Maran Illustrated - Piano (Maran Illustrated)

Book Description

This book is packed with step-by-step instructions covering all you need to know about playing the piano. Look inside to find: how to read music * scales and chords * special playing techniques * how to improvise and play with others * sections on playing classical, rock, jazz, blues and pop music * how to buy and care for a piano * plenty of practice pieces to help you develop your skills. The Maran family teamed up with Frank Horvat - an active piano and theory teacher and a member of the College of Examiners for the Royal Conservatory of Music. In addition to teaching and making concert appearances as a performer, Frank also composes for live concert and film genres.

Customer Reviews:

A beautiful treatment of a "how-to" subject..........2005-06-13

I was recently sent a copy of the book Maran Illustrated Piano from the maranGraphics Development Group. It's another subject treatment using the "maran illustrated" technique, and again it's an excellent work...

Chapter List: Piano Basics; The Basics of Reading Music; Basic Hand Positions; Playing Scales; Playing Chords; Beyond the Basics of Reading Music; Tips to Improve Your Playing; Special Playing Techniques; Improvising and Playing with Others; Styles of Music; Buying and Caring for Your Piano; Quick Reference; Index

The Maran books use a graphic-intensive format with liberal use of color and heavy-stock paper. With Frank Horvat as the technical consultant, they take the reader through an informative history of the piano, famous composers, and the structure of the piano (along with the various styles and related instruments). From there, they get into how to read music as well as the basic hand positioning for playing. The material on reading music is well done for anyone who needs to acquire that skill, even if they aren't interested in the piano. The book then starts to show how to play scales, chords, and progressively more difficult pieces. It would be very easy to use this book to do your own self-learning program, and it'd be a great way to figure out if you want to take the next step and find a piano teacher to help you progress.

The illustrations and photography of hand placement jump off the pages with the high-quality printing and paper. The pictures of Horvat sitting at the piano look a little stilted, but there's only so much "action" you can add to those settings. The only photo series I didn't much care for in the book have to do with the piano pedals. The pedal photos have someone's black shoe, white sock, and bare leg in the frame. That's just wrong... :-)

Shoes and socks aside, this is an excellent choice if you are looking to learn how to play the piano on your own. You will gain a solid foundation with the instrument, and from there you can take it to whatever level appeals to you...

And now Yes, You Too can really learn to play the piano!.......2005-06-07

For all the many self-help, how-to books published The Maran Family has polished the book-led guide to learning to a fare-thee-well. This well-conceived and very well written book is an excellent introduction to the joys of sitting down in front of a piano keyboard and actually creating music instead of fantasies.

As one of the maranGraphics books (others include such wide ranging topics as Weight Training, Computer Guides, Dog training, Guitar, Yoga, and Knitting and Crocheting!), this volume uses the technical consulting of Frank Horvat, a composer, performer and piano teacher, and then applies the approach to the keyboard in a highly visual series of photographs and schematics that begin a survey of the types of keyboard instruments, the history of the piano, and progress to the basics of what makes a piano make music and ultimately walks the willing student through a very sound technique of learning.

As a life-long pianist I am amazed at the facility developed in this beautifully designed book. For those who question learning to play the piano by a 'how to' book, just peruse the careful steps and clarity of instruction offered by this helpful guide. Much musicology is included and many examples of fine piano music are used in the lessons. Whether it is the classical route you wish or the popular medium of chord based music or the intricacies of blues and improvisation, the steps are here. At the end of the book is a fine discussion on how to choose your piano from the many types that exist and even a discussion on the various periods of piano music history (although brief these are succinctly to the point).

Terrific for the adults who moan 'if I'd only taken lessons as a child' as well for the young students who are willing to commit to the goal of learning to 'make their own music', this Illustrated Guide to the Piano is a solid source of didactics. And for those addicted to the computer, there are even "MP3 files available to listen to and play along with for all the chords, scales, exercises and practice pieces in this book." Truly a book for the 21st Century! Grady Harp, June 05

Average customer rating:

It may be short, but it's sweet!

Reviewed by professional credit consultant

Highly Recommended!

Could have been a pamphlet

Essential reading for anyone trying to make ends meet.

Life After Debt: Free Yourself from the Burden of Money Worries Once and for All
Bob Hammond
Manufacturer: Career Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Budgeting & Money Management | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Credit Ratings & Repair | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Finance | Accounting & Finance | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

How To Get All The Credit You Want And Erase Your Bad Credit Record: And Erase Your Bad Credit Record

Repair Your Own Credit

How To Beat The Credit Bureaus: The Insider's Guide To Consumer Credit

Life Without Debt: Free Yourself from the Burden of Money Worries Once and for All

Credit Secrets: How To Erase Bad Credit

ASIN: 1564144216

Book Description

Are you tired of being turned down for credit because of negative info in your files? Now you can learn the secrets used by pros to erase bad credit from your files and start over. This complete guide was written to meet the needs of everyone, including women, minorities, divorced people, military families and those considering bankruptcy.

Customer Reviews:

It may be short, but it's sweet!.......2002-02-23

Other reviewers of this book here at Amazon seem to feel that the author is skimping on the details, and that he uses the laws we have to live with as filler. I disagree. Personally, I don't have time to read a lengthy discourse on how to get out of debt, repair my credit, or work towards being financially stable. This book contains more than enough valuable information to get anyone with credit woes on the road to recovery. When I bought this book just over a month ago, I had 11 negative marks on one of my credit reports. After taking the sample letters in this great book and modifying them to meet my needs, I have changed 9 of these marks to positive, and am negotiating on the last 2. I found this book to be an invaluable tool, as a novice to the way debt works.

Reviewed by professional credit consultant.......2002-01-11

This book may be helpful for someone who needs some basic knowledge about credit repair and debt issues. However, Mr Hammond merely added very little updated information and creates another edition to be sold in the market place. More than half of the book consists of credit regulations, and out of date phone numbers for many governmental organizations and creditors alike. It is obvious he does not put in much additional effort in creating new additions. Also, some of his techniques may not work for everyone. If he spends any time practicing in this field (which I feel he have not) he would have written more practical credit repair techniques which may prove beneficial to consumers out there.

Highly Recommended!.......2001-11-21

Bob Hammond discusses how to reduce debts, repair credit and deal with creditors and collection agencies. He includes tips on negotiating debts downward and sample letters to creditors. The detailed appendix includes the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. This book is primarily targeted to small business owners, employees and the unemployed or underemployed who are having debt problems. We [...] appreciate the basic, "do this," tone of voice and the practical approach to helping someone climb out of debt. (While some of these strategies might be useful anywhere, only U.S. law is discussed.)

Could have been a pamphlet.......2000-05-28

The information that you need to start repairing your credit is in here and so is some stuff about reducing debt. The book covers how to order your report, dispute it and follow up with the Credit agencies. It has sample letters that you can use with your own information. It has techniques on working with creditors to have them remove negative information from your report for you.

Overall, I don't feel ripped off, but I am a bit disappointed. There could have been much more detail in the areas of Keeping your credit report from being damaged, building good credit, and strategies for saving money and reducing debts (which are the cause of bad credit in the first place). This type of book would be much more useful in the form of a workbook rather than the front to middle reading it is.

The book gives you what it promises, but not in the best form and with a ton of filler. The second half of the book is just a reprint of Credit Laws which could come in handy if I was working with a lawyer or could understand it myself, but otherwise is just there to add pages.

Judging by the number of books that Bob Hammond has written on the subject, I would say that he is just revamping old work, adding a lot of filler text and calling it a new book.

The information in this book is so rudimentary should be free. But I give it 3 stars because it has helped me get the ball rolling with my credit.

Essential reading for anyone trying to make ends meet........2000-04-07

Now in a fully updated third edition, Bob Hammond's Life After Debt continues to be the most practical, reader friendly, single volume guide to personal money management and emancipation from crippling debt available to the reading public. Hammond tackles the problems of how debt is caused and solving credit problems -- permanently. Readers will learn how to increase their cash flow, reestablish a sound credit rating in less than 30 days, stop collection agency harassment, raise their credit limit, create an "instant" credit history dating back ten years. Life After Debt is enhanced with addresses and phone numbers of consumer credit services, state banking authorities, and other financial stability resources. Life After Debt is essential reading for anyone struggling to make ends meet.

Book Description

In 1690, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) published Traité de la Lumière, containing his renowned wave theory of light. It is considered a landmark in seventeenth-century science, for the way Huygens mathematized the corpuscular nature of light and his probabilistic conception of natural knowledge. This book discusses the development of Huygens' wave theory, reconstructing the winding road that eventually led to Traité de la Lumière. For the first time, the full range of manuscript sources is taken into account. In addition, the development of Huygens' thinking on the nature of light is put in the context of his optics as a whole, which was dominated by his lifelong pursuit of theoretical and practical dioptrics. In so doing, this book offers the first account of the development of Huygens' mathematical analysis of lenses and telescopes and its significance for the origin of the wave theory of light. As Huygens applied his mathematical proficiency to practical issues pertaining to telescopes – including trying to design a perfect telescope by means of mathematical theory – his dioptrics is significant for our understanding of seventeenth-century relations between theory and practice. With this full account of Huygens' optics, this book sheds new light on the history of seventeenth-century optics and the rise of the new mathematical sciences, as well as Huygens' oeuvre as a whole. Students of the history of optics, of early mathematical physics, and the Scientific Revolution, will find this book enlightening.

Customer Reviews:

Huygens was an amazing guy.......2007-05-20

Like many serious studies of history, this book is not always an easy read. But stick with it, because the insight it gives into the person of Christiaan Huygens and the science of the seventeenth century is just amazing. Well worth a read if you've been bitten by the history of science bug as I have. It's just amazing how with relatively primitive tools and immature scientific concepts these guys were able to figure out and accomplish so much; all the more so when you read about some of the practical difficulties of things like gettings lenses made right to test your theories. But they got it done. This book gets into their heads and the details of their context like none other that I've read.

Book Description

Rock Joints deals exclusively with the mechanical genesis of joints in rocks. It is aimed at a coherent, critical and comprehensible presentation of the underlying mechanical processes of various types of joints and joint systems. Special care is taken to elucidate and quantify the role of high fluid pressures in the formation of joints. The background is an offshoot of the author's courses on "Genesis of Rock Joints" in the Department of Rock Mechanics and Tunneling at the Technical University of Graz, Austria.

Book Description

Millimeter and Submillimeter Wave Spectroscopy of Solids focuses on the experimental methods and recent experimental results which are currently employed in the millimeter wave spectral range. Time dome, Fourier transform, coherent source and resonant techniques are discussed by leading authorities in the field. The usefulness of the methods is discussed by reviewing experimental results on metals and semiconductors. Recent experiment covering modern topics such as correlation on metals, superconductors and confined quantum systems are also discussed. The volume is aimed at physicists, engineers and materials scientists interested in the dynamics of solid matter.

Customer Reviews:

the best book ever.......2002-12-08

This is the greatest book in the world! An absolute must-read.

Average customer rating:

Have you ever craved a popsicle and all you had was a cigarette?

Unforgettable story

Scary!

A great book

Cruddy

CRUDDY: An Illustrated Novel
Lynda Barry
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Comic | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Good Times Are Killing Me

One Hundred Demons

The Greatest of Marlys

The Freddie Stories: With the Great Marlys! and Sister Maybonne

Geek Love: A Novel

ASIN: 068483846X

Amazon.com

Lynda Barry's illustrated novel Cruddy has not one but three equally alarming openings. The first is a suicide note: "Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs." The next is a description of the lurid crucifix that hangs over the narrator's bed: "Some nights looking at him scares me so bad I can hardly move and I start doing a prayer for protection. But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?" The third is worthy of a nightmare fairytale, beginning "Once upon a cruddy time on a cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe..."

She's not exaggerating. It's 1971, and 16-year-old Roberta Rohbeson lives in what looks very much like hell. It's five years after the Lucky Chief Motel Massacre, after which Roberta was found wandering the desert, covered with blood and clutching her dog, Cookie, who suffers from "incurable skin problems." Even now, Roberta still won't talk about what happened. She lives with her mother and sister on the aforementioned cruddy street, hides in the weeds during her lunch period, and eventually befriends some suicidal misfits like herself. The novel intercuts their chemically enhanced adventures with scenes from a gore-filled road trip taken five years before. Hint No. 1: Roberta's father used to run a slaughterhouse. Hint No. 2: The maps inside the front covers have keys that read "Dead People We Left Behind" and "Places There Were Blood."

Barry came to fame as a cartoonist, and though the humor in her strip Ernie Pook's Comeek is dark, nothing in it could prepare her fans for the sheer horror of Cruddy. The novel is funny, sort of, as long as you think naming a knife Little Debbie is funny, or lines like "A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect." What's more, it's compulsively, almost harrowingly, readable, written with the kind of velocity that makes you keep turning pages even when you don't want to. Despite the hallucinogenic quality of the violence around her, Roberta is never anything less than real, and her story will strike chords in anyone whose childhood was marked by ugliness and fear. Cruddy may be a bad acid trip, but if you can stomach the ride, it's a very good book. --Mary Park

Book Description

On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping acid, a sixteen-year-old curls up in the corner of her ratty bedroom and begins to write.

Now the truth can finally be revealed about the mysterious day long ago when the authorities found a child, calmly walking in the boiling desert, covered with blood.

The girl is Roberta Rohbeson, and her rant against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road" soon becomes a detailed account of another story, one that she has kept silent since she was eleven.

Darkly funny and resonant with humanity, Cruddy, masterfully intertwines Roberta's stories -- part Easy Rider and part bipolar Wizard of Oz. These stories, the backbone of Roberta's short life, include a one-way trip across America fueled by revenge and greed and a vivid cast of characters, starring Roberta's dangerous father, the owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar-cum-slaughterhouse, and runaway adolescents. With a teenager's eye for freakish detail and a nervous ability to make the most horrible scenes seem hilarious, Cruddy is a stunning achievement.

Download Description

Roberta Rohbeson begins her book in 1971, planning to set down all the details of her life "in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe". What starts out as a drug-fueled teen-age rant, however, gradually fades into the story of two cross-country trips she made with her father five years earlier, a story Roberta has kept to herself since the day she was found wandering alone in the desert covered with blood.

Customer Reviews:

Have you ever craved a popsicle and all you had was a cigarette?.......2007-06-01

I make everyone I know read this book. I actually buy them a copy. I really have a hard time putting this gorey work of crushing sublety abd wistful evaporation of history into words. It is beautiful at times and hideous at others, but it may just be the best narrative of the terrible beauty of our lives in print.

Unforgettable story.......2007-01-17

My first response to this novel was the same one I had years ago when I first read "Catcher in the Rye," and then years later "Portnoy's Complaint" - i.e., what a fresh, different, original voice. "Cruddy" is a great story. It is also unbearably sad. Read it, but expect to be heartbroken when you're finished, albeit dazzled and opened up.

Scary!.......2006-09-29

I'm guessing Lynda Barry and I are about the same age. I found her dark novel hard to stop reading. I have no doubt there are people of all ages who lived such frightening times in there lives. The world isn't peaches and cream. Still, there is something about Ms. Berry's writing that grabs the reader.

Not for the squeamish.

A great book.......2006-07-29

I have read and reread this book so many times. A terrific book!

Cruddy.......2006-05-31

"Cruddy" is a tough read. If you're coming to this novel with a familiarity of Barry's comic creations, be prepared for an experience completely unlike anything she's done before. "Cruddy" intertwines two events in Roberta Rohbeson's life: events when she was 11 and five years later when she's 16 and what transpires in these eras can only be described as "American Gothic." Think David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" only ten times as intense and gory.

You may think this is a caveat to stay away from the book but on the contrary, I think a person misses out by not reading this tale. It's a tough read because Roberta has to endure so much (as bad and nasty as the father is, I tended to find the mother even more repugnant) and the end of the novel is so open. This book has a cast of some of the most memorable (and vile) people as you'd ever meet. Barry combines the young adult "problem novel", the road story and adventure mystery (Barry even has a "Macguffin" in the form of suitcases filled with money)into one mind-blowing tale.

This is one of the most original books I've read in some time. If you have a weak stomach, stay away but for the rest of you, enjoy.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books