EEK Books

This method is excellent! If I could give it more than five stars I would. If you're willing to put in the time it pays off. I have been working on the exercises from this book for almost a year and my ear has improved tremendously. Follow Mr. Arnolds directions in the book exactly as spelled out and you will do yourself a big favor. He has put in the time learning this material himself and knows all the pitfalls of doing it wrong and has distilled a method that works. He learned from the pros and has published what he learned. If you want a nice glossy book with lots of cool pictures this isn't for you. If you want something that works get it, do it, and you'll be amazed. The bottom line is you have to the work for the results. I have noticed some reviews that note the starkness of Mr. Arnold's books. His books are all substance and no jive! He shows his dedication to the material he presents by providing a FAQ section on the museek Website. You can submit a question and he answers it right away, sometimes in minutes, never more that 24 hours. That really surprised me!

I've been using Mr. Arnold's approach to ear training for about a month now. I have found it very challenging but on the same hand very rewarding. The main thing I have come away with from Mr. Arnold's Ear Training method is how damaging interval based ear training can be to your musical development. He believes that you must first understand how to hear the sound of all 12 notes against a key. I was a little unsure whether this all made sense but after working with this method I am seeing real progress. I'm currently using a combination of the (Ear Training One Note) and the Fanatic's Guide and I find it to be a winning combination. If you are serious about developing your ears like I am, I'd highly recommend checking this method out and starting off on the right path.

I have been working with Mr Arnold's ear training methods for just over two years now and would like to share with you some of my experiences over that time.

There is no other system of ear training i know that constantly pushes the boundaries of your aural perception. Working with his is as Mr Arnold reminds us a "lifetime's journey". Over the years i have steadily gained the ability to recognise any pitch in relation to a key center and sight-sing any required pitch readily (including chromatics). That is what one note complete and the fanatic's guide seeks to achieve.

The above lays the foundation for further development. In December of 2007 I finally completed key note recognition, that helps you to learn to adapt to various modes(major and minor) and recognise the key by listening to how notes function in relation. Now I am beginning work on two note that builds recognition for multiple notes and following complex modulations.

All this is impossible without dedication and an intense commitment to practice, practice,practice. As a guage i have worked at this at least an hour a day broken up into short sessions over the last two over years. And without keeping to this and really working at it, you won't be able to really understand what this method is all about. But IF you do, this will really change the way you are involved with music.

Just to describe a few simple experiences...

- Early on i began to gain a deeper sense of the music i was listening to. Suddenly everything opened up what can only be described as a kaleidoscope of colours.

- As an active musician, people began commenting on how musical and expressive my performances were getting and always "spot on" with pitching.

- Am now coming to grips with progressively more harmonically complex melodic forms such as modern jazz and funk.

I'm now embarking on the next phase in my ear training that is two note and beyond. I know it's going to be nothing short of gruelling, but with the positive changes that I have experienced in aural perception, I really can't wait to discover what else happens along the way.

Many thanks to Mr Arnold for his fantastic work, gift to aspiring musicians and continuing commitment to music education.

I bought this book about 6 months ago. I have only been working on two of the exercises so far but even that has really turned my head around about how to hear sound. I basically have found that this book has started to change my perception of how to identify sound. Though I haven't mastered the ideas presented in this book I am starting to realize that you can indeed memorize the sound of each note within a key and use this as a method to identify pitches. My overall recommendation is not to get this book if you don't have a lot of dedication to practicing. I have found the exercises to very difficult and quite honestly was about to give up a few times. I suppose each person who might buy this book is coming from a different place so my comments may not pertain to everyone. For me, I just couldn't latch onto a method of ear training that worked for me. This method is no "walk in park" but it is working and that's what matters to me.

Mr. Arnold offers practical advice and information to the contemporary music student. His several books present methods for learning music in an efficient and enjoyable manner. The methods were developed and refined during his many years of teaching, and are well informed by his professional associations with many of the world's finest musicians.

I have taught music theory and aural comprehension to well over 1000 music students at New York University. These future performers and composers hail from a wide variety of musical backgrounds - classical, jazz, rock, music technology, and music theater - and I have instructed them in ear-training techniques that are similar in methodology to Mr. Arnold's. These techniques have caused dramatic improvement in almost all students that have applied themselves and allotted sufficient time for practice.

In the 10 years of our acquaintance, Bruce Arnold has consistently impressed me with his abilities as a performer, composer, and educator. I share his philosophy of ear-training instruction and feel that he has realized it in a highly functional and useful manner with his books and CDs. For these reasons, I especially recommend his materials to my students, as I recommend them to anyone with the desire to expend effective hard work in the pursuit of their musical aspirations.

Klaus Sinfelt, Assistant Director of Music Theory, Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, New York University

My nephew aged 6, was having trouble with reading, and worst showed no interest in books. I bought these books for him because they were recommended to me by a librarian. Like magic he became interested in reading these, and his reading took off. My sister-in-law then gave these books to a friend of my Nephew's who was having difficulty with reading at school, and the same thing happened with him as well. I would recommend these to anyone with a 6-8 year old boy who would like to see their child reading better, and reading more!

This is the type of book kids love to read! It is a little spooky and a great adventure. My 7 year old son really enjoyed it. He reads it over and over again. The "Eek! Stories to make you Shriek" series is a very good way to create an interest in reading to your child.

I bought this book to read to my 4 year old. He LOVED it. It has just the right amount of suspense and "scare" to capture the imagination but won't cause nightmares.

I could not believe my 7-year-old son's reaction to this book. We've read a lot of books together, but I've never seen him act like this before. I read Dragon Breath to him. Then, for the FIRST time ever, he picked it up and read it himself. Again and again! I loved seeing the beginning of a love for reading. Now if I can just find other books that he loves as much...

After reading the reviews I thought this was going to be 'the halloween' book. But unfortunately I was disappointed.
I do agree the art work is wonderful. Very livid and colorful. A+ on that. But for a young child (mine is 18 months) the flaps are very hard to lift. Very thin. One already tore in the first day. Maybe this book is better suited for preschool though the story does suit a toddler. Maybe it's my fault.. I just expected more.

Great book to introduce young children to popular Halloween characters... pumpkins, spiders, skeletons, monsters, etc. ... in a fun, light-hearted and non-threatening way. Illustrations are bright, colorful and very cute. Each two-page spread features a single character with a simple rhyme and under-the-flap surprise. Book also has a very cute ending.

I read many Halloween books looking for just the right one for my 14-month-old. This is it. My daughter loves it.

Note: Pages are a heavy, slick paper not the heavy cardstock found in a lot of lift-the-flap books. This is a good in that it is easier to flatten out the flaps again if tiny hands bend them. But bad in that they're probably easier to tear. Probably best reserved for supervised reading.

Better than most Halloween books I've seen for preschool or kindergarten. Colors are bright and bold. The rhymes are well done. With the sounds the creatures make, it's also a good phonics lesson. And the flaps that you lift held up well under multiples readings. Most of all, it's just a cute book. I've given copies in place of candy to friends/family's kids at halloween this year.

The art in this book is really nice. The rhyming story is simple but well-written and my sister's preschoolers love it. I also found this to be a good phonics lesson. My favorite pages are the cute vampires hanging upside down. One of them is holding a teddy-monster. The ending is fun.

What's great about Bruce Arnold's books is that you can email him questions and he actually responds. This is a great book and the help files online are really useful.

Recently got First Stage Guitar Chord Chart by Chris Lopez and Essentials by Bruce Arnold. I'm a weekend geetar picker just getting started. I'm mostly interested in learning chords and scales. I thought both books were good they both gave simple presentations of the most important chords and scales. Essentials has an interesting quark in that you can download videos and mp3 files that go with various parts of the book. I found the mp3 files to be very useful to jam over but I'm over here on a dial up connection so couldn't use the video stuff that much. One thing I did watch though was movies about common problems found with each chord. It showed me all the common problems people have when learning chords and I thought that was pretty cool. Ya really can't go wrong with either book though - they lay everything out very clearly and are enjoyable to work with.

This is a rather odd book in that it is simply a collection of pieces of useful information found exactly as they appear in other Bruce Arnold books. What makes this book so useful is that it turns out that this book (actually more of a booklet) contains exactly the information that I most commonly reference back to in his other books. Mr. Arnold presents a system of music education that is unique as far as I can tell. I have seen no other system that provides the professional level of information, a members-only web site with a plethora of additional information AND e-mail access to the author. Yup, Mr. Arnold will personally answer your questions and you get access to the "members only" web site simply by purchasing any of his books. Every time I look at the web site, I find MORE information that either presents a new topic or clarifies something I have been struggling with.

I don't think that this book would be all that useful in and of itself. However, as an adjunct to the rest of his books on theory and technique it is an extremely handy collection of most commonly accessed information. Basically, it is the collection of "notes" that I would have eventually put together for myself so that I did not have to keep referencing multiple books for the same information over and over (because I forgot it or just "wanted to check to be sure").

This is a great collection of information if you are already using Mr. Arnold's books to learn to play guitar. It was money well spent. It just saved me the time of collecting the information (as well as figuring out what would be most useful). It is already done for you.

This book really gave me everything I needed, to learn chording for guitar on my own. A great product.

Well this book is going to keep me busy for awhile. But what a resource, I don't know of another book that so thoughly covers the chords on the 4 upper strings of the guitar. The chord progresssion at the back of the book have been great too. It hard to memorize so many chords unless you can hear them used in real music.

I have been one fustrated musician...I've bought a bunch of ear training books and nothing seemed to help me when I was playing with my friends. This new method is great and I can just carry around the CD and listen to it all the time. Thanks Again!!

I bought this book about a year ago. I thought I should wait to review this until I had worked with the book/CD. Just a little background on me. I'm a college grad. music major piano player. The ear training I received in college is the interval based system which didn't help me to hear quite honestly. Mr. Arnold's method is quite different from the interval based ear training systems and it works! I find now when I'm in a musical situation I can identify notes based on the key I'm in. This is quite exciting for me and I would highly recommend you check this system out!

This is probably the best ear training material I've had in my experiance as a music student. If you are serious music student, this is THE book for you. The instructions on how to use the book and how this method works was very useful. I got two other books from this author.

I recently purchased all 3 levels of the Ear Training One Note Series and thought I would share my experience. First lets look at the positive things. I think the most important thing to realize about this method is that if you have questions or concerns you can contact the author through the muse-eek website. I had quite a few questions, contacted Mr. Arnold and received quite in-depth responses to my questions. The author obviously is concerned for my development and this was clear from the multiple e-mails we exchanged. Mr. Arnold answered my questions about what I was suppose to be listening for and helped me set up a practice schedule. I should also point out that the FAQ questions are all listed on the website. I learned a lot from other people's questions and Mr. Arnold's answers. The website also has a member's section where you can download further information for free about this ear training method and also other pdf files to help in musical development (I particularly found the rhythm file to be helpful). On the negative side all three books in this series have the same text. I didn't realize this when I bought the series. As I came back to write this review I noticed that in the "Further information on this ear training series" article found under the "read more" link it does say "Essentially the speed at which you are required to answer doubles between each level; the techniques stay the same." It seems like it would be better if all three of these books were made into one. I asked Mr. Arnold about this in my e-mail and his response was as follows. "while Muse-eek is planning on releasing a compilation series of these books the main reason for the separate books is that many advanced music students do not need the beginning and intermediate levels so they shouldn't have to pay extra to get CDs they don't need. I'm not a beginning music student so I felt I really should have only purchase the intermediate and advanced levels. Once again I should have read the "Further information on this ear training series" article found by clicking the "read more" link. This article does say "total beginners at music should get the Beginning level, students with some musical background should purchase Intermediate, and students with a significant amount of training should start with Advanced." Overall I have to say I'm happy with these books. For me being able to contact the author and all the help files on the publisher's website shows that this is quite a unique method for teaching people music.

My husband picked this book up at the library the other week. My kids are 3.5 and 2 years old, and I think this is the most ideal book for their age range. We have some of those "award winning classic" children's books that the kids have absolutely no interest in. I don't know if this book has ever won any awards, but it should be a classic. It grabbed the interest of my kids in several ways. It has a simple rhyme, each page starts with an exclamation that the kids like to immitate, a different animal, and different actions.

For instance:
Dear Me!
The Dog has broken the dish.
And now the cat is after the fish.
Send in the Hog
To shoo that Dog!

Each page introduces a different animal, and they're doing things like dancing, eating, kicking holes in the wall, getting tangled in yarn, etc. And each page has something visually interesting. After a week of reading this to my kids, my 3.5 year old already knows most of the words, and my 2 year old likes to point out things going on in the pictures.

Another charming picture book from the creator of "Fireman Small" shows an escalating series of animal hijinx: a mouse is discovered in the house, so in comes the cat to chase that rat, in comes the dog to chase the cat, and so on, all the way up to the elephant. The illustrations are charming and feature visual puns for parents (note, for example, the "duck soup") while kids are sure to love the sweetly humourous animals. The story is told in simple rhyme, with plenty of exclamations and animal absurdity to make your toddler giggle.

This e-book is very nice. While it doesn't show you every major chord, it does explain "in detail" the techniques to play in "all" Major, Minor, and Diminished chords! I am a self taught pianist and trust me, Learning the "theory" makes you understand and become much much closer to the piano and music in general! You won't be a ray charles after reading this book because a good bit of this book is theory, but it does enough to get you a good start at playing Jazz and any other type of music for that matter! For the price, It's a steal!

A concise,comprehensive and imaginative presentation of the basics.This step by step approach is the best way to gradually
absorb the overwhelming yet ultimately rewarding world of Jazz.

I have used all of the Eek! titles to motivate readers in my classroom. A good Kindergarten reader could tackle the text with help, an average first grader would need some help, and an average second grader could read it independently. I tend to tell the students that I will not read the Eek books to them because they're too scary and may give them nightmares. But I invite the students who think they will not be scared to explore the books, or even borrow them and take them home. You'd be surprised the hubub over who's read which Eek book! Nearly every student in the class has read all of the books by the end of the year. I highly recommend the whole series for a primary classroom or parents looking to motivate a reluctant reader.

This is my 1st Grader's favorite book at the moment. He literally begs to read it every night! It's easy enough for the average 1st-2nd Grader to read with a little bit of help. The story is very entertaining and involves a younger child getting even with an older brother who is always trying to trick him out of his money. The illustrations are great and the story is long enough to be challenging to a child but short enough to be read by a parent in under 10 minutes. This book can be tremendously motivating to a child who loves scary stuff but generally dislikes reading. We also own and enjoy "CreepShow" which is part of the same series.

A great book for a camping trip, slumber party or Halloween party!