This book makes understanding vocal pedagogy easily accessible, offering simple direct language. David L. Jones has masterfully combined his knowledge of the Italian and Swedish-Italian Singing Schools into a modern-day treatise that reveals Old World singing training in its purest form. Full of vocal wisdom.

(Berklee Press). The vocal workouts in this much-anticipated follow-up to Peckham's bestselling The Contemporary Singer are based on Berklee College of Music's highly effective vocal method. This volume will help vocalists develop the voice through good vocal health, warm-up exercises, advanced techniques, stage performance advice and more. Includes companion online audio for ultimate interactive education!

(Berklee Guide). The second edition of this bestselling, comprehensive guide contains improved vocal workouts and additional topics, including performance anxiety and healthy singing. The companion audio makes this guide an ideal tool for creating a singing course for students of almost any age or gender, who can practice technique along with lead sheets for such standard vocal pieces as "Yesterday" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." Topics covered include getting started, posture, belting and diction, maintaining vocal health, microphone technique, and much more.

Vocal expression is a part of nearly everyone's workday, yet most of us are unaware of how much influence our voice exerts over our effectiveness. McAfee's work shows how we can deliberately marshal the power of our voices to support our intentions, aspirations, and relationships.

In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. Once the terrain of anthropologists, it is now the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs, while ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin. Singing to the Plants sets forth just what this shamanism is about--what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery.

Revised and expanded, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth Century Music is a comprehensive reference guide for students and professional musicians. The book contains useful material on vocal and choral music and style; instrumentation; performance practice; ornamentation, tuning, temperament; meter and tempo; basso continuo; dance; theatrical production; and much more. The volume includes new chapters on the violin, the violoncello and violone, and the trombone—as well as updated and expanded reference materials, internet resources, and other newly available material. This highly accessible handbook will prove a welcome reference for any musician or singer interested in historically informed performance.

Ranging from medieval music to Madonna and beyond, this book covers in detail the many aspects of the voice. The volume is divided into four broad areas. Popular Traditions begins with an overview of singing traditions in world music and continues with aspects of rock, rap and jazz. The Voice in the Theatre includes both opera singing from the beginnings to the present day and twentieth-century stage and screen entertainers. Choral Music and Song features a history of the art song, essential hints on singing in a larger choir, the English cathedral tradition and a history of the choral movement in the United States. The final substantial section on performance practices ranges from the voice in the Middle Ages and the interpretation of early singing treatises to contemporary vocal techniques, ensemble singing, the teaching of singing, children's choirs, and a comprehensive exposition of vocal acoustics.

This work describes in accessible language the technical foundations of the Old Italian School of Singing. It enables the reader to grasp the teachings of the old masters theoretically and practically. The research for this book used not only the old treatises from the 1700's onwards but also firsthand testimonies, biographies and recordings from historical singers. The author systematically takes us through the basic elements of historical singing with practical hints and exercises tested by extensive teaching experience.