This book is a useful guide for adult learners who are thinking of taking up a musical instrument for the first time or who want to pick up from where they left off as children. The author helps the reader to answer such questions as which instrument they should choose, the level of difficulty involved in learning and the likely costs. The book discusses the various benefits of taking up music for fun and general well-being. The author provides practical information about the most commonly taught instruments as well as some of the more unusual ones, and includes useful contact information to help readers to take their interest further. This book will help all aspiring musicians to make a truly informed choice.

In the age of digital music it seems striking that so many of us still want to produce music concretely with our bodies, through the movement of our limbs, lungs and fingers, in contact with those materials and objects which are capable of producing sounds. The huge sales figures of musical instruments in the global market, and the amount of time and effort people of all ages invest in mastering the tools of music, make it clear that playing musical instruments is an important phenomenon in human life. By combining the findings made in music psychology and performative ethnomusicology, Marko Aho shows how playing a musical instrument, and the pleasure musicians get from it, emerges from an intimate dialogue between the personally felt body and the sounding instrument. An introduction to the general aspects of the tactile resources of musical instruments, musical style and the musician is followed by an analysis of the learning process of the regional kantele style of the Perho river valley in Finnish Central Ostrobothnia.

This is the first book that teaches piano practice methods systematically, based on mylifetime of research, and containing the teachings of Combe, material from over 50 pianobooks, hundreds of articles, and decades of internet research and discussions with teachersand pianists. Genius skills are identified and shown to be teachable; learning piano can raiseor lower your IQ. Past widely taught methods based on false assumptions are exposed;substituting them with efficient practice methods allows students to learn piano and obtainthe necessary education to navigate in today's world and even have a second career. See http://www.pianopractice.org/

Guitarists are athletes. Playing the guitar requires the skilled use of your entire body. Unfortunately, most books on playing guitar focus exclusively on what notes to play, and give little or no attention to how they should be made. This leaves guitarists with a problem. Misunderstanding the mechanics of movement leads to frustration, because it makes learning new techniques harder, limits your abilities when techniques don't work like they should, and causes injury when unhealthy technique wears down your body. The solution is simple: Anatomy of Guitar Playing is your guide to moving well, learning faster and avoiding injury. When you understand the mechanics of moving, you will know for yourself how techniques work. Anatomy of Guitar Playing is both a description of how the body works, as well as a prescription for how to move better, taking you through what you need to know about the body in order to use it more effectively. It covers the anatomy and physics of fretting and picking, how to set up and adjust the guitar to your body and many other important topics. Through learning about the proper use of the body at the guitar, you will be able to learn faster, play with better facility and reduce injury.

"The rhythmic, onomatopoeic text dances across exuberant watercolors with lots of movement. This celebration of a child’s agency in choosing a means of artistic expression strikes just the right note." --Kirkus "A delightful offering for reading aloud, especially during music-themed storytimes." --School Library Journal From New York Times bestselling author Chris Barton and new illustrator Louis Thomas comes a fun, rhythmic picture book about finding the music that is perfect for you! A boy who loves to make noise gets to pick only one instrument (at his parents urging) in a music store, but there is too much to choose from! There’s triangles and sousaphones! There’s guitars and harpsichords! Bagpipes and cellos and trombones! How can he find the one that is just right for him out of all those options?

This ingenious book allows children to hear over 70 musical instruments from around the world. Simply take one of the 4 cards (each features 9 words and pictures on each side) out of the envelope and insert it into the slot as instructed. Press 'go' and then press a picture to hear how the instrument sounds. This delightful book is an ideal way to introduce young children to the sound of a wide variety of instruments (both familiar and less so) from home, school, bands and orchestras, as well a selection of instruments from early music history and around the world. A brief description tells you how each group of instruments is sounded, while lively illustrations show what the individual instruments look like and how they are played. Excellent sound quality and charming snippets of music give the listener an instant and memorable encounter with each instrument.

Press on the buttons to discover the sounds of eight different instruments!