Instruments Books

Just purchased a djembe and wanted some guidelines. The CD is very good. It is very helpful the way they isolated the tracks so that you can hear it seperately and with another part. The charts in the book look intimidating. For me, hearing the samples was easier than reading the music and putting it to the drum. The CD is good listening even if your not playing along. A bit above the basics but that is the only way you'll learn.

It just works for me and my students! Congratulations to the author for getting it right. It is right up there with Syncopantion and Stick Control.
Michael Hinton

This is a great book to learn how to keep a beat on the Djembe, and it is a wonderful aid for studing betwenn personalldrumming essons.
The practice CD that comes with the book is a helpful device.

This book is geared towards the beginning drummer. Instructions are clear and lessons well written, and it includes a CD for audio learners. If you can't learn to drum with this handbook, give up! It's well worth the purchase price.

As a beginner I find the book to be very good, it breaks everything down and gives you steps to learn the patterns. I would give the book a 5 star rating.
The CD is pretty good. The first song, Kuku, is easy to play along with as are some of the others. But on some of the songs, the patterns are played too fast, and I could not keep up, I even had trouble hearing all the drum beats. It would have been very helpful to me if the patterns were played more slowly at first.
The final 5 tracks, Jaguar at Half Moon Lake (parts 1-5), are nice, there is music, singing and drumming. But, I would have preferred something in the style of what was taught in the book, maybe even the same songs that were taught with a full drum circle.

OK book if your (shallow) interest lies in Astronomy. Despite the title there were not the numerous photos that I expected. Some fair illustrations and text, especially the history of the Hubble and repair missions.

I thought I would see an entire atlas of the skies with copious photos of the Universe. The pictures could be found elsewhere (NASA site)with greater detail and far greater number.

In sum, a disappointing book for anyone other than neophytes.

I wanted a coffee table book with Hubble photos and this book has nice large pictures.

That the pictures in this book are miraculous is a given in light of how far the amazing Hubble telescope can see into the past. I purchased this for my 9 and 10 year old grandchildren. I think they would have been more awed by sharper pictures of the more easily imaged things in our own neighborhood. In a few years they will appreciate this book more, as they will be more capable of understanding the magnitude of the distance and the views into the past that are represented. If, however, a child was a precocious budding astronomer this book would probably be appropriate regardless of age.

This is a large, hardback, heavy book. It is a reference book with tons of illustrations and pictures of distant astronomic objects. It especially covers the origin of the study of astronomy and its transformation by orbiting astronomy. It concentrates on the Hubble Space Telescope, its design and the images it produces.

I bought this lovely book as a gift for my engineer husband -- he was thrilled with it. The images are both stunning and eerie. Who knew that just outside our local astral neighborhood there were such amazing sights? In this day of high tech instant gratification it's hard to keep in mind that mysteries and miracles do exist - and it's too easy to take for granted such stellar achievements in the sciences. Pick up this book and leaf through it and that just falls away - you'll be amazed. And humbled.

This is a wonderful book if you're trying to "remodel" your jazz guitar technique. I entered this book with the goal of 1. Upgrading my music reading ability. 2. Upgrading my Picking Technique. 3. Upgrading my left hand ability. I'm presently up to page 45 and my playing has changed remarkably since I started this book. I work seriously on all the "upgrades" while playing the exercises and continue until the exercise is "under my fingers". While I may not be the world's greatest guitarist (I call myself a Jazz Guitar Student), the use of this book has moved my playing definately "off the charts" from where I started. My tone is much better and I've learned hybrid picking while using the book. Working with the exercises has "opened" my left hand and improved my horizonal fingering. If you're dead serious about improving your playing, this is the book. All my "upgrade" areas have remarkably improved. And to think, this book sat on my bookself - unloved - for 2 years before I got into it. It's also useful to have a cheap keyboard that plays chords & rhythm to give your ear clues about the exercises, some of which have a nice "outside" quality to them. I started this book about 5 months ago 1-5 hours/day. Wonderful Book. No Tabs - Hardcore. Ed/California

This book is neither a method nor a standard exercise book. It's not the sort of book to buy when you are starting out playing jazz.
It present no theory, and the exercises are presented in a manner that makes sense for developing figering but not for someone trying to learn jazz. The exercises have no harmonic logic to them.
The exercises themselves are all presented in standard notation, and where it's important with an indication of the string one should be playing on, but there are no tabs so the book presumes one can more or less sight read music for the guitar. This means it's not suitable for a begginer since almost no beginners will know the fretboard well enough to sightread the exercises.
The book is useful for developing jazz musicians who are trying to break out of the standard licks they have gotten in the habit of playing, or for jazz musicians who are tryint to break out beyond playing by ear or by tab to playing with a better note consciousness: knowing exactly what note you are playing rather than just your relative position in the scale.
So it's a usefull book, but probably not in the top ten in terms of usefullness, and it's of no use at all for beginners.

Take no shortcuts, study bits and pieces at a time and you will be amazed. Learning to read music opens doors to creativity and helps you understand the language. If you are a person who loves learning, these are the books for you. I'm finding that by studying Andrew Green's Jazz Guitar Series, my overall vocabulary in music is improving. I have all three books in the series and don't have the need to pay for lessons any more.

This book is just what I wanted and needed. The exercises are interesting and I am fairly painlessly learning to read music. The technical barriers are fewer than they were when I started. I am slowly beginning to think "music" a bit as one learns to speak and think in another language ie at first slowly and haltingly, putting individual bits and pieces together, moving on to the musical phrases of this book ie first sentences.

When I get to the etudes in the back it is my hope that I will move on to the equivalent of musical paragraphs. So far it seems to be working.

I believe that this is an excellent book of exercises which are well tailored those interested in improving their technique, their fund of musical ideas, and the overall smooth transition to thinking in terms of those ideas while also being able to play out those ideas more freely on a guitar

Very little in this book is easy or intuitive. Instead, it forces the reader again and again to confront his or her limitations as a guitarist. As such, it is one of the best tools in my library for forcing me to get outside of my head and really explore the possibilities.

The book is organized around independent concepts, and there is no particular order in which they should be approached. My current nemesis is the section on punctuating single eighth-note lines with chord voicings. As Mr. Green suggests, take lots of breaks while doing this particular exercise.

Incorporate this book into your regular warm-up routine. This is not a book of theory, and it's best to only use your brain until the lines become intuitive. Then just let the ideas buried in this book work their way by osmosis into your soloing vocabulary.

We got an electronic key board last Christmas and got this book to teach at home...it's Fantastic! Easy to use. Have fun!

You can follow right along with the books and it is easy to understand.

Don't expect to learn over night. It has to sink in little by little.

Just keep practicing as much as you can while enjoying it.

You can do one or two lessons a day and repeat as much as the old lessons as you want to do. You will be amazed how you improve. What was hard becomes easy.

I recently got a piano, and since I haven't played in 30 years, decided to start over with these books I used as a kid. They are just as good as I remember!

I recently got a piano, and since I haven't played in 30 years, decided to start over with these books I used as a kid. They are just as good as I remember!

I learned from these books, along with the Thompson series. I have been teaching piano now for nearly 30 yrs. and have tried many other series, always coming back to the Schaum books. I find them to teach everything needed, having complete sets of workbooks as well as the lesson books and technic books. They move at the correct rate with songs my pupils enjoy overall. Other series I have tried or pupils have come with have been more frustrating- trying to move too fast for the students to learn well. The old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it" works here. These worked years ago and they still do. Sometimes "new" isn't necessarily better.

This book has a lot of nice photos i've never seen before. The one i really like is in the first pages, where is a compilation of John Lennon's ID cards. It's great.

This is a nice book of memories of the world's best musical genius of all time.I still miss him. We lost a lot when we lost him.

John Lennon a man true to his words also standing not behind them but with them.That and his freedom in music is what made him big.Though what about his life before decaying behind fame and all the riches in the world?LIFE really captured Johns true essence from his middle class childhood to his stardom in the fab 4 to the final days of the limelight before he was murdered.That murder has came and went about 25 years ago and he will never be forgotten his motives were a strong point and LIFE helps his legacy live on.So many photos (WICH IS A TRADEMARK) with little to no information but with the supplied info you get a good idea at John's day to day life.(and the general person he was)

The point of it is to case a legend 25 years after his untimely death.Not any death but a MAsterful Musician.

For anyone who loved John Lennon and who was alive when he was murdered, the memory will never leave you. Everyone will remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that was horrifying and shocking. For me, it seems like yesterday when my brother walked into my bedroom and said, "Howard Cossel just announced on Monday Night Football that John Lennon was shot." There's no way to describe the numbing agony of that moment and its aftermath. For people of a certain age, this moment marked a turning point: an end of childhood innocence and the death of an icon of a generation.

This book is an excellent one for people who weren't around in 1980 and don't have actual memories of John Lennon. For those who have long followed his life, there are no new photographs or information contained here, but it's still worth the ride. It's heavily weighted towards the Beatles years, but there is still adequate coverage of the Dakota years and the assassination itself.

To sum up: excellent for newbies, adequate for long-time Lennon lovers.

I can't figure it out. What is it about John Lennon that makes his photographs so fascinating, fresh, and appealing all these years after he was killed? Is it because he is the only Beatle that didn't grow old? Is it because he is the image of my generation's youth? Is it because of the music he created that still resonates today? Is it simply because he was so photogenic? Is it because he was an enigma, someone we thought we knew, someone we wanted to know better? Is it all of these things, or some combination?

I don't know; but this book is a haunting joy. It features John alone, with the Quarry Men and Beatles, with his family, in shots there were staged, but often shots that gave us a hint of the real person. The book is composed of the work of several photographers that spent time with John and got to know him. The photos and brief write-ups give some insight into the real person, one that is nicer and more vulnerable than the persona that he fronted. You get a real sense of personal loss that the photographers felt after he was killed by a madman in 1981, a loss that was personal for the rest of us too - for some reason. (Again, what is it about John Lennon?)

Not a bad retrospective.

This is definitely one of the most thorough books on guitar of any kind that I've seen. Romane goes into great detail to discuss even small sections of songs. He covers a lot of theory--If I were to study this book intensely, there is no doubt I would gain a great deal of knowledge in music theory, not just jazz guitar.

The only downside is that it is a very advanced book. Even the first few chords are difficult to finger. Some of the first "licks" are extremely fast and would take months of dedicated practice just to play half as fast as Romane. And that's just to get through the first part of chapter 1. But if you (or I) stick with it long enough, I'm sure my overall guitar playing would improve dramatically, not just in gypsy guitar. It would be nice if the book started out at a more basic level, with much slower, easier pieces to play.

Another small gripe is that he doesn't cover how to play the rhythm parts in a manouche way. I suppose it's assumed that you already know how to do this or you have a teacher to show you.

Bottom line is that if you're a good guitar player already, or if you have a gypsy jazz guitar teacher, this book is fantastic. If you're just a beginner, it's a great book for learning some new chords, scales, arpeggios, and overall theory--and could prove to be a great book overall for learning gypsy jazz--but it will very likely be too difficult to get very far in the book.

While it is true that L'Esprit Manouche is a thorough study of Gypsy Jazz guitar, I would not go so far as to say it is "the only book you need". I have had it for a year and scarcely touched it, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the study pieces are not the familiar great tunes of Django or the Rosenbergs. So the first thing you need to do is familiarize yourself with the study pieces. They cannot be found on a single recording. You have buy all the albums the authors, Romane and Derek Sebastian made. And sorry, but Romane's music is not the most inspiring in the world of Manouche. Which brings me to the second reason this volume has been collecting dust on my shelf; the midi CD is only useful for giving you that cheesey midi-flavoured taste of the tones used in the pieces, rather than the full feel of studio recordings using real guitars. It might have made it worth the price if such a CD were included. Thirdly, I am not already a professional musician, and the lessons kind of assume you are. You don't begin on the bottom rung of the pedagogical ladder. You jump right into learning a complicated piece, Swing For Ninine, that has fast melodic phrases and difficult fingerings for a beginner like me (I have only been playing 20 years). Fourthly, I am lazy git who needs to start off simple and works his way up. Having said all that, this is an excellent volume for working or advanced musicians who love Gypsy Jazz and Romane, and wish to learn exactly how he plays those neato riffs. And it requires dedication and commitment. But the rest of us will need an intermediate book that starts by deconstructing, say, Minor Swing.

This book is awesome ! This is the best book ever written for gypsy jazz guitar. I mean a study of gypsy jazz music by Romane and Dereck it was to be the best, period ! It does takes quite a bit of effort to go through the chapters and exercises but it is so worth it. You can really see you progress little by little. For those who read French I also recommend "La Pompe" also written by Romane and Dereck (Available at amazon.fr or any other French website).
This book is the best ! JUST BUY IT !

This is my first foray into self study of Gypsy Jazz, and I am having to take it slowly. The book is very thorough in its coverage of arpeggios, chords, theory and chord progressions. If you don't read music, there is tablature, and chord and neck diagrams to go by. The snippets of songs on the included CD are incorrectly labeled, but the correct names for the songs are on the title page of the book. they are helpful for ear study. Also included are a number of MIDI files with arpeggios and parts of the songs, but that wasn't clear until I emailed customer service, who by the way gave great service and quick response. This book is like the proverbial elephant--you are going to have to eat it one bite at a time, but with several ways of approaching each song, it should appeal widely. Just take it slowly. What is missing for me is a way to learn these songs slowly. I would have included the rhythm to each song at half speed and at full speed, that way a student could practice and slowly come up to speed. Many may never get up to the full speed of the professionals.

I really like this book for the more advanced player. It's very comprehensive with loads of exercises and explanation. Anyone following this book will improve and become a very good player of this style. I don't know of a better book on the subject. I recon there's two to three years work here.

Very cute book, I am going to use it for summer reading @ my library this year. It was based on a song I knew as a kid.

I received a poster size soft cover book. NOT WHAT I ORDERED. But it was the holidays and didn't feel like sending back. VERY DISAPPOINTED!

This product made my son very happy. We can pick this book up at anytime and laugh and sing along. The pictures make my son laugh. I had forgotten how fun this song is and to see the pictures with song make it priceless for my son

My son LOVES this book! He has memorized the 'Spaghetti' song and has a lot of fun singing it. Mom also enjoys reading this book. It is written in a way which is fun, silly and enjoyable to read. We also love the illustrations!

Here is the story of the classic children's song "On Top of Spaghetti".
For those who don't remember the words, it goes something like this:

"On Top of Spaghetti all covered with cheese.
I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed!
It rolled off the table and onto the floor
And then my poor meatball rolled out of the door."

Yodeler, the dog, wants to get more customers into his restaurant. He invents this new kind of meatball which promptly rolls away when... you guessed it, someone sneezes!

So Yodeler chases the meatball around town. And the poor meatball has a very unhappy ending.

"It rolled in the garden and under a bush.
And then my poor meatball was nothing but mush."

But, wait! Something else comes out of that mush. If you want to know how the story REALLY ends, you should definitely buy this book.

Recommended for children 3-8.

This is a good book for the beginning organist. The book has good training activities and practice ideas.

I bought this as a Christmas present so was very disappointed to find though advertised as new the cover looked like something had been dropped on it. It was scuffed badly. I didn't have time to return it for exchange and the person who received it "said" it was okay I was upset. If something says new it should look new.

I am a pianist who recently started studying organ to upgrade my skill for playing in church. This is a great resource, with quite a bit of very fine music. As another reviewer stated, it is quite similar in concept to the classic organ method by Gleason, which I also respect and enjoy. But I find the repertoire here more interesting and serviceable than what you will find in the Gleason.

Also contains very fine chapters on registration, articulation and phrasing. An essential resource in my opinion.

This book is excellent for learning or reviewing organ skills; uses actual, common organist pieces for learning, not boring exercises like many books;

Speedy, on-time delivery from amazon

This is the finest universal organ method I have come across to date. I believe it is intended tfor the beginner or intermediate student. All aspects of playing the instrument are covered, with a focus on church service work and the issues dealing with that job.
I recommend it highly.

This is a typical self-help book: a lot of "therapy", that is to say mystifying nonsense and psychobabble. I had my suspicions immediately upon getting to the Introduction page: here we have an epigraph from one "Guru Nanak The First Sikh Guru"; goes like this [capitalisation preserved]: "Divine Music is heard in every soul, Continuous, resonant, self-sustaining". Boy, that's deep, that truly expresses ... something. OK, now, quick to the bibliography at the end: here my suspicions were further augmented by the presence of Coelho and Arundhati Roy among the sources. Intelligent people don't read this kind of stuff. OK, moving on to the bio blurb on the last page: a nice picture of the author here -- and a list of accomplishements worthy of a Benvenuto Cellini, including, among other things, not one, not two, but three Master's degrees -- in Journalism, Political Science, and Psychology. One wonders how this is possible and how meaningful all these are ... and in addition, the book is somewhat poorly written, at least for a Master in Journalism. Strangely, no music degrees are listed; this is unusual for someone teaching music (and who, in addition, had the time to obtain three unrelated Master's degrees).

A few specific examples of:

(1) Mystifying drivel, p. 27 "Picture a point of light at a spot in your abdomen and watch yourself breathing to that spot, lighting it up". That's good guidance! -- Deepak Chopra himself couldn't put this better.

(2) Strange grammar and usage, p. xiii, "As a teacher it became my goal to put all the components [...]". I can see HW Fowler spinning in his grave... More of that, p. xv, "This book contains the means to free yourself from [...] As you traverse the road ahead, please bring along ...". Travel, perhaps? Traverse would mean to cross the road; hardly the intended meaning. Page 41, "... notice the minimum amount of energy you need ...". Amount can be of sugar, but not of energy -- energy is an abstract noun. Master's in Journalism, huh.

(3) The book is full of pseudoscientific and/or cutesy little magic words (very typical for the bs-rich self-help genre) -- "Magic Carpet", "Eight-Point Sensory System", "Puppy Dog Hands", "Uh-oh Mindset", "At-one-With-the-Universe" this and that, "R/A Response", etc.

I'm being pedantic, I know.

The bottomline:

I'm not sure if Regent Press is a vanity publisher, but this book feels self-published. OK, tastes differ, fine: suppose you're curious, so check it out and if you find it helpful, god bless -- but do check it out. New-Age "therapeutic" types might like it... As for me, it's not enough (charitably) substance and too much formulaic tripe, so I'm sending it back.

---

PS. This review was originally posted on August 31, 2006, and since then accumulated 40 our of 67 helpful votes. Yesterday it mysteriously disappeared, along with the comments. Why? Well, think of it. Negative reviews on Amazon just have this tendency to suddenly and totally silently disappear. Strangely, this never happens to five-star ones. Anyway, here's a repost. Enjoy. (Comments, as always, are welcome, especially if relevant and cogently expressed.)

At the urging of a friend, I read this book expecting only to find things of interest to musicians. Instead, I learned easily mastered techniques for centering and focus that are useful for my non-musical life. And as for my life as a lay listener, it is forever changed by my new knowledge, compliments of Ms Elson's easy prose, of the many skills beyond those at the keyboard that a musician must develop - and CAN develop - to become an accomplished performer. A fascinating read.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I'm not much of a musician (I play a mean CD player, but that's about it). So, I was surprised when I found myself reading this book and translating a lot of the performance ideas to my athletics and work.
While this book is directed towards musicians, many of the techniques for preparing for a performance as well as the general guidelines of the book are applicable for others as well. I encourage you to read this book, not as a guide to how to play the piano, but as a guide to how to prepare for performances of any type.

As someone who has known Ms. Elson for several decades, I can attest to her pianistic artistry and her creative teaching. As an experienced piano teacher myself, I have found her ideas for performance preparation, including practice/preparation techniques and focussing techniques during performance, which draw upon many different sensory resources to be extremely helpful for both me and my students. A number of my students have sworn by it. What I appreciate about Margret is her ability to write a book that is both concise and yet rich in content, easily readable and humorous, yet effective in its step-by-step processes. She practices what she preaches by reaching the reader through many sensory approaches. Anyone who has heard her performances knows that she plays with exquisite taste, style and passion. I highly recommend this thoughtfully written book.

What I look for in an instructional manual are easy-to-follow instructions, personality, and at least one good tip that I can internalize for longterm use. Margret Elson's Passionate Practice succeeds on all three counts. As soon as the book arrived, I began working my way methodically through the various exercises and I found them all easy to understand, if sometimes tricky to do. Elson's humor and straightforward, encouraging language helped me to stay on task. What have I internalized, now that this book is tucked away among my Mozart and Beethoven piano music? A greater awareness of tension in my hands, not only when I'm at the piano, but when I'm talking on the phone or driving. As soon as I notice my hands clenched on the steering wheel, remembering Passionate Practice, I relax them. Ditto for that tough phone call--and when I soften my grip on the handset and breathe, the phone call usually gets easier. I loved Elson's technique for attacking problems with memorization and/or wrong notes when two sections of the music are only slightly different. The short version is that you get into the position of two statues that express the feeling of the two passages, and it's surprising how very different statues One and Two can turn out to be. After practicing my statues away from the piano, I find my knowledge of the music substantially changed when I return to the keyboard. For more detailed accounts of this and other techniques, I recommend you get your own copy of Passionate Practice.

It looks to me like the author has transcribed the ALTERNATE TAKE (or "Take 2") of Cross Road Blues in this book, not the original take like all the other songs.

Just an FYI.. for all you other pickers out there struggling with this book!

Whew! What an extensive work! I have only just made it through Kind Hearted woman.

If you purchase this you better be ready to woodshed a LOT!

!Quédate en casa trabajándote este libro y olvídate de ir a las 12 al Cruce de Caminos!, saldrás ganando. , August 8, 2008
By Javier Maria Perez Albert "Xavier Tijuana" (Valencia, Spain) - See all my reviews


Olvídate de frecuentar los cementerios a partir de las 12 de la noche, para emular a Bob Johnson. Déjate de acudir a los cruces de caminos para intercambiar riffs con los espíritus de Son House o Charlie Patton, o su amigo Willie Brown. La verdad está en este volumen. Con una precisión impresionante,(hay que tener un oido sobrenatural para escuchar ciertos timbres que aun apareciendo transcritos resultan imposibles de oir en las grabaciones de Robert Johnson) y una minuciosidad asombrosa, se transcriben nota-a-nota por orden cronológica de grabación los legendarios temas del más enigmático personaje de la historia del Blues. Las afinaciones empleadas por Johnson incluso la extraña afinación Add9 (La con 9ª añadida) que usó en un par de cortes.
Extraordinaria obra para estudiar a Robert Johnson. No hay nada mejor.

Excellent service. The book arrived within 10 days to my home in Spain, and in perfect condition thanks to the excellent packaging.

FYI: The picture on the cover (taken from a stmap) was altered by United State Postal Service, when Robert Johnson was recently put on a postage stamp. They removed the cigarette, not the author/publishers of this book.