A helpful guide for anyone looking to understand musical success.
Music educator Griffin (Music and Keyboard in the Classroom, 2013) aims to help readers understand the science behind “practice makes perfect.”
While Griffin’s new book doesn’t go so far as to guarantee perfection for its practitioners, he does make a point to debunk the myth of natural talent, arguing instead for the unmatched importance of time spent practicing. With regard to so-called child prodigies, Griffin writes that what distinguishes them is that “they are constantly compared with children their own age, rather than with others who have accrued similar quantities of practice hours, similar opportunities, and family support.” Still, parents of would-be child prodigies can learn plenty here about how best to nurture their budding musicians. Griffin’s six well-researched, in-depth chapters are explained well for lay readers, translating studies in mathematics and neuroscience into comprehensible pop psychology with plenty of valuable “learning strategies for musical success.” Accordingly, the book is geared more toward instruction than entertainment and might be a bit dry for the casual reader; that said, Griffin also offers worthwhile information for nonmusicians. Particularly interesting are his notes on selecting background music for study, considering volume, tempo, tonality and texture. “Extrovert teenage boys are,” perhaps not surprisingly, “most at risk to choose poor study music.” Ultimately, rooted as it is in research and experience, much of Griffin’s advice comes down to matters of common sense, such as the need to strike a balance between encouragement and critical instruction. Figuring out how to do this is, of course, a bit trickier, so musical educators and parents of young music students alike will be grateful for Griffin’s valuable insights and the supporting information he’s gathered. The intermittent quotes from various historical luminaries on music, education and the mind don’t add much to Griffin’s text, though they’re precisely the sort of reducible platitudes found on posters in many music classrooms, so they don’t feel entirely out of place.
A helpful guide for anyone looking to understand musical success.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481946735
Page Count: 174
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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