Reviews for Mel Bay's Chord Diagram Pad

The average rating for Mel Bay's Chord Diagram Pad based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-10 00:00:00 Adam Rivera I find most difficult, theoretical writing to be annoying. (I'm a doctoral student in English, so I read a lot of it.) But occasionally, in a book like this, the difficulty feels (usually) worth it, sprinkled as it is with moments of beauty and insight. That is, if you care about Burrows's point: that we listen to music because it creates a space in our minds to focus on the present, a space that we need because language always draws our attention away from the present. It's hard for me to know if I agree with him or not, exactly, but I'm always intrigued, and I always love the gentle, beautiful, and even confusing ways Burrows gets us there. Here's the paragraph that best summarizes his big point, I think, while also exemplifying his writing style: Music creates a safe zone of sensation detached from issues of practical survival. The musical mindscape is an echo of the mindscape sustained by language, but it is a mindscape made up of schematized immediacies of sound and time, rather than symbols. Its culturally validated patterning satisfies our complex ways of processing the world, so that we know this flow of sounds is ours, not random environmental noise, and can give ourselves to it. The elaborate directness of experience that results, a sophisticated return to innocence, helps make being human manageable. (117) If that paragraph terrifies you, then it's not the book for you.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-06-26 00:00:00 Siu Mei Louie The famous Australian Soprano Janice Chapman's book of exercises and writings on the human voice, addresses well common vocal problems in uncommon situations.