This volume is full of ideas for solving common technical problems and creates a framework for band directors to re- evaluate and improve every aspect of the job. --from publisher description.

In Habits of a Successful Band Director Scott Rush provides: A how-to book for young teachers; A supplement for college methods classes; A commonsense approach to everyday problems band directors face; Sequential models for instruction that are narrow in scope; Solutions, in the form of information and probing questions, that allow assessment of a classroom situation; Valuable information in a new format and references to other helpful publications; A contemporary text for all band directors. Some of the topics covered in the ten chapters include: classroom organization and management, working with parents and colleagues, the importance of the warm-up, rehearsal strategies, selecting high-quality literature, and student leadership. The appendices provide valuable outlines and reproducible forms such as medical releases and pitch tendency chart.

This practical text offers a comprehensive program for organizing and managing the non-instructional functions of a successful music program.

The Band Director's Guide to Success is the ideal guide for preparing future band directors for the practical challenges and obstacles that they will face in the introductory years of their teaching careers. Written in an easy to understand, quick-reference guide format, this book is designed to be easily navigated as a series of case studies arranged by topic in concise, user-friendly chapters ranging from budgeting to classroom management to conflict resolution and beyond. This manual and career guide in one may be used as a supplemental text with suggestions and practical advice to spare new music teachers from many of the initial headaches and stress that often accompany the transition into the full-time teaching profession.

Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!

The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist—a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture. From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes. Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco—an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation. Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.

Draws on interviews with some of the most recognizable names in the jam band scene to trace the genre's origins and evolution, offering insight into key musical influences, songwriting styles, and tour experiences.

Each composer addresses the following topics: Biographical information, The creative process ... how a composer works, Orchestration, Views from the composer to the conductor, Commissioning new works, The teaching of composition, Influential individuals, Ten works all band conductors at all levels should study, Ten composers whose music speaks in especially meaningful ways, The future of the wind band, Other facets of everyday life, Comprehensive list of works for band.

Why Jazz Happened is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz’s post-war styles. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz’s evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more. In an absorbing narrative enlivened by the commentary of key personalities, Marc Myers describes the myriad of events and trends that affected the music's evolution, among them, the American Federation of Musicians strike in the early 1940s, changes in radio and concert-promotion, the introduction of the long-playing record, the suburbanization of Los Angeles, the Civil Rights movement, the “British invasion” and the rise of electronic instruments. This groundbreaking book deepens our appreciation of this music by identifying many of the developments outside of jazz itself that contributed most to its texture, complexity, and growth.