Music Lesson - Katharine Weber interesting story about an art theft, seduction and betrayal. Very readable and well worth a go. Occasionally the Irish characters seemed a bit stage Irish but overall not a bad book. I found it difficult to pinpoint the actual time for a while until the characters started to talk about specific events in the past. Then again I'm sure there are places in the wilds of Cork that are like that.

Little Music Lessons for Little Kids: Le... The first three lessons in the Little Music Lessons for Kids series was a free download on Amazon yesterday. Being an independent music teacher, I couldn't resist reading and reviewing it.

These lessons solidly teach the most fundamental concepts of music theory in a way that is fun and interesting for kids. The stories are cute, interesting, and presented simply. Parents without any music experience at all can confidently teach this information to their children.

Two minor criticisms:

1) The picture of "Little Edward's flute" is actually a recorder. Although the recorder is technically a type of flute, I wouldn't say that is common knowledge or terminology. I'd like to see the name of the instrument more accurately reflect the picture shown.

2) I'd prefer that the images of the hand show the backside of the hand so that the thumb is labeled as finger 1, not the little finger. That way the thumb would remain the "bottom floor of the house" but the numbering system would be consistent with what children may eventually learn - or possibly, are currently learning - in music lessons. I can't think of any instrument whose numbering system labels the little finger as 1. Even when the thumb isn't numbered at all, it's opposite. Little finger is always last (4 or 5).

That aside, in my own studio, I've found that the traditional ways to teach these basics can be difficult for some students to grasp. Some children need a different approach. Through stories, rather than tedious worksheets and drills, Tatiana Bandurina has provided some fresh new ideas for teaching these concepts. I have never drawn a treble clef in the manner she describes; in fact, I think I was taught to draw it in a completely opposite way. But it works! I love the "inflated B" story to teach children proper note-drawing penmanship. I love the emphasis on the G line when learning about treble clef. And the idea of the staff as a house with multiple floors, each line an "apartment," is a great visual kids can easily relate to and remember.

I'm interested to find out what stories the "musical puppy" will tell in future volumes of the Little Music Lessons for Kids series!

(NOTE: If Goodreads allowed for it, I'd be rating this 3 1/2 stars)

I've played the banjo for a couple years now. My only prior brush with playing music was piano lessons in the 4th and 5th grade. I'm glad I took them, i learned the basics of reading music and where middle C is, but apart from that, they didn't go so well. My younger brother and I were enrolled together and the piano teacher, Mrs. Blackburn, tried to keep us at the same level but he picked it up a lot quicker than I did and I was holding him back. He learned faster and played better. He did then and he does now.When I was a kid in church I was honestly asked in so many words if I was trying to sabotage the song we were learning and would I mind singing a bit quieter? It's safe to say that my ability to carry a tune was, and is, minimal. For me, the ability to play music has always felt inaccessible. It's a membership in an exclusive circle that you are either born into or obtain access to by selling the invisible part of your dual nature at a midnight meeting on a dusty crossroads in the deep South. Needless to say, I wasn't born into the club and my soul remains firmly ensconced in my body.I don't think it's because I don't have the genes. I often fell asleep listening to my dad jamming on the piano or making up songs on the guitar. He'd even whip out the viola at family reunions and treat us to a duet with grandma on the piano. Whatever the reason for my lack of musicality, I really, really want in. I want to be able to pick up the guitar and strum a few chords with a friend or play backup banjo in an informal bluegrass jam session. I want my playing style to shift from being something that resembles computer programming to being organic and emotional. Regrettably, after two years of picking the banjo daily, I don't feel I'm a lot closer to that goal and, as rewarding as the learning has been, it's a bit disheartening at times. The Music Lesson is probably geared more towards people like my dad or my brother; musicians who are already competent but want to take it to the next level, but I found it incredibly helpful in my personal mission to extract the music that I hope exists somewhere in there. The writing is more metaphysical than technical and more abstract than concrete, but I found the way it teaches you how to think about music and life enlightening. Wooten talks about music as a language and how you should go about learning it the way you learned English. To learn English, you practiced, but didn't think of it as such. You simply found yourself immersed in the company of expert speakers and in order to communicate with them you had to follow their example.At this point, I think learning music will have to be something closer to the process I used learning Spanish: intense study and explicit practice combined with immersion. Immersion meaning playing along with experts, in person if possible, but with recordings when the Avett brothers aren't available to come over and jam. As simple and obvious as that sounds, I hadn't really thought about it that way before.The Music Lesson is full of insights like that. There are lessons on how to trust yourself when you play, how to combine the elements of music in ways that sound good and how to play along with others. I think the book was meant to be listened to, not read. The audiobook is narrated by Victor Wooten and a cast of several actors. It's full of music and sound effects and it makes the conversational writing style that might seem forced or naive on paper feel completely natural. Quite a bit of it is "out there," but I think the hyperbole is purposeful, it drives home the lessons and makes them memorable. Listen to it with an open mind.I still haven't found my music, but after reading this, I feel like there's finally progress in the search.

This novel tells the story of Patricia Dolan, a middle-aged art historian who finds herself in the midst of a mid-life crisis of epic proportions. The book opens with Dolan in the midst of a large-scale art heist, which removed a Vermeer from the clutches of none less than Buckingham Palace. Dolan is holed up in a cottage in a tiny, remote Irish Village with the stolen painting. How an American art history professor came to find herself in this situation comprises the first three-quarters of the book. The rest brings the heist to its dramatic and suspense-filled conclusion. At the outset of the book Patricia Dolan finds herself stalled in her career, divorced, and grieving the death of her daughter. She finds solace in a long-lost, decades younger cousin who tumbles into her life and becomes the other half of Dolan's torrid love affair. It's the fling with this Irish cousin who launches Dolan into an Irish Liberation plot to steal a British-owned Vermeer. I found this book undeniably slow to get going. The details of Patricia's relationship with her cousin Mickey were not especially interesting. What was interesting was how an unassuming professor came to find herself in the midst of an international art heist. For as exciting as this book should have been, it simply was not. The characters were not especially well-developed, and were not always believable. The most interesting entity in this book is the painting, The Music Lesson. Perhaps this is intentional. The best-expressed emotion in this book is Patricia's love for the painting. The final, dramatic ending is the highlight of the book. Getting there, however, is slow going.

The Music Lesson - Katharine Weber What woman is so stupid? They'd never let her live.