrible Tragadabas, we meet Little Bitty, Middle Size, and Great Big, three granddaughters who are sent to the store to buy little cakes and honey, only to find out about the Tragabadas. Reminiscent of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, this story takes a slightly scary turn. Children absolutely love it!

And… a bonus for all you parents and teachers out there. The publisher, Cinco Puntos Press, offers free teaching resources for each of the four stories. To purchase the book, go to www.sunriseimports.net/tellmeacuento.html. To download the accompanying teacher’s guide, go to www.cincopuntos.com/teachers_guides.html.

Tell Me A Cuento: Cuentame Un Story

Told by Joe Hayes, Illustrated by Geronimo Garcia

Recommended for 8 years and up

Sheila Hull-Summers
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/childrens-books-tell-me-a-cuentocuntame-un-story-53380.html

my friends’ band, very talented, toronto, Canada.

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canadian indie band final fantasy (aka owen pallett) performs a “medley” of three, full-length songs at schuba’s in chicago:

“i’m afraid of japan”
“hey dad”
“the cn tower belongs to the dead”

features overhead projector animation by stephanie comilang

http://www.myspace.com/ffinalffantasy

Duration : 0:9:32

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Technorati Tags: "Final, "Hey, Alternative, animation, Canada, chicago, cn, comilang, dad, Fantasy", Indie, japan, owen, pallet, schuba's, stephanie, tower

Piano improvising and arranging is an art but definitely not a science. It is all based on chords and chord progressions. There aren’t any steadfast rules for creating an arrangement, nothing to dictate the limitless potential of your imagination. Musicians learn to arrange by simply arranging and improvise by improvising—over and over again. It’s a big game of trial and error. But it’s also a scientific method: you keep the experiments that work, and abandon those that don’t work.

That being said, there are a few things that can help you in the knowledge of piano improvization. Don’t think of these as rules, but rather points on a roadmap guiding you through the vast world of arrangement and improvisation possibilities.

The first step, of course, is to learn as much as you can about chords and how they work. Once you get a handle on piano chords and the chord symbols that represent them such as Fm7, G9, D, C7, etc., you can then learn how to break those chords up in various patterns.
Learn several different chording patterns, such as open voicing, arpeggios, upward inversions, western bass, Alberti bass, swing bass or boogie bass. This course guides you through these techniques, in addition to others, and teaches you to understand when they’re the most appropriate.
Learn some right hand fillers, like octaves (and the multitude of harmonic possibilities associated with octaves), tremelos, grace notes, twangs, runs, and turnarounds. Again, this course teaches you these fills and several others.
Study pre-arranged sheet music. Your local music shop will have tons of music books containing several arrangements; read and play through these in detail. Seeing what other people have done with various pieces of music will help you understand the art of arrangement and also introduce you to new techniques!
Dig into different musical styles, like ragtime, blues or country-western. Pick up some compilation CDs focusing on a particular style of music or purchase some piano sheet music specializing in the style. Understanding the fundamental elements of various styles will help you learn to arrange any song in that particular style—or just add a few stylized elements to any arrangement.
Jump online and type in “chord piano” or “piano chords” into your search browser, and you will come up with a zillion choices where you can learn all you need to know about chords in a reasonably short time. It’s not rocket science, and once you learn a few piano chords, you probably will become addicted to chords and their application to your piano playing.

Duane Shinn
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/playing-the-piano-using-chord-symbols-instead-of-being-tied-to-the-written-sheet-music-51778.html

Some people start with nautical star tattoos but soon graduated to more complex designs.  The book, Tattoo, has been called “One of the best tat books yet.”  It talks about how tattooing is a reflection of the basic human desire to decorate the body, and that tattoos have held many different meanings throughout history.

The book is a fascinating journey through the colorful world of the art form through hundreds of fascinating photographs of tattoos as well as the fantastic designs of modern tattoo artists.  You can read more reviews here.

Technorati Tags: gothic tattoos, nautical star tattoos, tattoo crosses, tattoo finder, tattoos ideas

So perhaps you’ve learned your basic chords or scales on your respective instrument. You’ve been working on your technique, and it’s starting to come together. There are a couple of songs that you like to play and they sound OK. When you play your axe, you’re starting to get a feel for when it’s really in tune. What now?

I cannot stress enough the importance of being able to play by ear. Everything that you’ve ever heard anyone play on your instrument is at your disposal - you just have to figure it out. Learning how to play tunes or instrument parts using your ear is just like anything else you practice: the more you do it, the easier it gets. If you do it often enough, you won’t even need your instrument to figure it out. The concept of teaching your ear to decipher musical structures as they’re being played is called ear training and it’s been practiced and honed for centuries.

Whether you are interested in learning to play the guitar by ear, or virtually any other instrument for that matter, there are a number of excellent learning aids available to assist you! The current state of learning aids for ear training is quite well these days (thank you for asking). With a variety of books, CDs, DVDs, and even software, there’s plenty from which to choose when you decide to add this important skill to your arsenal:

Ear Training Books -

In the musician world, there are two reknowned learning institutions, the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and Musicians Institute (MI) in LA. Both have their own take on ear training. For Berklee, it’s Essential Ear Training for the Contemporary Musician and for MI, it’s Ear Training - The Complete Guide for All Musicians. Homespun, which makes a large variety of books, CDs, and DVDs for all musicians and styles, has their take, which is Ear Training for Instrumentalists featuring a whopping 6 CDs full of exercises and drills. If you’re a guitar or bass player, you’ll definitely want to check out Ultimate Eartraining for Guitar and Bass by Tribal Tech’s Gary Willis. My friend Chris, who’s a working electric jazz bassist in NYC, absolutely loves this book.

Ear Training Videos -

Playing the guitar by ear, or nearly any other instrument for that matter, is not as hard as you may think! For videos, Berklee has produced Harmonic Ear Training (DVD). This 73-minute DVD will help you recognize chord progressions quickly and listen to music more analytically. Bass players get a real treat, as jazz bass great John Patitucci has released John Patitucci - Electric Bass 2: Soloing Ear-Training And Six-String Technique Video, which teaches soloing by stressing the importance of ear training.

Ear Training Software -

As you might expect, software is a natural choice for teaching ear training because it’s interactive. The cream of this crop is Ars Nova Practica Musica which is both Windows and Macintosh compatible, covers just about every aspect of ear training, and features customizable exercises. Ear Training Coach is a more affordable option and offers a 10-grade curriculum in ear training and sight-reading. However, the piece de resistance and the one tool that should be in everyone’s ear training bag is the SlowGold CD-ROM. This nifty piece of software lets you slow down any piece of music on CD or MP3s without changing the pitch. So if you’re learning to play a passage from a recording, and it’s too fast, just run it through SlowGold to hear every single note at the exact pitch it’s played.

Ear Training Hardware -

Not surprisingly, music equipment makers have gotten into the ear training game, and not surprisingly, the offerings are particularly good for electric guitar and bass guitar. The Tascam CD-GT1 MKII Guitar Trainer and the Tascam CD-BT1 mkII Bass Guitar Trainer features the same slowdown technology of the SlowGold software, but have housed it in a standalone unit with a built-in CD player, effects, and a headphone jack for silent practicing. Tascam has even made one the vocalists, the Tascam CD-VT1 Portable CD Vocal & Performance Trainer, which has a Vocal Cancel feature that removes the vocal from the CD during playback. Karaoke will never be the same …

Learning aids aside, one really useful exercise is to pick out a recording of a simple tune that you like. Listen to it very carefully. See if you can determine when the band is changing chords. If you can pick out where these chord changes occur, then you’ll know the points in time when you need to determine what the next chord is.

Tune your instrument to the recording. Take the first chord in the tune. As it plays, try to pick out a low note on your instrument that best matches that chord. There should one note that resonates with the recording. Did you find it? This is the root note of that chord. If this note is a C, you know that the first chord is a C (something). It could be a major chord, a minor chord, a 7th chord, but whatever it is, it’s a C version of that chord. If you’re listening to “Hey Jude”, the root note for the first chord is an F. If you’re listening to “Wonderwall”, it’s an F#. If it’s “Layla”, it’s a D …

Now that you have your root note, the next step is determine what the quality of the chord is. Is it a major or minor chord? Is it a power chord? One surefire way to determine this is trial and error. Assume it’s a major chord. Test out this possibility by playing the major chord for your root note along with the recording. Does it sound good? Does it resonate? If so, you’ve just figured out what the first chord is. If not, try a minor chord. Play the minor chord for your root note along with the recording. Does this sound good? Does this resonate? Try a few different choices. If you get stumped, look at the sheet music or transcription of this recording. This is your answer key, so to speak. If you’re just starting out and need a lot of easy tunes for practice, there are some great 3-chord songbooks such as The Guitar 3 Chord Songbook and Favorite Songs With 3 Chords.

After you’re figured out the first chord, go to the next point in time where this changes, and figure out what the second chord is. Repeat this process until you’ve covered the entire tune. A lot of popular music is cyclical in that the same 3-4 chord pattern will often repeat throughout the tune, so you may not have to figure out more than 3-4 chords for the entire song. Yes, when bands write great songs using just “three chords and an attitude”, it makes your job a lot easier.

So why would you want to do this? Well, first of all, you’re improving your ear. Secondly, you’re improving your knowledge of chords because you’re forcing yourself to play a variety of chords. If you know your root note for a particular chord is an F#, but you don’t know what the quality is, you may have to test out an F# major chord, an F# minor chord, an F#7 chord, and so on. This solidifies your knowledge of chords throughout the parameters of your instrument. The more tunes you figure out, the easier it is to find and play these chords. The other benefit of going through this process is that you’re playing along with recordings, which is going to make you’re playing better, because you’re subconsciously absorbing all the nuances of the recording into your playing.

The main thing is to not get discouraged and to do it on a regular basis. Turn on the radio and try your hand at whatever’s playing. If you don’t like the tune, change the station. Put it on the classical station - yes, you can play along with classical ones too. Don’t be afraid. It’s all just music, and in the end, armed with just an ear and the knowledge of some basic chords for the trial-and-error process, you can figure out how to play it.

Christopher Sung
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/learning-to-play-by-ear-88454.html

Diesel May, opening for Slaughter at Snatch Rock Bar in Calgary, Alberta. February 6, 2008.
Diesel May is an independent Canadian hard rock band from Red Deer, Alberta.

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Technorati Tags: alberta, band, Canadian, Deer, Diesel, Hard, Heavy, Independant, independent, Indie, May, Music, Red, Rock, Slaughter, Unsigned

A fanvideo i made from All Girl Summer Fun Band’s song, Canadian Boyfriend.

I know the edition isn’t good, it’s my first video, and i used Windows Movie Maker.

Please, DO NOT COPY! And if you do it, give me the credits.

Sorry for my bad english.

Duration : 0:2:30

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Technorati Tags: agsfb, all, band, boyfriend, Canadian, fan, fun, girl, Indie, Pop, summer, twee, Video

Have you ever noticed how your favorite music can make you feel better? Well, new research studies suggest that certain types of music can boost your memory, cut your company’s training time and make you smarter too.

Scientists at Stanford University, in California, have recently revealed a molecular basis for music known as the “Mozart Effect”, but not other music.

Dr. Fran Rauscher and her geneticist colleague H. Li, discovered that rats, like humans, perform better on learning and memory tests after listening to a specific Mozart Sonata in D. They found that various growth factors and a memory compound increased in an area of the brain that affects learning and memory.

In addition, some years before, at the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Rausher found that college students scored higher on the spatial portion of an I.Q. test after listening to the Mozart Sonata for only 10 minutes! The findings were published and the “Mozart Effect” craze officially began.

Although there is still some controversy over whether the “Mozart Effect” really exists, I’ve done my research and am a big fan personally. I listen to certain Mozart CD’s every day when I write my books.

They help me focus and concentrate, and give me the added boost of a better memory. OK, I admit, sometimes I forget where I put the car keys, but listening to these particular pieces called “Mozart Effect for Focus and Concentration” actually do help me focus better.

On a more serious note, there is substantial research showing that classical music lessons can really pay off, because music can “boost brain circuitry and increase certain mental functions”.

Ultimately, you may develop the more spatial areas of the brain, and the research shows that people who have had music lessons or play an instrument perform better on many types of cognitive tests.

Major corporations such as Shell, IBM, and Dupont, along with thousands of schools and universities use music, such as certain Baroque or Mozart pieces, to cut learning time, mask irritating sounds, and increase retention of the new materials.

Many industrial corporations provide music to their employees. Dupont, for example, used a music listening program in one department that cut its training time in half and doubled the number of people trained. Another corporation using music found that clerical errors decreased by one third.

I use many type of music in my Instant Learning workshops and trainings because I find that it reduces learning time and increases memory of the material. Music activates the whole brain and makes you feel more energetic.

There is also some compelling newer evidence to show that music, used properly, can calm people with ADD or ADHD and even autism.

A recent news article reported that researchers have discovered direct evidence that music stimulates different regions of the brain responsible for memory, motor control, timing and language. For the first time, researchers also have located specific areas of mental activity linked to emotional responses to music.

At McGill University in Montreal, neuroscientist Anne Blood, who conducted the study said, “You can activate different parts of the brain, depending on what music you listen to.

So music can stimulate parts of the brain that are underactive in neurological diseases or a variety of emotional disorders. Over time, we could retrain the brain in these disorders.”

Harvard University Medical School neurobiologist, Mark Jude Tramo, says, “Undeniably, there is a biology of music. There is no question that there is specialization within the human brain for the processing of music. Music is biologically part of human life, just as music is aesthetically part of human life.”

Given the exceptional benefits of listening to certain types of music, I highly recommend you add Mozart to your tool chest of rapid learning strategies. You can listen as a family, use it at work, or play it in the background when you want your to kick your memory into high gear.

Pat Wyman
http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/how-music-boosts-your-memory-and-makes-you-smarter-70645.html

Audio books have long been a popular source of entertainment for people with vision problems and young children. The rise of in car tape players,cds, mp3s and ipods has meant an increase in the popularity and use of audio books. While most people will listen to music in their cars and on the move an increasing number are using ipods, mp3s and cd players to listen to audio books and consequently the number of audio book stores is beginning to increase.

Put simply an audio book is the recording of the contents of a book that have been read aloud. Generally speaking audio books meant books that had been recorded on audio tape but with the rise of digital equipment audio books are now available on cd or in other digital formats. Since 2006 an increasing number of audio books are now available in downloadable form and are therefore instantly available from audio book stores. Recent estimates of the audio book business have been put at somewhere in the region of two billion dollars.

Audio books come in a number of different forms. Some of them are abridged or shortened forms of the original book and some are unabridged, presenting the original text in its entirety. Some books are produced as dramatized audio books with different voices and often a musical accompaniment. For many years books and longer stories have been serialized, particularly on BBC radio stations. Occasionally such series use the voice of well known actors. Just as there are book shows and book awards with money and prizes for award winners, so there are audio awards with prizes for the best performance/reading of different genres.

The increasing popularity of the audio book means that there are now an increasing number of titles that can be downloaded from online audio book stores. Audio books are a boon to those with sight problems or who, for one reason or another are unable to read the printed version for themselves. But more and more people are also discovering the great advantages of downloading from an audio book store and immediately being able to listen to one of the thousands of titles now available.

There are now an increasing number of books available in online audio book stores. Some websites are devoted entirely to selling audio books and sometimes there is an option to download straight away rather than wait for delivery. With different formats and an increase in the choice available it seems fair to say that the growth of audio book stores will continue and their products will continue bringing people pleasure for some considerable time to come.

Shaun Kerrigan
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/the-rise-of-the-audio-book-store-95050.html