Plucked instruments Books

Book SynopsisIn this beautifully illustrated book, a master luthier and a painter tell their story of the creation of a musical instrument. The Uke Book Illustrated clearly explains every step of the process through concise notes and informative drawings in the format of a graphic novel. This artistically conceived and executed book reveals the practical aspects of an ancient trade, showing of the preparation and selection of materials, assembly and construction, the tools and jigs, and how to approach the work. Anyone who wants to use this book as a guide or manual will be able to proceed chapter by chapter and drawing by drawing during the realization of his or her own instrument. Anyone wanting to gain insight into how a musical instrument is made will appreciate the clear and informative line drawings and the beautiful watercolor illustrations that fill every page. In the end, this book is not just for crafters and woodworkers, but for musicians, artists, and anyone who enjoy a good

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Book SynopsisOver 30 of the greatest jazz songs ever, specially arranged for ukulele. Includes full lyrics, strumming patterns and ukulele chord diagrams.Trade ReviewI just want to say how much I have enjoyed your arrangements in The Ukulele Jazz Playlist (Purple Book) that I bought in France last year. The songs are great, the chords are great and the arrangements are excellent. The best uke book I've seen. Please do another! Dan T-J Table of ContentsAin't Misbehavin (Fats Waller); Autumn Leaves (Nat King Cole); Bewitched (Ella Fitzgerald); Come Away With Me (Norah Jones); Cry Me A River (Julie London); Embraceable You (Dinah Washington); Fascinating Rhythm (Jamie Cullum); A Foggy Day (Michael Bublé); Hit The Road Jack (Ray Charles); Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't My Baby (Louis Jordan); It Had To Be You (Frank Sinatra); Let There Be Love (Nat King Cole); Let's Call The Whole Thing Off (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong); Let's Face The Music And Dance (Diana Krall); The Look Of Love (Hal David and Burt Bacharach); Lullaby Of Birdland (Sarah Vaughan); Mad About The Boy (Dinah Washington); Moondance (Van Morrison); My Baby Just Cares For Me (Nina Simone); My Funny Valentine (Chet Baker); Someone To Watch Over Me (Ella Fitzgerald); Stormy Weather (Lena Horne); Straighten Up And Fly Right (Nat King Cole); Summertime (Billie Holiday); They Can't Take That Away From Me (Bing Crosby & Peggy Lee); Too Darn Hot (Mel Torme); The Way You Look Tonight (Fred Astaire); What A Difference A Day Made (Dinah Washington); What A Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong); When You're Smiling (Louis Armstrong); Yeh Yeh (Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames)

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Book SynopsisThe word sensei in Japanese literally means “one who came before,” but that’s not what Janet Pocorobba’s teacher wanted to be called. She used her first name, Western-style. She wore a velour Beatles cap and leather jacket, and she taught foreigners, in English, the three-stringed shamisen, an instrument that fell out of tune as soon as you started to play it. Vexed by the music and Sensei’s mission to upend an elite musical system, Pocorobba, on the cusp of thirty, gives up her return ticket home to become a lifelong student of her teacher. She is eventually featured in Japan Cosmo as one of the most accomplished gaijin, “outside people,” to play the instrument. Part memoir, part biography of her Sensei, The Fourth String looks back on the initial few years of that apprenticeship, one that Janet’s own female English students advised her was “wife training,” steeped in obedience, loyalty, and duty. Even with her maverick teacher, Janet is challenged by group hierarchies, obscure traditions, and the tricky spaces of silence in Japanese life. Anmoku ryokai, Sensei says to explain: “We have to understand without saying.” By the time Janet finds out this life might not be for her, she is more at home in the music than the Japanese will allow. For anyone who has had a special teacher, or has lost themselves in another world, Janet Pocorobba asks questions about culture, learning, tradition, and self. As Gish Jen has said of The Fourth String, “What does it mean to be taught? To be transformed?”Trade Review"The Fourth String reconfigures the typical Japan fish-out-of-water memoir into a meditation on music and mastery, relationships, culture and narrative." —The Japan Times "Sometimes Janet and Sensei argue, sometimes Sensei favors other students over Janet, but each encounter offers a little more insight into music, Japanese culture, and into Janet herself." —Education About Asia "This memoir provides a picture of the ever present tension between the traditional and modern in Japan. It also provides great detail on the learning and playing of Japanese traditional music." —The Asian Review of Books "In this candid memoir, Pocorobba recounts the years she spent in devotion to her teacher and to learning the intracacies of the shamisen—a traditional Japanese three string instrument famously difficult to play." —The Pacific Rim Review of Books “Moving and provocative, The Fourth String charts a profound journey into the heart of another culture. What does it mean to teach and be taught? What does it mean to transform and be transformed? Are teacher and student finally, above all, comrades? This memoir --part biography, part autobiography, part portrait of an alchemy -- is as transmuting as its subject, and a joy to read.” —Gish Jen, author of The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap "A detailed and intimate portrayal of the relationship between two women." —Hippocampus Magazine "Impressively well written with a distinctive narrative storytelling style, The Fourth String is an inherently fascinating, thoughtful, and compelling read." —The Midwest Book Review "Elegantly spare yet detail rich, The Fourth String is a beautifully crafted, moving memoir." —Alexandra Johnson, author of The Hidden Writer, recipient of PEN/Jerard Fund Award Citation for nonfiction. "An insightful and deeply generous book written by a woman as open to surprises within herself as she is to the revelations she discovers about her temporarily adoptive country of Japan. Janet Pocorobba is by turns curious, funny, sensitive, and always, always brave." —Pamela Petro, travel writer and author of Travels in an Old Tongue, The Slow Breath of Stone, and Sitting Up With the Dead "The Fourth String is a piercingly insightful memoir of a young woman's search for herself by diving into the demanding traditional art form of the shamisen in a country renowned for keeping outsiders at arms' length." —Liza Dalby, author of Geisha, Kimono, Tale of Murasaki, and others "The Fourth String transports you into the exquisite minutiae of thoughtful, aesthetically oriented "gaijin" life in Japan." —Leonard Koren, author of Wabi- Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, Gardens of Gravel and Sand, and others "An eloquent and insightful story about Japanese music and culture. Her observations shed light on our longing for beauty and purpose." —Kyoko Mori, author of the memoir Yarn: Remembering the Way Home "With lyrical prose and elegant precision, Pocorobba tells a gripping story of teacher and student, practice and dreams, and the ways we listen to our own music and discover our true self." —Hester Kaplan, author, Unravished, The Tell, The Edge of Marriage, and others "Exquisitely written … takes us on a spiritual quest in a new country and culture, … the soul of a place whose past secures hope and whose present yearns for modernity." —Rachel Manley, author of Drumblair trilogy and winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Literature "The intimate, evocative world unveiled in Janet Pocorobba’s The Fourth String is a compelling place to visit... An effortless read by a writer who manages the impossible – capturing the ephemeral." —Elizabeth Dowd, Noh Training Project US, Producing Director

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Book SynopsisThe saz or bağlama, a generic name for long-necked lutes in Turkey, plays an important role in the Turkish musical culture. It forms the core of all folk musical ensembles and orchestras and is a popular instrument in the arabesque, entertainment, and pop music. It is the instrument par excellence in Turkish music education and in the religious rituals of the levi and Bektaşi. The saz or bağlama can also be heard as a solo instrument on international concert stages. Acknowledging the instrument’s unique place in Turkey, The Turkish Long-Necked Lute Saz or Bağlama, an updated and revised edition of the Dutch book Turkse Langhalsluit of bağlama, mainly focusses on its cultural and historical background while briefly discussing various saz or bağlama types and their construction, tuning, and playing techniques.Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements ; General Introduction ; Chapter-1 Historical Background ; Tanbûr, Saz, Bağlama ; Early and Late Antiquity ; The Spike Lute ; The Necked Lute ; The Sâsânian Tunbûr ; The Umayyad and Abbâsid Tanbûrs ; The Rum-Seljuks ; The Anatolian Long-Necked Lutes ; The Ottoman Empire ; Court and City ; The Saz in the Work of European Artists and Travellers ; The Saz in Anatolian Folk Music ; The Saz in the şık, Alevî, and Bektaşî Tradition ; The Diffusion of the Saz ; The Republic of Turkey ; The Saz and the Establishment of a National Musical Culture ; The Development of the Contemporary Bağlama ; Towards a New Generation of Bağlamas ; Trends in Bağlama Performance ; Migration and the Bağlama in Western Europe ; The Bağlama in the 21st Century ; Chapter-2 Variation versus Standardization ; The Bağlama Family ; The Cura ; The Bağlama ; The Tambura ; The Divan Sazı ; The Meydan Sazı ; Variation versus Standardization ; Chapter-3 Construction ; The Choice of Wood ; The Drying of Wood ; Construction Process ; Bowl ; Soundboard ; Frets, Bridge, and Strings ; Ornamentation ; Chapter-4 Tuning ; String Tuning ; Fret Tuning ; Countryside ; City ; Chapter-5 Playing Technique ; Playing Position ; Finger Positions ; Plectrum Techniques ; Finger Techniques ; Execution Melody ; Horizontal Techniques ; Vertical Techniques ; Glossary of Musical Instruments and Terms ; Discography ; Bibliography ; Illustration Credits ; A Note on Turkish ; Index

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Book SynopsisThe Ottoman Tanbûr provides a detailed study of the history of this long-necked lute-like instrument, its role in Ottoman music, construction and playing technique. Tanbûrs are played in the art, Sûfî, and folk musical traditions along the Silk Road and beyond. In Turkey, the name tanbûr is mainly used as a name for the long-necked tanbûr of Ottoman art music, the Ottoman tanbûr. The origin and early development of the Ottoman tanbûr is, notwithstanding its importance, still not fully understood due to the absence or scarcity of literary and iconographical sources, while well-preserved Ottoman tanbûrs are rare or non-existent. The book explores the political and cultural-historical conditions that contributed to the development of a distinct Ottoman Art music (Osmanlı san’at mûsîkîsi) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the central place given to the tanbûr. Thereafter, Ottoman art music and the Ottoman tanbûr suffered from official neglect until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and even rejection after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. This situation changed after the foundation of the first Turkish music conservatory in 1975 at the Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi (ITÜ). The revival of Ottoman art music since the 1990s resulted in a rehabilitation of Ottoman art music and of the Ottoman tanbûr whose days had seemed to be numbered.Table of ContentsList of Figures ; Preface and Acknowledgements ; General Introduction ; Chapter 1: The Turko-Persian Culture and Heritage ; Introduction ; The Rûm-Seljuq Turko-Persian Culture in Anatolia ; The Tîmûrid Turko-Persian Art Music ; The Safavids and Tîmûrid Turko-Persian Art Music ; The Ottomans and Tîmûrid and Safavid Turko-Persian Art Music ; The Decline of Ottoman Turko-Persian Art Music ; Chapter 2: The Rise of Ottoman Art Music and Ottoman Tanbûr ; Introduction ; The Origin of the Ottoman Tanbûr ; The Ottoman Tanbûr in the 18th Century ; Chapter 3: Negligence, Rejection, and Revival of Ottoman Art Music ; Introduction ; The Ottoman Tanbûr in the 19th and Early 20th Century ; Ottoman Art Music and Ottoman Tanbûr and The Republic of Turkey ; Chapter 4: Construction ; Introduction ; The Anatomy of the Ottoman Tanbûr ; The Choice of Wood ; The Drying of Wood ; Construction Process ; The Bowl, Neck, and Soundboard ; Bridge, Nut, and Tailpiece ; Frets, Strings, and Tuning ; Ornamentation ; Chapter 5: Playing Technique ; Introduction ; Playing Position ; Left Hand Finger Technique ; Right Hand Plectrum Technique ; Execution Melody ; Appendix 1: Ottoman Tanbûr - Charles Fonton ; Appendix 2: Ottoman Tanbûr - Guillaume-André Villoteau ; Appendix 3: Ottoman Tanbûr - Raûf Yektâ ; Discography ; Bibliography ; Glossary ; Illustration Credits ; Index

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Book Synopsis

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