Learn Organ Keyboard

The Total Rock Keyboardist will teach you everything you need to know to become a well-rounded player. This book provides warm-ups, practice tips, discussion of various keyboard instruments and their place in music history, left-hand bass lines in a variety of styles, tips for improvising melodies and keyboard solos, and great songs and examples in the styles of innovative rock keyboardists. You'll also learn music theory including chords, diatonic harmony, and scales. …

Many German composers of the early 17th century went to Italy to study the newest musical trends. Samuel Scheidt, one of the main representatives of the North German organ school, did not do this. He went to Amsterdam instead, to study with the famous organist and composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. But although Sweelinck, as far as we know, never left the Netherlands, he was very well aware of everything that was happening all over Europe.

Samuel Scheidt's Tabulatura Nova, published in three parts in the early seventeenth century, is one of those checkpoints that music history students have to learn. It was a collection of keyboard music with mostly instructional intent, making up a compendium of North German polyphonic techniques. The Tabulatura Nova was an early example of the exhaustiveness of musical thinking that became one of Bach's key characteristics, and it pointed to Bach as well in its density and overall conservatism. This double disc, covering the second of the Tabulatura Nova's three volumes, includes early fugues, fantasias, dances, an impressive toccata, and pieces intended for sacred use, including several based on chorales.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) was one of the most influential composers of the Late-Renaissance and Early-Baroque. He was organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam for 44 years. His influence was enormous, he attracted composers from many European countries to Amsterdam to learn his art. Even the great Johann Sebastian Bach acknowledged his superior craftsmanship. Sweelinck's keyboard music is divided into 4 groups: Fantasias, Toccatas, Chorale variations (sacred works), Variations on Dances (secular works). Traditionally Dances were performed on the harpsichord, Chorale Variations on the organ.

“Solitaire” is a concept album exploring the meaning of Resistance in liquid modern times. Written by Francesco Venti (solo guitar) and Sergio Manfredi (vocal and lyrics) for their own project called Alcàntara, it is a journey through space rock, progressive ballads and psychedelic blues.