The music and sounds of video games have become an inescapable part of our world. Not only do these sonic elements profoundly shape the experiences of billions of players every day, but also the soundscapes of games have stretched out from our living rooms to encompass spaces as diverse as pinball arcades, concert halls, museums, and classrooms across the globe. Research on game music and sound is equally diverse-a vibrant, innovative, and multifaceted field that incorporates approaches fr...

Whether social, cultural, or individual, the act of imagination always derives from a pre-existing context. For example, we can conjure an alien's scream from previously heard wildlife recordings or mentally rehearse a piece of music while waiting for a train. This process is no less true for the role of imagination in sonic events and artifacts. Many existing works on sonic imagination tend to discuss musical imagination through terms like compositional creativity or performance technique...

Whether social, cultural, or individual, the act of imagination always derives from a pre-existing context. For example, we can conjure an alien's scream from previously heard wildlife recordings or mentally rehearse a piece of music while waiting for a train. This process is no less true for the role of imagination in sonic events and artifacts. Many existing works on sonic imagination tend to discuss musical imagination through terms like compositional creativity or performance technique...

In Sonic Virtuality: Sound as Emergent Perception, authors Mark Grimshaw and Tom Garner introduce a novel theory that positions sound within a framework of virtuality. Arguing against the acoustic or standard definition of sound as a sound wave, the book builds a case for a sonic aggregate as the virtual cloud of potentials created by perceived sound. The authors build on their recent work investigating the nature and perception of sound as used in computer games and virtual envir...

The Recording, Mixing, and Mastering Reference Handbook provides an easy-to-read guide for music-making in the studio setting, from equipment fundamentals to recording and mixing almost any instrument. In six sections, lessons give a comprehensive introduction to microphone settings and techniques, audio processing and effects, controlling acoustics, and history lessons on songs recorded with a given technique. The second half of the handbook delves into background theory on micro...

Teach yourself how to play guitar with our easy acoustic guitar lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free audio demonstrating all examples. Hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band.***"Acoustic guitar for someone who knows nothing - that is me. I didn't even read music, now I am starting to." - David Wright [Amazon]Progressive Acoustic Guitar contains all you need to know to start learn...

How is the Beatles' "Help!" similar to Stravinsky's "Dance of the Adolescents?" How does Radiohead's "Just" relate to the improvisations of Bill Evans? And how do Chopin's works exploit the non-Euclidean geometry of musical chords? In this groundbreaking work, author Dmitri Tymoczko describes a new framework for thinking about music that emphasizes the commonalities among styles from medieval polyphony to contemporary rock. Tymoczko identifies five basic musical features that jointly contr...

Teach yourself how to play guitar with our easy slide guitar lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free audio demonstrating all examples. Hear how examples are played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band.***"I wanted to learn to play slide guitar and learn from a source that really teaches it well. I looked over quite a few books and then found this one. No other source is needed in my opinion. Plenty right here in this boo...

Teach yourself how to play piano with our easy blues piano lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free audio demonstrating all examples. Hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band.***"I knew the basics of keyboard, but I wanted to diversify my playing. This book is great for finding that blues sound you’ve been searching for." - blindmango66Progressive Blues Piano Method contains all you ne...

Theory is a six-letter dirty word to most musicians, but hey, musicians love dirty words, right? And just like all the other dirty words, theory is easy to learn and fun to use! After studying 'popular' and 'classical' music theory, Ray Harmony created a unique approach that he uses to compose his songs, which feature multi-platinum Grammy winners Serj Tankian (System of a Down), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), and many more. Ray Harmony is an award-winning music lecturer and multi...

Teach yourself how to play guitar with our easy guitar lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free guitar videos and audio demonstrating all examples. See and hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band. Also includes music score animation for easy music learning.***"Great, and a fun way to learn. Very good well written easy to follow book […] this book would suit both young and old." - Driver [Amaz...

In the spring of 1969, the inauspicious release of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica, a double-album featuring 28 stream-of-consciousness songs filled with abstract rhythms and guttural bellows, dramatically altered the pop landscape.Yet even if the album did cast its radical vision over the future of music, much of the record's artistic strength is actually drawn from the past. This book examines how Beefheart's incomparable opus, an album that div...