Solkattu, the spoken rhythms and patterns of hand-clapping used by all musicians and dancers in the classical traditions of South India, is a subject of worldwide interest—but until now there has not been a textbook for students new to the practice. Designed especially for classroom use in a Western setting, the manual begins with rudimentary lessons in the simplest South Indian tala, or metric cycle, and proceeds step-by-step into more challenging material. The book then provides lessons in the eight-beat adi tala, arranged so that by the end, students will have learned a full percussion piece they can perform as an ensemble. Solkattu Manual includes web links to video featuring performances of all 150 lessons, and full performances of all three of the outlined small-ensemble pieces. Ideal for courses in world music and general musicianship, as well as independent study. Book lies flat for easy use.

David Nelson wrote and compiled Konnakkol Manual to assist teaching an advanced course in the rhythmic compositions of Karnatak (South Indian) music. This new instructional book picks up where his previous book, Solkattu Manual, left off. It includes advanced exercises for developing control of odd pulse divisions, such as three and five notes per beat. There is a chapter on the sources of Karnatak tāas (meters), and another on the evolution of rhythmic compositions—told through the work of three generations of musicians. The main body of the book comprises full tani āvartanams (spoken percussion solos) in three tāas, together with instructions for practice, and Solkattu notation. Nelson created 150 instructional videos to accompany the text. They are accessible at www.weslpress.org/readers-companions/.

Most classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today’s music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear and complete guide that will enable future solfege teachers and students to use these techniques and their methodology to greatly improve their rhythmical skills. An accompanying website of audio examples helps to explain each technique. For examples of composed and improvised pieces by students who have studied this book, as well as concerts by highly acclaimed karnatic musicians, please copy this link to your browser: http://www.contemporary-music-through-non-western-techniques.com/pages/1587-video-recordings

The reggae sound system has exerted a major influence on music and popular culture. Out on the streets of inner city Kingston, Jamaica, every night, sound systems stage dancehall sessions for the crowd to share the immediate, intensive and immersive visceral pleasures of sonic dominance. Sonic Bodies concentrates on the skilled performance of the crewmembers responsible for this signature sound of Jamaican music: the audio engineers designing, building and fine-tuning the hugely powerful "sets" of equipment; the selectors choosing the music tracks to play; and MCs(DJs) on the mic hyping up the crowd. Julian Henriques proposes that these dancehall "vibes" are taken literally as the periodic motion of vibrations. He offers an analysis of how a sound system operates - at auditory, corporeal and sociocultural frequencies. Sonic Bodies formulates a fascinating critique of visual dominance and the dualities inherent in ideas of image, text or discourse. This innovative book questions the assumptions that reason resides only in a disembodied mind, that communication is an exchange of information, and that meaning is only ever representation.

This book presents the latest computational models of rhythm and meter that are based on number theory, combinatorics and pattern matching. Two computational models of rhythm and meter are evaluated: The first one explores a relatively new field in Mathematics, namely Combinatorics on Words, specifically Christoffel Words and the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, together with integer partitions. The second model uses filtered Farey Sequences in combination with specific weights that are assigned to inter-onset ratios. This work is assessed within the context of the current state of the art of tempo tracking and computational music transcription. Furthermore, the author discusses various representations of musical rhythm, which lead to the development of a new shorthand notation that will be useful for musicologists and composers. Computational Models of Rhythm and Meter also contains numerous investigations into the timing structures of human rhythm and metre perception carried out within the last decade. Our solution to the transcription problem has been tested using a wide range of musical styles, and in particular using two recordings of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould. The technology is capable of modelling musical rhythm and meter by using Farey Sequences, and by detecting duration classes in a windowed analysis, which also detects the underlying tempo. The outcomes represent human performances of music as accurate as possible within Western score notation.