Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor of music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), Music Secrets for the Advanced Musician: A Scarecrow Press Music Series is designed for instrumentalists, singers, conductors, composers, and other instructors and professionals seeking a quick set of pointers to improve their work as performers and producers of music. Easy to use and intended for the advanced musician, contributions to the Music Secrets series fill a niche for those who have moved beyond what beginners and intermediate practitioners need. In Oboe Secrets: 75 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Oboist and English Horn Player, Jacqueline Leclair tackles the oboe’s reputation as an especially difficult instrument and illustrates how oboists and English horn players can overcome common challenges. Leclair draws on her experience as a performer and instructor, offering practical tips and sometimes revolutionary ideas for rethinking oboe pedagogy. Leclair also looks at performance strategies in the areas of equipment maintenance and management, physical health, and performance technique. Her secrets focus on such matters as how to optimize practice sessions, build endurance, improve use of the body when playing, work with reeds, and apply extended techniques. Oboe Secrets provides oboists and English horn players a quick and efficient path to significant improvement—both technically and musically—in their playing.It is the perfect resource for advanced high school oboists, professional performers, music instructors, and avid amateur musicians.

In Oboe Art and Method, veteran oboe performer and instructor Martin Schuring describes in detail all of the basic techniques of oboe playing (including breathing, embouchure, finger technique, articulation, and phrasing) and reed making, with expert tips and step-by-step instructions for how best to perform each of these tasks with grace and technical efficiency.

"Purpose is to place the musical and technical study of the oboe within the context of a precise understanding of the human body" --Foreward.

Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in her Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), Tracy Heavner's Saxophone Secrets provides advanced saxophonists with 60 performance secrets that will assist in their musical development. This work is the result of 30 years of personal teaching and performance experience. Heavner offers both intermediate players and advanced professionals a wide variety of techniques, which will greatly improve any saxophonist's performance ability. Designed to be the go-to hands-on guide for practitioners, Heavner's strategies consider a vast array of issues for the saxophonist who needs to take that next big step up. Beginning chapters consider various brands of saxophones, mouthpieces, ligatures, reeds, and maintenance techniques that reflect the standard practices and expectations of the advanced performer. The secrets that follow develop and improve embouchure, tone, articulation, and finger technique, allowing saxophonists to analyze their own playing and adjust accordingly. Heavner pulls back the curtain further to introduce those secrets for developing the altissimo register and extended saxophone techniques, from circular breathing and multiphonics to slap and flutter tonguing--all absolute necessities for saxophonists seeking to play contemporary classical, jazz, or commercial music. Finally, Heavner concludes by letting musicians in on those little-revealed secrets for taking their saxophones on the road. Saxophone Secrets is the ideal work for saxophonists, saxophone instructors, band teachers, and anyone looking to improve their saxophone performance skills or those of their students.

This second edition of Clarinet Secrets is a compilation of Distinguished Professor Michele Gingras’s acclaimed books that spearheaded Rowman & Littlefield’s Music Secrets series: Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets. It is the result of Gingras’s thirty years of hands-on experience spent in the clarinet studio working with students. Learn practical and technical secrets about rapid tonguing and double-tonguing; circular breathing; sight-reading and transposition; reed fixing and repair equipment; improving tone, intonation, technique, and musicianship; contemporary techniques; classical and non-classical performance; performance anxiety; auditioning; career planning and marketability; and more. The concepts are discussed in a straightforward way, explained clearly, and illustrated with photos, diagrams, and musical examples. Easy to use and intended for the intermediate and advanced musician, this second edition of Clarinet Secrets is perfect for students in a class or private situation, professionals, or instructors engaged in pedagogical research.

Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor of music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), the Music Secrets for the Advanced Musician series is designed for instrumentalists, singers, conductors, composers, and other instructors and professionals seeking quick pointers to improve their work as performers and producers of music. Easy to use and intended for the advanced musician, contributions to Music Secrets fill a niche for those who have moved beyond what beginners and intermediate practitioners need. Drum Kit Secrets: 52 Performance Strategies for the Advanced Drummer is an indispensable guide for any drum kit player. Drummer and historian Matt Dean covers a broad range of drum kit–related subjects to assist drummers already well versed in the instrument to advance and polish their skills for both live and studio performance. Drum Kit Secrets includes topics and tips on how and what to practice; how to develop one’s timing and master the metronome; how to prepare for auditions and overcome stage fright; how to stay healthy as a drummer through proper eating, tried-and-true warm-up routines, and correct drum kit set up; how to select and maintain drum equipment; and how to create drum solos and improvise with ease. He also includes tips and tricks for mastering the studio setting, getting the most from one’s drum kit, writing quick and easy drum charts, preparing for gigs, marketing oneself as a drummer, and much more. Drum Kit Secrets is the perfect resource for intermediate-level amateurs to working professionals. Dean draws on his many years as teacher and drum professional in this unique compilation of tips and performance strategies for advanced and expert players.

Clarinet Secrets contains concepts that have been repeatedly and successfully used with students over a period of 20 years of teaching. Each strategy is explained on two facing pages with accompanying graphics, photos, and musical examples.

What do the world's most prominent oboists have to say about their musical ideas, performance techniques, and teaching strategies? Michele L. Fiala and Martin Schuring, themselves skilled oboists, undertook the project of asking twenty-six of them about their musicianship and pedagogy. The results are collected in Great Oboists on Music and Musicianship, which provides a unique window into how these virtuosi of wind instruments think about their craft. Each chapter paints an engaging portrait of a leading oboist that allows them to share--in their own words--their insights on the performance techniques, learning strategies, and career moves that propelled them to their current stature. The captivating prose chapters that Fiala and Schuring composed from the interviews allow each artist's personality to shine through as they convey their hard-won wisdom on topics such as musical interpretation, the relationship between vocal and instrumental music, being a good ensemble player, and warm-up routines. The diverse array of musicians portrayed in this book includes orchestral and solo performers from across North America, Europe, and Australia. Their practical advice will resonate not just with oboists but also with players and teachers of other instruments as they pursue their own musical journeys.

A ritualistic murder. An autistic child who saw more than he knows. Can one detective solve the riddle before a ruthless killer strikes again? Detective Cal Rogan is down to his last shot. His supervising officer has him on probation and he's determined to prove he's cleaned up his act. But his return to the department may be enough to drive him back to the lure of heroin when he sees the crime scene of a child's grisly murder. On the search for clues, he starts to suspect the young victim's death is only a small piece of a bloody conspiracy steeped in ritual. Before long, he finds himself swept into the strange world of a religious cult. Between the zealous believers and closely guarded secrets, his best chance at solving the case may come from a single word uttered by an autistic boy. With his colleagues turned against him, can Rogan solve the puzzle and catch a child-killer before he claims his next victim? Oboe is the second book in the exhilarating Cal Rogan Mysteries crime thriller series. If you like flawed heroes, high-stakes suspense, and twists and turns that'll leave you guessing, then you'll love Robert P. French's gritty thrill ride! Buy Oboe to crack the code to a complex, compelling mystery today!

The memoir that inspired the two-time Golden Globe Award–winning comedy series: “Funny . . . heartbreaking . . . [and] utterly absorbing” (Lee Smith, New York Times–bestselling author of Guests on Earth). Oboist Blair Tindall recounts her decades-long professional career as a classical musician—from the recitals and Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, where musicians trade sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the city. Tindall and her fellow journeymen musicians often play drunk, high, or hopelessly hungover, live in decrepit apartments, and perform in hazardous conditions—working-class musicians who schlep across the city between low-paying gigs, without health-care benefits or retirement plans, a stark contrast to the rarefied experiences of overpaid classical musician superstars. An incisive, no-holds-barred account, Mozart in the Jungle is the first true, behind-the-scenes look at what goes on backstage and in the orchestra pit. The book that inspired the Amazon Original series starring Gael García Bernal and Lola Kirke, this is “a fresh, highly readable and caustic perspective on an overglamorized world” (Publishers Weekly).