(Guitar Recorded Versions). Our official songbook for the third installment of this wildly popular video game features notes & guitar tab for 36 hits: Barracuda * Black Magic Woman * The Devil Went Down to Georgia * Even Flow * La Grange * Mississippi Queen * Paint It Black * Pride and Joy * Rock You like a Hurricane * School's Out * Talk Dirty to Me * Welcome to the Jungle * When You Were Young * and more.

(Guitar Collection). A great collection of 50 "standards" that you really need to know if you want to call yourself a guitarist! Includes: All Along the Watchtower * Beat It * Born to Be Wild * Brown Eyed Girl * Cocaine * Communication Breakdown * Detroit Rock City * Hallelujah * (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction * Iron Man * Oh, Pretty Woman * Peter Gunn * Pride and Joy * Seven Nation Army * Should I Stay or Should I Go * Smells like Teen Spirit * Smoke on the Water * Sunshine of Your Love * When I Come Around * Wild Thing * You Really Got Me * and more.

Lonnie Johnson (1894–1970) was a virtuoso guitarist who influenced generations of musicians from Django Reinhardt to Eric Clapton to Bill Wyman and especially B. B. King. Born in New Orleans, he began playing violin and guitar in his father’s band at an early age. When most of his family was wiped out by the 1918 flu epidemic, he and his surviving brother moved to St. Louis, where he won a blues contest that included a recording contract. His career was launched. Johnson can be heard on many Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong records, including the latter’s famous “Savoy Blues” with the Hot Five. He is perhaps best known for his 12-string guitar solos and his ground-breaking recordings with the white guitarist Eddie Lang in the late 1920s. After World War II he began playing rhythm and blues and continued to record and tour until his death. This is the first full-length work on Johnson. Dean Alger answers many biographical mysteries, including how many members of Johnson’s large family were left after the epidemic. It also places Johnson and his musical contemporaries in the context of American race relations and argues for the importance of music in the fight for civil rights. Finally, Alger analyzes Johnson’s major recordings in terms of technique and style. Distribution of an accompanying music CD will be coordinated with the release of this book.

(Guitar Solo). One hundred timeless songs from a wide variety of musical genres are featured in this collection of solo guitar arrangements in standard notation and tab. Includes: Angel * Bless the Broken Road * Chances Are * Don't Know Why * Faithfully * Hallelujah * I Will Always Love You * Killing Me Softly with His Song * Memory * Stardust * Tears in Heaven * Woman * You Raise Me Up * and many more.

The definitive story of a game so great, even the Cold War couldn't stop it Tetris is perhaps the most instantly recognizable, popular video game ever made. But how did an obscure Soviet programmer, working on frail, antiquated computers, create a product which has now earned nearly 1 billion in sales? How did a makeshift game turn into a worldwide sensation, which has been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, inspired a big-budget sci-fi movie, and been played in outer space? A quiet but brilliant young man, Alexey Pajitnov had long nurtured a love for the obscure puzzle game pentominoes, and became obsessed with turning it into a computer game. Little did he know that the project that he labored on alone, hour after hour, would soon become the most addictive game ever made. In this fast-paced business story, reporter Dan Ackerman reveals how Tetris became one of the world's first viral hits, passed from player to player, eventually breaking through the Iron Curtain into the West. British, American, and Japanese moguls waged a bitter fight over the rights, sending their fixers racing around the globe to secure backroom deals, while a secretive Soviet organization named ELORG chased down the game's growing global profits. The Tetris Effect is an homage to both creator and creation, and a must-read for anyone who's ever played the game-which is to say everyone.

Featuring over 180 of the world's greatest guitar superstars, "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes" is a definitive guide to those guitarists whose talents helped change the face of music forever and touched the lives of millions. From the heroes of rock - the likes of Hendrix, Clapton, Page and Beck - to classical maestros such as John Williams and Latin legends such as Paco de Lucia, this comprehensive catalogue of guitarists covers a wide range of musical styles. It will allow the reader to discover legendary players from the earliest blues pioneers right up to today's indie icons and everyone in between.Grouped into seven chapters based on the genre of music each guitarist is most closely associated with, each chapter is then organised chronologically according to the guitarists' birth dates, making the book easy to navigate. Written by an expert team of music writers and musicologists, the informative text tells the story of how each of these axemen rose up to stand out from the crowd, carving themselves a place in the history books. Learn what inspired them to create the music that led to their legendary status, how they achieved such greatness and the tools they used to get to the top.Supported by over 400 superb images that bring each page to life and capture the power and emotion behind the music, this encyclopedia is the ideal book for any aspiring guitar hero, and will satisfy even the most die-hard of music fans. The comprehensive reference section includes an extensive listing of a further 500 of the greatest musicians ever to pick up an axe, recommended further reading and a host of website links, all of which provide a further gateway into the lives of the greatest guitarists the world has ever known.

“A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history” (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built. In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock ’n’ roll—and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul—whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought—to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo. While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s—including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton—adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable. In “an excellent dual portrait” (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering “spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars” (The Atlantic). “The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new” (The Washington Post).