Reddit mentions: The best folk & traditional music books

Gah, aural skills. Let's start with this: everyone dreads aural skills the first time 'round because it's freaking tough. Even the kids who've been playing by ear their whole lives sweat a little when someone asks them to sing a minor sixth. So first bit of advice: breathe.

I'm absolutely positive that you've made a lot more improvement than you're giving yourself credit for. You can ace this thing if you approach it smartly and don't give into despair.

My first question/suggestion would be why are you going to do something that has the potential to sadden you for eight hours a day?! Seriously, back off it a bit over the summer. One hour a day is plenty (possibly too much!). And if you do do one hour a day, it'd be best to do it in small doses: fifteen minutes here, ten here, twenty there. Going at it regularly is far more important than going at it exhaustively. Give yourself room to breathe.

Second, there must be someplace where you have relative strengths aurally and someplace else where you have weaknesses. So identify what you're good at and start by improving that; you've got to give yourself a win here or you're not going to want to keep going. So if you're great at naming intervals, start and end your day with quickfire interval blasting. Or maybe it's rhythm or hearing progressions. Whatever it is, give yourself some affirmation.

Next, (re)start simply. The pentatonic scale, for example, is really easy to hear and sing so a lot of aural skills methods start there. I know plenty of negro spirituals use the pentatonic for all the main melodic material. There's even a series called Folk Song Sight-singing that uses more basic shapes to slowly build up to a refined ear. But even starting with Mi-Re-Do will do plenty of good.

From there, it's important to realize, a lot of this stuff is really just a memory exercise at first. Start by internalizing what "Sol-Fa-Mi" sounds like and then hearing for it wherever you can. Start with one pattern, and when you are confident you can identify it wherever, add another.

This ties into how we play our instruments. If you want good ears, the easiest way is to sing while you play. You don't need to be much good at the instrument in question although, obviously, some instruments are better suited for this task than others. Play a scale? Sing that scale! Found a cool pattern while playing? Write it down and practice singing it. Made up something wild? Guess what?

With that in mind, you can't practice these things in isolation because we hardly (if ever) hear in isolation. So back to the Sol-Fa-Mi melody snippet: if you really want to ingrain this in your ear, you've got to give it some context.

Perhaps you'll note how it features the dominant's chordal seventh resolving down by step (Fa-Mi) or that it goes nicely with the harmonies I - V - I. While you practice singing it, you might play those harmonies to really hear/feel it in context and then talk to yourself about the theory behind it. You have all this amazing theory knowledge already; use it to help your ears make sense of things.

Cross-modal thinking like this is actually part of the reason Solfege works wonders the way it does. The Kodaly method adds in hand signs for each note as well; you might give those a try as well to help you physicalize pitch space. To help your ears out, use more than just your ears.

On that note, you need some way of checking how right you are. A partner is great for this but we live in the 21st century so computers work just as well. Teoria is a great place to start for this. I like the program GNU Solfege because you can use your computer's microphone to check your sight-singing and dictations. It also lets you customize exercises so at the start and end of the day, you can always give yourself some wins.

That said, talk to your teachers about your progress. They've been through all this hoorah before and have actually heard/seen your performance first-hand. They are in a far better position to be able to help you through this bump than anyone here. It can be scary, but simply asking for help can open up so many doors for improvement, it's wild.

EDIT: Can't believe I didn't mention this earlier, but record yourself practicing. This helps your teachers identify what's going wrong but more importantly, lets you do the same. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the sound of their own voice (for reasons beyond the scope of this thread) but you're going to make light years of progress when you're able to self-correct. More importantly, you'll get an honest depiction of your skills and not your fears. Often times the truth is far better than we fear it to be.

Often times, we have perfectly good ears (really!) but the exercises are out of our range. A bass will struggle to write down something too high because it's hard for them to imagine themselves singing it. A soprano will flip if you play a G2 for the starting pitch for a sight-singing exercise. Change the register of your exercises to make sure they are most comfortable for your own voice; you might just surprise yourself with how much better you perform after you do this.^1

But the absolute best way to get someone to check your work? Join a choir. I'm bolding this entire paragraph because if you follow only one bit of advice from this thread, this would be it. Singing in a choir will take your ears into hyperdrive. It gives you a constant check on whether or not you're doing it right and provides tons of context for the music you're hearing/producing. It also solves the pesky problem of range/register. Not to mention, it can be mega fun so you might not even notice your ears are improving!

Also, kind of a weird one, but check the timbre of what you're listening to. In high school, I was behind my AP theory class when it came to this stuff and one day, our teacher switched the keyboard sounds to organs, and flutes, and saxophones. I aced that day while everyone else bombed; turns out I have a far easier time figuring out winds than I do pianos. Which makes sense: my introduction to music was playing flute.

But seriously, timbre has a supermassive impact on what and how we hear, for reasons too involved to name here. So, if you can, change the color of what you're listening to. If you grew up playing a certain kind of instrument (strings, saxes, etc.), start there. And after that, have fun looking for other timbres you find easy/pleasing to listen to. This advice ties into choral singing; the voice is the timbre most familiar to all of us.

And that's a great next tip: have fun. Reconnect to all the reasons you love music. Dance a waltz by Chopin and count through the rhythms. Sing along to an ear-worm by Mozart. Simply hum the tonic to a Beethoven symphony and make note of when it changes. Read the sheet music for these pieces while you do it. Actively engage in the music you listen to and your ears and your heart will thank you for it.

That was...a lot more than I planned on writing and I'm sure there's typos littered everywhere. Still, I hope this helps. You totally can get good ears by the time you're done with your theory sequence. Be patient with yourself. Be smart about how you practice. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Give yourself some wins. And again: breathe. Take care and have fun practicing.

1.) This is perhaps my biggest beef with aural skills classes as they are currently taught most places. This is such a simple thing to vary yet most of our exercises are still in the middle register. I understand that that's where most people are likely to be able to sing but never switching it up makes it easier for some people to learn simply because they have voice types that closely match what's being played. Irks me to no end.

> Wait, what free drink? I totally missed this.

If you're in London hmu on reddit. I buy first drink for anyone whose name I recognise from reddit, as a general rule.

>(I'm sure there is more theory out there, of course, I just don't know what it is or how to find it.)

Once you've got the basics, you're starting to get into specialist areas. It's a bit like saying "I want to learn some science". Music theory becomes musicology, and that's literally a degree topic.

You could look for the following books:

On the topic of analysing music, try Nicolas Cook. A Guide to Musical Analysis, 1994. I'm not a fan of a lot of what Nicolas Cook writes and says but I can't deny that as an entry level for people that haven't read deeply, he has some of the seminal texts.

On the topic of harmony and form, you could try either Aldwell and Schachter or the much cheaper, but much less thorough [Pratt](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamics-Harmony-Principles-Practice.

On the topic of music history, you probably want to start with a general overview of classical music. Nicolas Cook wrote A Very Short Introduction. A textbook like Burkholder, Grout and Palisca covers most of the areas first year undergrads are expected to learn in the UK. Alternately, something like that Taruskin is also very thorough.

When you then want to focus down, you can use bibliographies from any of those books to find your favourite area.

Ethnomusicology might be worth considering. Look at the Very Short Introductions to Ethnomusicology, World Music and Folk Music.

If you have an interest in film music and how that functions, then you could start by looking at a book like Music and Mythmaking which is quite a nice introduction. There's another Very Short Introduction which is also useful. Kalinak is someone I find generally on target. There's also the Mervyn Cooke introduction to the history of film music which I found slightly inaccurate as it got more modern, but that's often the case in these books written contemporarily.

A subsection of this is ludomusicology (my field!) which you probably want to get into by reading either Collins or Summers depending on whether you want to read an established author, or read something written by one of my potential supervisors. You might struggle to find either of these depending on where you are. You could also try Ludomusicology.

There's also composition, but this might be a good start?

Jazz I'm not as sure about off the top of my head, alas.

E: It's worth noting that a lot of this steps away from purely mathematical relationships though. The mathematical relationships just get weird as you push further and as mentioned elsewhere in this AMA, the people that study them are the kind of people that nerds avoid at parties because they might want to talk about mathemusic.

A huge amount of British music has been collected that dates from before the 20th century. There has been two major revivals - one in the late 19th century, and another in the mid 20th century. Since the 1960's (in particular) there has also been a huge revival of performers playing this style of music.

Do you live in England? In Camden (London) there's a building called Cecil Sharpe House, which is home to a huge library of old folk songs / tunes. There are 2 collectors in particular who are worth looking into - Ralph Vaughan Williams and Francis James Child.

A popular book in the British folk scene is The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. It contains lyrics and melodies, and was really influential in the 60's revival.

Artists that I would recommend looking into:
Nic Jones
Ewan Mac Coll,
Dick Gaughan,
A.L Lloyd,

(These are just a few favourites though - if you're interested I can give you some more names)

With regards to dance music, it's fairly rare to have exact dates the tunes were written - there are lots of collections of music from the last few centuries. There is a huge amount of traditional English dance music, as well as a lively tradition of folk dancing (morris dancing).

John Kirkpatrick is one example of a player of English trad dance music.

(I don't know a huge amount about English dance music - my main interest is Irish dance music - but I grew up around it and am can you give you a fair bit of info if you want)

EDIT: clarity & extra link

That Michael Gray "Dylan Encyclopedia" is an over-the-top indulgence. It's fun to flip through occasionally but whenever I do I walk away thinking "I can't believe someone invested so much time to produce something so arcane". I actually bought the book when Gray was going around the country as part of a speaking tour to promote the book.

​

A book that's fun but is only sort of a book is The Dylan Scrapbook. As it's name implies, it's put together like an actual scrapbook that features all sorts of pictures and reproductions of things from Dylan's early years. Lots of cool features like handwritten lyrics, photos, and more that were curated by the same guy who oversaw the Music Experience Project in Seattle.

I was in a tape Bob Dylan tape tree years ago and some very generous member send me a bunch of recordings and this DVD of various Dylan TV performances.

http://www.stellarproducts.info/product_p/605.htm

Some of the quality on the version I have are a bit bootleggy (new verb) but I love this thing. I have volumes one and two and I believe there is a third. I'd pick them all up.

Another item she needs is Clinton Heylin's "Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions 1960-1994."

http://www.amazon.com/Bob-Dylan-Recording-Sessions-1960-1994/dp/0312150679

Or "The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" by Michael Gray is a great "bathroom" reader.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0826469337/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687702&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0312150679&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0GF9NA2VA04JYE6J3526

Check e-Bay for more Dylan memorabilia type stuffs.

Suzuki??? I recommend you learn how to read music a more traditional way. Suzuki method will only teach you what the teacher teaches you.


Musical literacy is the ability to pick up music and read it with no help, just like regular literacy. It takes time to develop, just like regular literacy. Suzuki method is generally for those who cannot understand the notated music, or do not care to practice reading it.



First you need to learn how to read music. Then you can just buy a book of traditional Irish songs (this is the one I got on Amazon) and get to work. The Irish Songbook (Vocal Songbooks): 75 Songs (Songs collected , adapted and have been sung by The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem ; The Irish Echo) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0825602378/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5aa5Bb1ZZC1S7

Honestly it's just a puzzle until you figure it out. In the meantime, there's nothing stopping you from playing a song over and over again and playing along with it. It just takes time.

You can purchase LP mailers at most local record stores and several online locations, such as Amazon.com. There's actually a perfect write-up for this by an eBay seller here.

If you still have questions, you can submit your question using the 'Submit a New Question' button on the side or within this thread. There are several users who frequent that thread in order to help users with questions. Good luck!

Reader's Digest Merry Christmas Songbook has a lot of songs, is spiralbound so it stays open, and I'm pretty sure it has all the lyrics. It also includes the history of some of the songs which I find interesting.

>So why don't classical musicians learn by transcription?

Assuming the premise. They do.

If you've ever taken an ear training class at a music school or conservatory, you no doubt would have had to do dictation and sight singing (responding to your "the vocalization of the music should be more important than the actual notation itself" comment, though I have to admit I'm a bit mystified by it). Of course, transcription from a recording is something you can only do with recorded music, but if we look at how things worked out historically, you'll see that there was still a lot of oral/aural pedagogy in European classical traditions before recording technology became available. Figured bass and partimento pedagogy was the primary way composers were trained in Europe through the eighteenth century; sources of partimento realizations are scarce, so it's assumed that notation was rarely involved and much of the pedagogy was oral.

But let's expand our discussion of oral/aural tradition out further. Music is more than pitches and rhythms, you know. Here are two excerpts from Anne McLucas' The Musical Ear explaining the role of oral transmission in the interpretation and nuanced shaping of classical music:

>Any teaching of classical music involves an enormous amount of aural learning; the teaching of the nuances of everything that needs to be added to the pitches and rhythms that are printed on the page is learned aurally from one's teacher or by mimicking other players or recordings. Since our notation is not capable of showing most of these nuances, it is often their execution that makes the difference between a well-trained musician and a poorly trained or even an untrained one. This kind of aural/oral transmission is probably no different in America than in other places where
Western music is taught.

>However, there are other kinds of oral transmissions at work as well, especially at the upper echelons of musical training, and they are especially strongly emphasized in American institutions, in part because of the necessity born of our history, that we have often felt that we must prove ourselves vis-à-vis European musicians. This, this oral transmission reflects the transmission of a method through a line of teachers, tracing back as far as one famous, preferably European, one. For example, Theodor Leschtizky, a pupil of Czerny, who himself had studied with Beethoven, started a line of teachers that passed on the Paderewski and Schnabel, and also to American students. Amy Fay wrote a memoir recounting her studies with Leschtizky's teacher, Ludwig Deppe, as well as wit Liszt and other famous pianists in the 1870s; and Ethel Newcomb recounted her studies with Leschetizky at the beginning of the twentieth century. (114)

---

>The presence of a lineage can also have a direct bearing on how a particular piece of music is taught. For instance, in the published editions of Chopin, there are opposing philosophies on whether they should be created from manuscript and published sources or should include variants that came from the students of Chopin, whose corrections to his own published works, which often were riddled with errors, were passed down through the oral tradition of his students. For example, according to one source, there are at least fifteen variants for the Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2, several of which are not even published, but have come down through the oral tradition of his various students, each of whom heard and notated slightly different things. In the even more amorphous tradition of how to play Chopin—the application of agogic accents, rubato, dynamics, pedaling, and tempo—the lineage directly from Chopin through his pupils is even more important. Already of Chopin, wrote: "Chopin's compositions … run the risk of being misunderstood if one has not known the master's way of playing, his intentions and his conception of the instrument—since their result on paper is quite different from that of the sound world in which they really live."

>Surprisingly, these differences of opinion show up even in performance practice of twentieth-century composers, whose own playing has been recorded. In her article on Debussy and his early interpreters, Cecila Dunoyer contrasts the descriptions of Debussy's playing of his own works—and his recordings—with that of several of his early interpreters, finding significant differences, even in the generation contemporary with the composer. (117)

To jump on your comment, a friend gave me a copy of The Folksinger's Wordbook which has a ton of songs in it. The key/arrangement isn't always true to some versions I know but it's a great tome to thumb through if you're looking for a random song to play.

Someone once recommnded this book to me and I highly recommend it to you: http://www.amazon.com/Readers-Digest-Merry-Christmas-Songbook/dp/0895771055/

It's beautiful and hardcover and spiral bound. Aside from that it's got a nice version of almost every Christmas song you could imagine.

Okay! A keyboard.

I bought all five GBA games from a seller on eBay for £22. I figured, why the hell not, I've never played any of them and they sell for ~£15-£20 each on Amazon. Excellent value!

When they arrived they looked legit - but I've never owned a GBA or any of the games so I couldn't compare. I was partly tipped off when I started playing Ruby - the grass/trees change colour a little when you're running, becoming more vibrant. When I went to leave seller feedback, I happened to spot some feedback that said "Great value. Fakes, but very good fakes."

So I went looking and according to this link the games are indeed fake. The only thing the cartidges don't have is the stamped stickers on the holographic foil - everything else is there. So I know they're fake, at least.

But thanks for the warning! I knew that fake cartidges wouldn't necessarily let you transfer the Pokemon across, but I didn't realise that they would erase the game data. I had intended to try it, just to see if I could, but my DS games are all much further ahead than these new games, so maybe I'll just start playing 'em all and wait to buy the proper versions rather than investing too heavily in them now.

This was a lot of text to say something that doesn't necessarily mean a lot. D'oh.

My uncle wrote a biography of Townes Van Zandt. It's always weird to see/hear about him because I always think of my uncle, who plays guitar and banjo and just about every stringed instrument ever. He loves the guy and so he wrote a book about it, and I always thought that was pretty damn cool. Link to his book if anyone's curious.

Fun fact: Apparently it was after seeing them perform that Justin decided to give up music. This was abviously before BI was a thing, and I think it was shortly after he left Deyarmond. He was just so mindblown by how good they were, and he didn't think he could ever accomplish the same.

Source: The unnoficial biography... https://www.amazon.com/Bon-Iver-Mark-Beaumont/dp/1780387377

https://youtu.be/6j6Xclma02w - amarguitar has an amazing YouTube channel that takes super deep dives into music theory and breaks down tons of Phish jams

https://www.amazon.com/Phish-Companion-Guide-their-Music/dp/0879306319/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_1/133-1251050-1249136?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0879306319&pd_rd_r=9a6dc57e-ad9f-4a4f-a709-bcb8fc2c8412&pd_rd_w=fgKqO&pd_rd_wg=397nq&pf_rd_p=aae79475-6dc9-4a12-80e8-27b63108fa72&pf_rd_r=88DHHXDNAZ5XBC376BXC&psc=1&refRID=88DHHXDNAZ5XBC376BXC

Having this book in my bathroom legit made me learn so much about Phish’s setlists and what happened at each show while I pooped.

She really loved him. Her book is really good even if you aren't a big Dylan fan.

His autobiography Bound for Glory is great also. The man lived an interesting life.

I'd recommend finding some of the Old Town School of Folk Music resources. You can get books or downloads.

Editing to add the great resources from Sing Out magazine. "Rise Up Singing" songbook and teaching discs.

Oh yes. She has had a CRAZY life. I don't really have any specific stories because my dad said I had to read her book first before I asked her a million questions that would be explained there. I just bought it at the Woody Guthrie Music Festival, here's the amazon link if you're interested! It's a mix of her autobiography and her memories with Woody and what not. Super interesting!!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0184CBHHK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#navbar

Repeating what I've said recently:

The best Chromebook "available in the UK" is probably from... the US.

VAT aside, there are no import duties on laptops from the US. Amazon.com will even include the UK VAT (and call it import duty even though it's actually VAT) for you at checkout. Postage ~£15.

Edited to add:
UK Gov trade tarriffs on laptops

The tax calculation from when I imported my TCB2 in Jan 2016

Old ebay thread on Laptop duties back when we had 15% VAT

My dummy order on Amazon.com today for a Samsung CB+

Thank you for your kind words. He was able to finish a book he was working on before he passed. His colleagues at the University of Tennessee were kind enough to give all book proceeds to his wife and daughter. It’s a collection of interviews and info of a Knoxville legend, Cas Walker.

If you are looking for an interesting read check it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Cas-Walker-Stories-Life-Legend/dp/1621905357

A Touch of Magic

http://www.amazon.com/A-Touch-of-Magic-ebook/dp/B006ETGELA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1333727275&sr=8-2

Along with a handful of celtic music books.
(Fifty Great Celtic Jigs series)
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Great-Celtic-Gregory-Mahan/dp/1468129996/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3

Reading about this song led me to discover this songbook, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People https://www.amazon.com/dp/0803244754/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_eUwVAbPFT3ES9

I ordered it immediately. It has great songs by Woody Guthrie, this one and other socialist/union songs

Positively 4th Street:
http://www.amazon.com/Positively-4th-Street-Fariña-Richard/dp/B008SMTSDM
Freewheel in' Time
http://www.amazon.com/Freewheelin-Time-Greenwich-Village-Sixties/dp/0767926889/ref=pd_sim_b_3/181-7152492-3180319
Chronicles Vol. 1
http://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Bob-Dylan/dp/0743244583/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Search the internet for 'x5 buyer's guide' to find results like these:

http://www.ebay.com/gds/BMW-X5-buyers-and-owners-guide-by-micrabits-/10000000010710610/g.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/2727671/Buyers-guide-BMW-X5-2000-2004.html

https://www.amazon.com/BMW-X5-Essential-Buyers-generation/dp/1845845331

There is also an xdrivers forum and other X5 forums where you can get more targeted advice from people who own them.

It's an alright read

• Cost to list 1200+ items on Amazon per month = £30
  
  https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/sell-online/pricing.html
  
  
• Cost to list 1200 items on eBay per month = £60
  
  https://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/Which-eBay-Shop-is-Best-For-You-/10000000011296774/g.html
  
  

A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, by Suze Rotolo

I really want this... Because I'm OBSESSED

Bon Iver
http://amazon.ca/dp/1780387377