[ePub] The Spirit of Contradiction. a New Comedy of Two Acts by Rich; John at Arts-Photography

Review

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Great book; but dont get the Kindle versionBy CustomerI have been familiar with this book for years it is a great collection of duets (perfect for student teacher) and solos (for intermediate/advanced players). However; I recently lost my paper copy so thought Id give the Kindle a try. Do not like it AT ALL. Pages appear to be scanned too small. Lots of dead space around the music. Increasing font size doesnt change anything except the title. From other reviews I have seen; this is a common problem with music books on Kindle. Get the print version instead.5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. NOT as advertised - no duetsBy joebobhenrybobDont purchase this book if you are looking for duets. It has none. You actually might want to buy it once you get through my diatribe about song arrangement at the end; however. Depending on what youre looking for.Reviews on are of course a sort of combination review - of the product and the seller. The description here on says there are duets and thats it. No further detail.Seeing as the title of the book SAYS duets; the actual product is defective.Imagine youre at a recital hall. A vocalist comes out and sings a song with a backing piano. Is this a duet? No; its a solo with piano accompaniment. A clarinet comes out and plays the same melody line with a backing guitar. Is THIS a duet? No; its a clarinet solo with guitar accompaniment.There are no duets in this book. The second half of the book contains vocal solos with guitar accompaniment. Yes; you could adapt a vocal solo to play a single-line melody with any instrument but these Christmas songs originate as sung songs with a vocal melody; words; and stuff like that. Its a vocal solo. Trade a clarinet; recorder; whatever for a voice and youre still playing a solo.So; to the author and publisher; the fact that two instruments are playing at the same time doesnt make it a duet - words mean specific things in music. A duet has counterpoint; instruments changing who is carrying the melody; call and response; things like that. A solo carries the melody the entire time in one instrument - it retains the basic elements of the song regardless of whether anyone else is playing. Accompaniment is when another instrument provides backing harmony; rhythm; that kind of thing. If you play just the solo part; you can recognize the song. If you play JUST the accompaniment and leave out the melody; you do not retain the most important elements of the song. (think of all the rock songs out there with the same chord changes - if you were just playing block chords or some new backing arrangement; its the MELODY that would tell you what song you are listening to.)So; like I said; words mean things; so when you say one word and mean something else; youre - lets say; to put it delicately - communicating non-true things. You want to put DUETS on the cover of your book and put nothing but solos in it; you get one star.The book below is full of actual duets for classical guitar:Christmas Guitar PortraitsIts nice and thick - 86 pages as compared to Christmas with Classical Guitars 47.However; I do have a gripe - or well; warning; with this book as well. An arrangement by definition is the decision on HOW the song is going to be played. Guitar is different than piano because theres ONE piano key for a given note on a piece of paper for piano while guitar has multiple places to play the same note. Arranging for guitar is therefore a bit like arranging for an ensemble even when it is performing as a solo instrument. Give a guitar a chord to play and it can be played with the exact same voicing in multiple locations - some of these locations will be more or less difficult for the player to execute and theyll also have different timbres depending on where on the fretboard you play it. And you have to worry about the next chord and the previous chord - is this chord easy to get to from the last one; is it easy to get to the next chord from this one?There is some merit to a classical guitar book with no notation because it forces the player to learn to arrange a song. But when youre getting a classical guitar book of Christmas arrangements; the last thing you are thinking of using it for is practice or study. Typically you would want to absorb the material as quickly as possible - you just want to play something for Christmas; thats really the only goal with christmas music. You wont be playing it for a recital; a restaurant gig; or your family in August for instance.So many decent books that give you interesting christmas arrangements give you NO helpful notation. When it comes to Christmas music; I want to be inundated with fingering and position suggestions. I dont want be looking at a clean pristine page of notes. The "oh but what if you want to do a different fingering" argument wont fly with me. Youd cross out whatever fingering you disagree with and write in your own; wouldnt you? JUST like you would be writing in fingering notes on an un-notated page. Im imagining some player who worked on his sight-reading; feels he has an advantage over other guitarists; and therefore prefers anyone with worse sight reading skills to have a hard time of it with learning the arrangements -otherwise they get to pick up the song just as fast as he does; and whats the point of that for him; right? But when it comes to Christmas music; this attitude seems pretty Grinch-like....so the one nice thing I want to say about Christmas with Classical Guitar is that they do give you a lot of help in the fingering department. Sometimes Ill write in my own fingering in a piece if I dont like the one given; but its nice to have. That leaves me more time to add non-christmas tunes to my repertoire. See? When you do some hand-holding on your christmas guitar arrangements; its a win for serious music; which isnt the point of the christmas stuff really.That other book I mentioned Christmas Guitar Portraits looks fairly nice - no tablature is fine with me and means I get that much more material in the book. ...but if you get it; prepare to whip out the ol mechanical pencil and spend some times experimenting with positions; penciling in and erasing things; and so on. This isnt really ideal for a Christmas book because you probably wouldnt be thinking of christmas music until November - which isnt the time to start; if you wanted to ARRANGE say 5-10 christmas tunes in time for christmas. Its just dumb because obviously the author uses SOME sort of fingering when they write the book; they obviously therefore KNOW their own preferred fingering. They just wont share the arrangement with little Timmy away at music school who had the bright idea on thanksgiving to come back home with some songs to play for the family by the fireside at christmas. Or whatever; you catch my drift.Woah woah hey; we gave Timmy the NOTES. Who said anything about a guitar? You figure out that guitar part for yourself; Timmy. If you dont have those fingerings for those 10 songs ready until February; well; thats just your punishment for being an intermediate level player; isnt it?So I have no perfect christmas classical guitar solution for yall. Christmas with Classical Guitar has some misleading advertising/titling but for solo purposes the arrangements seem non-awful; possibly quite good and the fingering help looks good. Ive bought quite a few christmas guitar books over the years and it seems like a majority of them either get interesting arrangements with zero fingering/position notation or bad arrangements with copious notation. Go figure. I did also kinda likeMel Bay Christmas Book-Carols Arranged for Acoustic Guitar ...youd definitely be sitting down for awhile with a pencil deciding exactly how you want to play things and it has just a tiny bit of a Charlie Brown Christmas feel to it (he throws in a sprinkling of diminished and 7th chords); but I like the arrangements note-wise. The author just doesnt always bother to tell you what his arrangement actually was.Christmas Carols for Solo Guitar [Paperback] [1996] Glenn Weiser The arrangements were pretty good and the actual notation was pretty good. This is my favorite solo christmas book thus far - although to be slightly fair to the book Im reviewing; it looks ok in that regard as well; keeping in mind that its a solo book with no actual duets.To any eager beavers out there; theres a dearth of tasteful; well-notated; well-arranged; fun classical guitar duet books out there right now. Especially in that ill-defined "intermediate" space. The field is wide open right now. I figure if you started now; youd have something you could shop around to the publishers by Christmas 2013 or maybe in the spring 2014 - in time to have it out for christmas 2014. Just a thought.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy Jennifer CaggianoPerfectly arranged for the intermediate classical guitar student. Worth every nickel!