The art of hearing: Aural skills for improvisers Review

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(More customer reviews)I can't say enough good things about this book.
It is a comprehensive ear training program designed for jazz musicians and includes a CD full of exercises from the text. It covers all the important scales, chords and progressions found in jazz.
In addition to the standard ear training topics (solfege, intervals, arpeggios, inversions, etc) it also helps you to identify the chords and scales that are important in jazz rather than just the ones more relevant to classical music. Another great feature of this book is that it provides a detailed study of jazz rhythms and articulation, providing a sort of scat vocabulary to use which is far better than the more conventional ways of counting. It even provides ways of articulating some of the special effects like doits and shakes.
Traditional ear training books are often quite dry and uninteresting to work through. This book is actually fun. It is clearly written and very much focussed on jazz melodies.
Ear training is definitely benficial. With enough practice, it will allow you to look at a piece of music and hear it playing in your head. Conversely, if you hear a piece of music, you will recognise what is going on in the tune. If you are able to accurately pre-hear a piece of written music, you are less likely to make mistakes like cracked notes, it will work wonders for your transcribing, and if you are an improviser, it will help you to accurately transfer the melodies you hear in your head to your instrument.
This book really works.

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Improving "aural skills" consists of learning to discriminate one sound or group of sounds from another. This book addresses rhythmic articulations and syllables, intervals, chord patterns, chord/scales, hearing melodies, and guide-tone lines. The book is divided into two levels of difficulty for advancing students.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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What to Listen for in Music Review

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(More customer reviews)THIS IS A BOOK FOR PEOPLE AT ALL LEVELS - LAYMAN, COMPOSER, OR ADVANCED MUSIC LOVER. "Why should one have to learn or need guidance on how to listen to what one is hearing?" is the question that William Schuman asks in his Preface. "The answer is simple. Listening to music is a skill that is acquired through experience and learning. Knowledge enhances enjoyment."
What makes What to Listen for in Music so invaluable is that it is the ONLY book on musical appreciation written by a GREAT COMPOSER. "This is a composer's book," Aaron Copland states. "Given the chance, every composer would like to know two very important things about anyone who takes himself seriously as a music lover...1. Are you hearing everything that is going on? [and] 2. Are you really being sensitive to it?"
The only shortcoming of this book is that it should be taken as part of a class to make sure that one gets everything out of it. It would be great if it came with a CD of all the examples to which Copland makes reference. However, each chapter does end with a list of "recommended listening." To make specific points, Copland does include sheet music (but I didn't read this book sitting next to my piano). However, these problems are minimal, considering we live in an age of the cheap CDs and music downloads.
Copland covers EVERY aspect of music, starting with "how we listen," - on the sensuous plane, the expressive plane, and the sheerly musical plane. He then goes on to explain to us the Four Elements of Music - Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, and Tone Color. We find out about all the musical instruments, their history and classifications. We find out about all the genres in music - Sectional Form, Variation Form, Fugal Form, Sonata Form, Free Form. Did you know that Sonata Form includes symphonies as well? And that symphonies grew out of operatic overtures?
This is a book that bears re-reading. A lot of technical jargon gets bandied about and, although Copland does his best to explain it all, it still gets a tad confusing. I advise reading this book, listening to a LOT of music, and then reading it again. I know my own knowledge and appreciation of music has grown from reading it. Now I DO have an idea of the nuances I should be listening for in a Mozart piano concerto.

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