Recording Classical Music presents the fundamental principles of digitally recording and editing acoustic music in ambient spaces, focusing on stereo microphone techniques that will help musicians understand how to translate "live" environments into recorded sound.The book covers theory and the technical aspects of recording from sound source to delivery: the nature of soundwaves and their behavior in rooms, microphone types and the techniques of recording in stereo, proxi...

Musicians in the 16th century had a vastly different understanding of the structure and performance of music than today's performers. In order to transform inexpressively notated music into passionate declamation, Renaissance singers treated scores freely, and it was expected that each would personalize the music through various modifications, which included ornamentation. Their role was one of musical re-creation rather than of simple interpretation--the score represented a blueprint, not...

The legendary critic and author of Mystery Train "ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).Unlike previous versions of rock 'n' roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies rock 'n' roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, in...

The First Time I Heard Joy Division / New Order is Part I in an ongoing series where musicians and writers tell their stories of first hearing the music of an iconic artist or band.  In this first volume, forty-five different musicians and writers remember their initial experiences hearing the seminal post-punk UK band Joy Division and/or its offshoot, New Order. Contributors to the Joy Division / New Order edition include musicians such as Adam Franklin (Swervedriver); David Lewis...

Alan Cross is the preeminent chronicler of popular music.Here he provides a history of Patti Smith, Godmother of Punk."The High Punk Priestess of New York" looks at her influence and is adapted from the audiobook of the same name.

Though Nevermind was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them - and the grunge phenomenon - internationally, In Utero has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band members themselves. Instead of sticking to the "grunge pop" formula that made Nevermind so palatable to the mainstream, Nirvana chose instead to challenge their audience, producing an album that the band's creative force, Kurt Cobain, said truly ma...

The First Time I Heard The Smiths is Part IV in an ongoing series where musicians and writers tell their stories of first hearing the music of an iconic artist or band. In this fourth volume (following the first three installments, which covered Joy Division/New Order, Cocteau Twins, and David Bowie), thirty-seven different musicians and writers remember their initial experiences with hearing the legendary Smiths, the influential 1980s alternative-rock band from Manchester, UK that featur...

It's October 1977, and the Rolling Stones are in a Paris recording studio. They're under siege. Keith Richards's legal troubles after his arrest for heroin possession threaten the band's future, and the broad consensus among rock aficionados is that the band will never again reach the heights of Exile on Main Street.But Mick Jagger is writing lyrics inspired by the year he has just spent in New York City, where he was hanging out with the punks at CBGB and with the glitterati at St...

Bel canto, or 'beautiful singing,' remains one of the most elusive performance styles vocalists strive to master. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, composers routinely left the final shaping of recitatives, arias, and songs to performers, and singers treated scores freely so that inexpressively notated music could be turned into passionate declamation. In other words, vocalists saw their role more as one of re-creation than of simple interpretation. Familiarity...

Simultaneously the memoir of a famed composer, conductor, and music educator, and an important historical sourcebook on the American musical scene during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the autobiography of Gunther Schuller chronicles the first thirty-five years of this multifaceted and expansive figure's life and work.Schuller began composing music at an early age and joined the Cincinnati Symphony as its principal French horn player at seventeen. Since then he has...

Choral Repertoire is the definitive and comprehensive one-volume presentation of the canon of the Western choral tradition. Designed for practicing conductors and directors, students and teachers of choral music, amateur and professional singers, scholars, and interested vocal enthusiasts, it is an account of the complete choral output of the most significant composers of this genre throughout history. Organized by era (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Mode...

For a few decades now, They Might Be Giants' album Flood has been a beacon (or at least a nightlight) for people who might rather read than rock out, who care more about science fiction than Slayer, who are more often called clever than cool. Neither the band's hip origins in the Lower East Side scene nor Flood's platinum certification can cover up the record's singular importance at the geek fringes of culture.Flood's significance to this audience helps ...