Here are 72 books that Garage Band Theory fans have personally recommended if you like
Garage Band Theory.
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After dabbling in music in my youth, I returned to playing roots music over fifteen years ago. I’ve joined music circles, jammed, made new friends, and learned a lot. My husband Gene and I have recorded three albums and played at bars, festivals, weddings, and listening rooms. Professionally, I’ve spent years as a writing teacher and writer, and I also teach at an annual folk music camp. I wanted to share the joys of music with others, so I talked with dozens of musicians, dug down to find rare resources, and pulled it together into Making Music for Life to make it easier for others to pursue their own musical journey.
Barry Green suggests a method for shifting your musical focus from external achievement, which can lead to performance anxiety and misery, to the quality of your experience and the pleasure you gain from learning and playing music—the inner game. I found his method helpful for my own struggles with self-doubt and stage fright, and a good reminder to enjoy the amazing journey of making and sharing music.
The bestselling guide to improving musical performance
The Inner Game of Music is the battle that all musicians have to fight against elusive opponents such as nervousness, self-doubt and fear of failure. Using the world-famous Inner Game principles, developed by bestselling author Timothy Gallwey, acclaimed musician Barry Green explains the basic principles of 'natural learning' and shows how you can apply them to reach a new level of musical application and performance. In precise, easy to understand language, Green and Gallwey explain how natural skills - such as awareness, trust and willpower - can be nurtured and enhanced. Through a…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
After dabbling in music in my youth, I returned to playing roots music over fifteen years ago. I’ve joined music circles, jammed, made new friends, and learned a lot. My husband Gene and I have recorded three albums and played at bars, festivals, weddings, and listening rooms. Professionally, I’ve spent years as a writing teacher and writer, and I also teach at an annual folk music camp. I wanted to share the joys of music with others, so I talked with dozens of musicians, dug down to find rare resources, and pulled it together into Making Music for Life to make it easier for others to pursue their own musical journey.
Madeline Bruser is a professional musician and teacher focused on teaching dedicated music students of all ages. She brings her own meditation practice and fresh insights into improving music practice through mindfulness, attention to the sounds and sensations one experiences while practicing or performing, and increased awareness of the joys of music. Although I haven’t attended music school or spent a career as a professional musician, I still picked up useful tools and insights that have improved my practice time. If you’re finding practice to be boring, painful, or unproductive, this book can help you reorient your approach and savor music more fully.
An illustrated guide for the amateur and professional musician that teaches us how to transform practicing from an often laborious activity into an exhilarating and rewarding experience
Foreword by Yehudi Menuhin • “Give this book to any musician you love and to any person who loves what music does for them and for the world.”—Richard Stoltzman, clarinetist
In The Art of Practicing, acclaimed pianist and teacher Madeline Bruser combines physiological and meditative principles to help musicians release physical and mental tension and unleash their innate musical talent. She offers practical techniques for cultivating free and natural movement, a keen enjoyment…
After dabbling in music in my youth, I returned to playing roots music over fifteen years ago. I’ve joined music circles, jammed, made new friends, and learned a lot. My husband Gene and I have recorded three albums and played at bars, festivals, weddings, and listening rooms. Professionally, I’ve spent years as a writing teacher and writer, and I also teach at an annual folk music camp. I wanted to share the joys of music with others, so I talked with dozens of musicians, dug down to find rare resources, and pulled it together into Making Music for Life to make it easier for others to pursue their own musical journey.
Pete Warnick is best known in the bluegrass world as a performer (Country Cooking and Hot Rize) and teacher (the Warnick Method), but his book on the nuts and bolts of being in a band is uniquely helpful in its specific details, particularly for weekend warriors. He addresses getting a sound system, rehearsals, prep immediately before the gig, band dynamics and emotions, performance details, and more. Although some material is now dated, I’ve used much of the book’s details to improve our bookings and performances and found tips available nowhere else.
This "guide to success" has been created especially for bluegrass and acoustic performers, with applications for all levels of the music/entertainment business. Many of the skills necessary for a band's success do not directly involve music and are rarely formally taught. This book is an attempt to fill that gap and teach you how to help yourself on the professional level so that you can achieve your musical dreams. It covers such topics as: How to create good promotional materials; Whom to call to get bookings, and what to say; How to attract important allies such as record companies and…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
After dabbling in music in my youth, I returned to playing roots music over fifteen years ago. I’ve joined music circles, jammed, made new friends, and learned a lot. My husband Gene and I have recorded three albums and played at bars, festivals, weddings, and listening rooms. Professionally, I’ve spent years as a writing teacher and writer, and I also teach at an annual folk music camp. I wanted to share the joys of music with others, so I talked with dozens of musicians, dug down to find rare resources, and pulled it together into Making Music for Life to make it easier for others to pursue their own musical journey.
This book comprehensively addresses a wide range of topics geared toward teen music students, from the foundations of practicing and understanding theory to working with a teacher and parents, playing in an orchestra, or planning a music career. Although some of the topics are useful for any musician (such as practice ideas and improving one’s musicality), this book is best for guiding adolescents on a musical path.
In her follow-up to Making Music and Enriching Lives: A Guide for All Music Teachers, Bonnie Blanchard offers students a set of tools for their musical lives that will help them stay engaged, even during the challenging times in their musical development. Blanchard discusses issues such as finding an instructor, selecting the right instrument, and choosing a college or conservatory. The book includes lessons on music theory and history as well as a guide to finding additional materials in print and online. Blanchard's strategies for making practice productive and preparing for auditions are useful tips students can return to again…
I have two major passions in life: music and writing. I started learning guitar aged 16, and my friends and I formed a band as soon as we possibly could. My first professional job was writing about pop music for a monthly magazine, and much later in life, I discovered jazz. Now I’m a bass-player, jazz singer, and composer who works with some of the finest jazz musicians in London, and I play regularly at Ronnie Scott’s club. As well as the Donald Fagen biography, I’ve also written biographies of the great jazz singers Mark Murphy (for me, the greatest of them all) and Jon Hendricks.
You thought you knew everything there was to know about The Beatles. I thought I did. I was wrong.
Craig Brown somehow manages to tell a very familiar story with details that either you never knew or had forgotten. He isn’t scraping the barrel: the book is full of excellent stories about the Fab Four, and sheds new light on where the band came from and where they ended up. It’s more than 600 pages long, and beautifully written, but a very easy read.
SHORTLISTED for the Baillie Gifford Prize's 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award
WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020
A Spectator Book of the Year * A Times Book of the Year * A Telegraph Book of the Year * A Sunday Times Book of the Year
From the award-winning author of Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four.
John Updike compared them to 'the sun coming out on an Easter morning'. Bob Dylan introduced them to drugs. The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. JRR Tolkien…
My earliest filmgoing memory is of a bad guy getting pushed down the stairs in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. That shocking scene has stayed with me, leading me into a lifetime of exploring the dark visions of crime stories. It was only natural that my love of rock music, and in its interaction with other media would draw me to mystery writers whose books were fueled by their love of rock, blues and pop. "If not for music and movies, I wouldn't be a novelist," George Pelecanos once told me. "They have influenced me more than any author. I want to shout about it." Me too.
You know an author is serious about his rock music when he names three of his novels after Rolling Stones albums. As much as I liked the Stones, growing up, my personal tastes leaned more toward the Beatles. But the more I read Scottish great Ian Rankin's Rebus novels, the more I gravitated toward Mick Jagger and the boys. When it comes to classic rock 'n' roll moments, you just can't beat the one in Let it Bleedin which down-and-out Inspector John Rebus finds solace in a Keith Richards guitar riff. "Women, relationships and colleagues had come and gone but the Stones had always been there. 'I don't have much,' Rebus thought, 'but I have this.'"
The seventh Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES. 'Rankin continues to be unsurpassed among living British crime writers' THE TIMES
Struggling through another Edinburgh winter Rebus finds himself sucked into a web of intrigue that throws up more questions than answers.
Was the Lord Provost's daughter kidnapped or just another runaway? Why is a city councillor shredding documents that should have been waste paper years ago? And why on earth is Rebus invited to a clay pigeon shoot at the home of the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary?
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I was born in 1970. From my earliest memory there was music. But it’s never been just about the music, I have a natural curiosity for the people who make that music. The artist on the album cover, but also the side musicians, the producers, engineers, and promoters. I’m also fascinated by the roadmap from blues to rock to Laurel Canyon to disco to punk and on and on. Real music infuses and informs the fiction I write — by reading real-life accounts and listening to the songs, I’m put in the world from which it was all born.
I love the idea of taking a very specific time period, in this case one year, and parsing out what happened within an art form. The evolution of pop music in 1971 was changing both the industry and the world. Throughout 12 months, we see the same characters weaving in and out — Carol King, Van Morrison, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Mick Jagger — and the way they came together and pushed apart is its own year-long miniseries. To get at how art and industry cohabitate, and how we got to the pop culture machine we know today, there is no better crash course than 1971.
The basis for the new hit documentary 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, now streaming on Apple TV+.
A rollicking look at 1971, rock’s golden year, the year that saw the release of the indelible recordings of Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Who, Rod Stewart, Carole King, the Rolling Stones, and others and produced more classics than any other year in rock history
The Sixties ended a year late. On New Year’s Eve 1970 Paul McCartney instructed his lawyers to issue the writ at the High Court in London that effectively ended the Beatles. You might say this was…
It’s open, honest, and really helps you get inside the head of someone who wants to play guitar, maybe more than anything. There’s great insight into addiction, too. And, of course, it has the gossipy rock and roll stuff that can’t be avoided when you’re a member of The Rolling Stones.
The book covers many decades; it’s an intimate look at a long, creative life.
As lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics, and the songs that roused the world. A true and towering original, he has always walked his own path, spoken his mind, and done things his own way.Now at last Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, only…
I have been fascinated with the sixties and its counterculture ever since I was about eleven or twelve, and I found out that the summer I was born, 1967, was called the Summer of Love. Because of this fascination, I started reading writers like Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson at an early age. Then, I became a lover of the Grateful Dead and went on tour with them as a fan for a couple of years in my late teens. It was the best way remaining in this country, in the 1980s, to be a hippie in some real way. I still love the music and literature of that time.
This novel is a strange triptych, with three tangentially connected parts that all have to do with the darker side of the '60s counterculture. I loved it.
One part is about the early days of the Rolling Stones, with the band members themselves as characters. Then there’s avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who made a movie in which Mick Jagger appeared alongside Bobby Beausoleil, who later joined the Manson Family. The third part is about the Manson Family itself, leading up to their inexplicable crimes.
The book engaged and compelled me in spite of (also because of) its disjointed nature—it’s beautifully written and a true work of art.
Three dramatic and emblematic stories intertwine in Zachary Lazar's extraordinary novel, Sway -- the early days of the Rolling Stones, including the romantic triangle of Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg, and Keith Richards; the life of avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger; and the community of Charles Manson and his followers. Lazar illuminates an hour in American history when rapture found its roots in idolatrous figures and led to unprovoked and inexplicable violence.
Connecting all the stories in this novel is Bobby Beausoleil, a beautiful California boy who appeared in an Anger film and eventually joined the Manson "family." With great artistry, Lazar…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
When I was a kid, my biggest escape was my father’s record collection. Growing up in 1990s NJ, music was a huge part of my experience. Springsteen was from a few miles south, Bon Jovi was from the town next to mine, and Whitney Houston was from the same state but a different county. Music told stories. Inspired my the music of my youth, I now make my living as a storyteller— I tell stories onstage, write books about storytelling and teach others how to tell stories effectively. I have no musical gifts except for the mass consumption of any book with juicy tales about the world of music. Here are a few of my favorites.
Gorman just wanted to play the drums in a rock band and established that so well at the beginning of this book. The ups and downs he experiences as part of a successful and talented group with two feuding brothers at the forefront is jaw-dropping. Filled with rich details and vividly dramatic scenes, the reader roots so much for him to leave the security of the band behind for happiness on his own.
Black Crowes drummer and cofounder Steve Gorman shares the band's inside story in this behind-the-scenes biography, from their supernova stardom in the '90s to exhilarating encounters with industry legends. "This book is literally the Angela's Ashes of rock memoirs. .. I absolutely loved this book."
-BILL BURR, comedian
"I couldn't put the book down-absolutely unbelievable read!"
-JOHN MCENROE, New York Times bestselling author of But Seriously and You Cannot Be Serious
"I honestly couldn't put [this book] down. Made me nostalgic, sad, and happy too."
