What (musical) book are you reading?

[MAJUSCULE]

Another tangential thread...

 

What are you reading these days? I've started reading for pleasure again over the past year, after having somewhat lost the habit through my university years, and it's been really nice, even if it's usually just a bit in the mornings.

 

Currently reading: A Natural History of the Piano: The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians - from Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between by Stuart Isacoff. Xmas gift from my brother who reads ravenously and constantly shops used bookstores and library sales. Really well written so far, and I've already learned some things (CPE Bach and I share a disdain for bad time! Some early pianos also had a second keyboard for your feet!)

 

I also just ordered Drumsville!: The Evolution of the New Orleans Beat by Robert H. Cataliotti to give to a friend, but it'll come with the caveat that I'll want to borrow it after he's done with it.

 

I imagine most musical reading will happen in the biographical/historical/critical worlds, but fiction is of course welcome. I read a lot of Roddy Doyle as a teenager.

[TommyS]

“Adventures in Modern Recording”.   Trevor Horn,,,,  fascinating read,,,

[octa]

"Kansas City Lightning - the Rise and Times of Charlie Parker" -Stanley Crouch (it's taking awhile to get through Ch. 1, but am enjoying it)

 

got David Crosby's autobiography in the queue. I hear it's a wild one. 

[JamPro]

I'm reading Effortless Mastery by Kenny Warner. 

 

I have given up on Jaco (Bill Milkowski) (about Jaco Pastorius).  It reads like a fan-zine: every other sentence an over-the-top breathless rave of Pastorius.

[MAJUSCULE]

I've meant to read Effortless Mastery for a while now, I think I may even own a copy... Also The Inner Game of Tennis, made no less interesting by the fact that I enjoy the sport as well.

 

I read a biography of George Jones earlier this year, written by Charlene Montgomery, his good friend and Peanutt Montgomery's wife. Yeah, not very well written and at times a little too forgiving of George and his, shall we say, antics. But certainly an interesting window into their lives and the country industry at the time. A pretty quick read, thankfully.

[mauriziodececco]

"Nove vite e dieci blues" an auto biography of Mauro Pagani, a great italian musicians and producer; he was an early member of the Premiata Forneria Marconi, an italian prog group that was known internationally back in the 70s and 80s; he was the composer behind the Fabrizio De André "Crueza de ma" that was (imho) one of the most interesting records in Italy in the 80s, and more recently producer of the two Malia records by Massimo Ranieri, again imho a great interpretation in a Jazz key of Napoletan classics.

OK, the book is Italian, limited audience here (but you can listen to the records he worked in :).

 

Maurizio

[D. Gauss]

[Docbop]

Currently I'm reading  Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by dan Charnas.     Dilla was such a major influence in Hip-Hop with his Drunk Funk beats.   I'm still in  the beginning of the book and the author is trying to explain time to the non-musician reader, but hope it will get past that and getting into all the groups Dilla worked with and still influence today.  

 

 

[Ivan May]

 

If you're not super familiar with Heart, you might want to read this book. Written by the sisters themselves, the book talks about their successes as a female led rock band and their childhood, as well as the infighting. But if you're a Heart fan like I am, please read it.

[Stokely]

I'm honestly not sure I've ever read a music-related book, not for ages at least. I'm pretty voracious when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy though   I'm way more into audiobooks these days, provided they have good voice actors.  A good voice actor (or multiple) adds a lot to fiction IMO.  Some of this might be that my eyesight is terrible and I can't find glasses half the time...but it's also kind of convenient to do dishes or take a walk and listen to a book.  Not to mention driving, which I thankfully don't do much of anymore.

I do watch instructional youtube vids, mostly on logic pro tips these days.  Holy cow is it easier to find answers about DAWs/sequencers compared to olden times...I remember we tried calling Opcode when we had some kind of issue!

[DJkeys]

Reading Roger Daltrey's Autobiography right now-

 

-dj

[drawback]

4 hours ago, MAJUSCULE said:

I read a biography of George Jones earlier this year, written by Charlene Montgomery, his good friend and Peanutt Montgomery's wife. Yeah, not very well written and at times a little too forgiving of George and his, shall we say, antics. But certainly an interesting window into their lives and the country industry at the time. A pretty quick read, thankfully.

Tangentially, then…  the recent HBO series George & Tammy is superb. Apparently Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon did their own vocals, live. 
 

Back on track, the Robbie Robertson autobiography, Testimony, is a good read.

[Tusker]

Some instrument manuals (alas). Some scores. And Piston. And Rimsky Korsakov. But the material is dense and I am slow. 🤦‍♂️

 

 

 

 

[16251]

I bought Jazz Masters of the 40's used, years ago. I did recently read the chapter on pianists. What a time for jazz.

 

[ksoper]

[marino]

Gosh, I think I have never read so many books in so little time. I'm writing this book on electronic music history, trying to document myself as thoroughly as possible - so I've digested many 4/500-page books in recent months.

A quick selection of my favorites:

 

Fred K. Prieberg - Musica ex machina

Joel Chadabe - Electric sound: the past and promise of electronic music

Thomas Patteson - Instruments for new music: sound, technology and modernism

Curtis Roads - Composing electronic music: a new aestethic

Thom Holmes - Electronic and experimental music

Reynold Weidenaar - Magic music from the Telharmonium

Albert Glinsky - Theremin: ether music and espionage

Jean Laurendau - Maurice Martenot, luthier de l'électronique
 

[NewImprov]

I backed a kickstarter to do a reprint of this classic text, and got the electronic version a few weeks back, have been working my way through it. It's amazing! I found the first edition at the public library when I was a teen, read it before actually playing a synth. I've had a shoddy, photocopy of a photocopy version for years (bought directly from the publisher at a premium). This new repress was done with Strange's family, and is absolutely wonderful. Hoping to get the paper edition in the next few months.

 

[NewImprov]

1 hour ago, marino said:

Gosh, I think I have never read so many books in so little time. I'm writing this book on electronic music history, trying to document myself as thoroughly as possible - so I've digested many 4/500-page books in recent months.

A quick selection of my favorites:

 

Wow, quite the reading list, I've read the Chadabe, Holmes and Roads, all are dense! I bet your history will be quite interesting, keep us informed!

[Sam Mullins]

The two I would recommend are:

 

- “Aja” by Don Breithaupt
 

- “How to write one great song” by Jeff Tweedy

 

(His memoir is also great)

 

[David Emm]

* "Electri_City: The Dusseldorf School of Electronic Music" by Rudi Esch

 

It describes early "Krautrock" in general, from the loose 1970s-mid-1980s. Neu!, Harmonia, Kraftwerk and many others are addressed. Its a bit of a turgid read, but its also a satisfying spread of the various names and bands. High point: seeing who influenced who and when, as it was all developing. 

 

* "Chopin" by Adam Zamoyski

 

A compact but engaging biography that contains plenty of Chopin's low points, occasional bad habits and notable achievements. You get a good sense of the madness such musicians underwent, such as riding herd over students and publishers.

[GRollins]

Walter Piston--Harmony

 

I won't bother you with how erratic my musical education has been, just understand that this is a laughably out-of-sequence book for me to attempt at this time, but hey, I'm brave. I'm about half-way through. The chapter on Harmonic Rhythm seemed to me to be rather opaque--to the point of being useless--but the rest of it has been pretty good. It's slow going because I've been hammered incessantly by a dying house and one of my sons has got me reading the Pendragon series by MacHale. Assuming that I can get things settled (if you listen hard enough, you can hear the gods chuckling as they quaff mugs of mead and plan their next chess moves to thwart me...), I intend to move on to Piston's Counterpoint, then Orchestration. At the rate my life is flowing, it'll only take me another twenty years to knock those bad boys out. I've got some other musical books on hand that I'd like to read, but I'll have to live quite a lengthy life to even joke about where they'll be in the reading queue.

 

Grey

[Losendoskeys]

Greg Lakes autobiography.

Oh, what a lucky man he was 😁

[Motif88]

Keith Emerson - 

https://www.keithemersonbook.com/

 

 

[Piktor]

On 1/26/2023 at 9:22 AM, MAJUSCULE said:

I've meant to read Effortless Mastery for a while now, I think I may even own a copy... Also The Inner Game of Tennis, made no less interesting by the fact that I enjoy the sport as well.

 

I read a biography of George Jones earlier this year, written by Charlene Montgomery, his good friend and Peanutt Montgomery's wife. Yeah, not very well written and at times a little too forgiving of George and his, shall we say, antics. But certainly an interesting window into their lives and the country industry at the time. A pretty quick read, thankfully.

Many artists' biographies seem to spend many pages on their downward spirals (Art Pepper, Jaco Pastorius, Keith Moon, etc.) and over time I have become disinterested in those stories. Life can suck. Addictions suck. Selfish decisions suck. Okay, okay, I get it.  In this regard, Bill Bruford's biography stands apart. If I recall correctly, his autobiography presents less of a chronological sequence of life events and more a reflection on events and some cool thoughts about music (and Robert Fripp!). I think that I'm going to read the book a second time. I can usually tell how much I love a book by the number of pages I dog ear. BB was able to express some feelings about music that I could not put into words myself. 

(OT - My favorite recent music biography is Beautiful Scars by Tom Wilson, a Canadian songwriter.  He wrote on his quest to develop his song writing and discover his Indigenous roots. I was not too familiar with Wilson's music, but I loved the book. There is some downward spiral, but also redemption. Reading many parts of it gives me the sense of reading poetry.)

 

I haven't read the Inner Game of Tennis, but I did read some of The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green. I don't think that I finished it, probably because it did not resonate with me at the time. Effortless Mastery DID resonate with me at the time that I read it (twice). While I did not apply all of the book's concepts and practices, I do think that there were some ideas around centering and practices for shutting out thoughts of audience expectations and personal expectations that can get in the way of performing and creating music. While I do not suffer from stage anxiety, I found those teachings quite useful. 

 

Still working on

- Metaphors for the Musician: Perspectives from a Jazz Pianist by Randy Halberstadt

- Songwriters on Song Writing by Paul Zollo. 

- Maybe most impactful: various books of poetry - As part of my aspiration to become a better song writer, I took the advice of a teacher who recommended the practice of absorbing a poem by a recognized artist everyday. He suggested reading the piece multiple times and reading the work aloud at least once. The goal is to soak in a sense of how writers set off fireworks and images in your brain. Imagery, rhythm, verbs, etcetera. Just think of the best lines in great songs. While I am a not daily reader, I do make the effort. We are all beginners at something. I can't pretend to be much good at fully comprehending guys like T.S. Eliot, let alone write like Joni Mitchell, but there are times when a single line from a poem that i read can set off a small explosion in my mind and inspire some progress in my own attempts.

 

 

 

 

[nursers]

Like @Stokely I love a good audiobook - there's some great music non-fiction audiobooks out there. Waiting to be read / listened to are Bono's biography (which I believe is excellent  even if you're not a Bono fan) and Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars

[Mike Davis]

7 hours ago, Piktor said:

- Maybe most impactful: various books of poetry - As part of my aspiration to become a better song writer, I took the advice of a teacher who recommended the practice of absorbing a poem by a recognized artist everyday. He suggested reading the piece multiple times and reading the work aloud at least once. The goal is to soak in a sense of how writers set off fireworks and images in your brain. Imagery, rhythm, verbs, etcetera. Just think of the best lines in great songs. While I am a not daily reader, I do make the effort. We are all beginners at something. I can't pretend to be much good at fully comprehending guys like T.S. Eliot, let alone write like Joni Mitchell, but there are times when a single line from a poem that i read can set off a small explosion in my mind and inspire some progress in my own attempts.

— This is outstanding! We listen to great music if we want to play better, and in the same sense, we read great writing if we want to write better.

 

 

[uhoh7]

I've been working on three music books for quite some time now. I started playing in the early 80's but never "Classical" music...too many notes  However the recent unearthing of historical teaching methods and theory has led me into a daily quest and I've been reading a lot of general history as background too, which makes it quite interesting. 

 

 

Above is an actual workbook from the era, and numerous translations of teaching methods of the time. I'm proceeding like one of Bach's newbies in 1730. You get a baseline with bassocontinuo notation, and you get the soprano. Your mission is to fill in the middle. The huge bestseller by far, was "Grundriss des Generalbasses" Basics of Thoroughbass (1783), by JC Kellner, which is really fantastic. It went through many reprints. For $20 you can get a PDF from Remes and these videos explain how that book was used:

 

 

I'm am also using this book, which goes at the issue from a different perspective, starting with Bach's 2 5 1 cadences, and outlining the building blocks of 18th century music which you need to get fluent with, and how to make plans for an historical improvisation. Really invaluable, this book is now well known at Juilliard School, and Mortensen has a brand new more advanced book which I will eventually get to, if I live long enough

 

 

Here is an excellent interview, in depth, with Mortensen:

 

 

These works and the new "school" inspired by Robert Gjerdingen in 2007, combined with our incredible access to "new" composers of the 18th century on Youtube, really have enriched my journey at age 65. Knock on wood, I seem to be healthy, and I'm practicing several hours a day, so maybe I'll get past the baby steps of figured bass.

 

I've always needed music in front of me, for reference, though I've understood Jazz improv and worked on my scales and progressions for many years. I was good enough to entertain at a cocktail party, but too undisciplined for proper gigging. I started keyboard around age 28, way too late for excellence, usually, but not too late to have a very good time

[Joe Muscara]

I literally went to an actual bookstore yesterday and one of the real, physical books I picked up (I resisted many!) was Miles: The Autobiography. I found a preview of it online and loved that so I had to get the rest.

 

I'm in a book club with alumni of my university and that led me to two fiction but music-related books. One was The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb, and the other was The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton. The former was a selection, the latter didn't make it but I read it anyway. I liked them both though there were a few details in Opal & Nev that made me think the writer wasn't a musician. OTOH, Slocumb is and while he clearly didn't do all the things the protagonist did, there are some direct parallels to his own life and he explains those in the afterword.

 

Kenny Werner published a new book last year, Becoming the Instrument. Personally, I like it better than Effortless Mastery. I think it flows better, and he has more experience with the subject after having taught it to so many in the intervening 25 or however many years.

[sagetunes]

https://www.amazon.com/Testimony-Robbie-Robertson/dp/0307889785  Robbie Robertson

 

https://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690/ref=sr_1_2?gclid=CjwKCAiAuOieBhAIEiwAgjCvchPtl12RVbZnKJ0zBH6CotkgCuL9gw9OJDs-bjPYxOAJ_DGNynbOIRoC8LMQAvD_BwE&hvadid=580699395754&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9002253&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8139919324317234130&hvtargid=kwd-295940815653&hydadcr=29568_14563522&keywords=geoff+emerick+book&qid=1675286690&sr=8-2   Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick

 

https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Man-Recording-Rolling-Zeppelin/dp/0147516579  Glyn Johns

 

[JohnH]

Bought and started reading  the Sequential Circuits book after Dave died and the book was mentioned here.  It's excellent. Have gotten it out of a back room and will start reading it again. It's really good. I get distracted and sometimes don't finish books when I first get them and always have so many going at once.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Prophet-Silicon-Valley-Complete-Sequential/dp/1512198323