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New Guitarist's Guide to Composing & Improvising
Press Release
2002-04-09

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Berklee Press, the publishing division of the world-renowned Berklee College of Music, has released The Guitarist's Guide to Composing and Improvisation by legendary performer, composer, lecturer, and clinician Jon Damien. The book is an unparalleled journey through performance, composition, and improvisational technique, coined by Damien as "comprovisation." The title offers the guitarist a unique perspective on composition while providing charts, exercises, and an audio CD providing step-by-step learning with play-along tracks for improvisation and self-testing.

The Guitarist's Guide to Composing and Improvisation is an invaluable resource to all guitarists looking to develop practice and learning methods that will lead them to think outside the box of composition. Each element of the learning process is carefully designed to allow maximum learning. As a guitarist, you can expect to:

* Expand your palette of musical colors

* Explore conceptual tolls for composing and improvising

* Develop your sense of dynamics, articulation, rhythm, melodic direction, and musical E.S.P.

* Stimulate your imagination with unconventional creativity development exercises like a musical Rorschach Test and crossword puzzle

* Increase your confidence for improvising with other musicians

* Improve your command of the guitar with fingerboard, scale, interval, arpeggio and ear studies

* Bring the concepts to life with the accompanying CD containing 80 tracks for study, observation, and interactive play-along.

About the Author

Jon Damien's work as a composer, performer and lecturer had taken him to five continents. His varied performances range from Bill Frisell to Luciano Pavarotti, and from the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa to the Boston Pops under John Williams with Johnny Cash. He has performed with Jaki Byard, Leonard Bernstein, Howard McGhee, Jimmy Giuffre, Shelia Jordan, Ricky Ford, Joanne Brackeen, Don Byron, Bobby Watson, Rosemary Cooney, and Linda Rondstadt. He is professor of guitar at Berklee College of Music, and his students have included Bill Frisell, Mark Whitfield, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Leni Stern, and Wayne Krantz.

About Berklee Press

Berklee Press is the non-profit, educational publishing division of Berklee College of Music. Our mission is to promote the enrichment and success of musicians, students, teachers, and hobbyists alike through publishing high-quality practical books, videotapes, DVDs, and interactive products for all areas of contemporary music education. Proceeds from the sales of Berklee Press products are contributed to the scholarship funds of the college. Berklee Press publications are distributed by Hal Leonard.