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Hal Leonard Books has published Minding Your Business, a guide to money and taxes for creative professionals by Martin Kamenski.

If there is anything a creative person tends to dislike more than talking about money, it’s talking about taxes. But paying attention to the business side of your art is important, and author and practicing CPA, Martin Kamenski, takes you by the hand and leads you through the tangled web of the IRS.

This book will end your fear of taxes and will help you lead the life you crave as a creative professional. The language is easy to understand for even the most number-illiterate. Minding Your Business provides guidance about when to treat yourself as a business, including all important considerations before incorporating and shattering some of the most prevalent (and costly) myths existing in the artistic community.

Minding Your Business is suitable for any actor, writer, musician, dancer, photographer, director, model, visual artist, band, or production company. The author’s Chicago-based practice serves clients nationwide and offers artists and creative professionals the explanations they need. Kamenski has taken the very fine-tuned method of explaining taxes that made his practice successful and condensed it in a book that will pay for itself tenfold. The playing field is about to be leveled. Prepare to feel in control of your financial future!

The book is available to purchase for $19.99 USD.

More information: Hal Leonard Books / Minding Your Business

Hal Leonard Books has announced The Worship Vocal Book, a book that addresses the needs of the modern worship singer, covering style, confidence, singing technique, stage presence, and more.

Author Tim Carson has been traveling the country, helping singers of all types learn to present themselves and their music in a way that communicates the emotion in the song, the heart behind the lyrics, and the power behind the voice. He helps people understand their voice as an instrument, like any other, and that singing is truly a learnable skill.

“Tim Carson is an amazing vocal coach. In my opinion, he’s the best out there today!” says Tim Davis, vocal contractor for the FOX TV show Glee. At a wide range of conferences and sessions, the principles presented in The Worship Vocal Book have proven to produce better singers, time and time again. The techniques in this book draw on four-hundred years of classical, foundational vocal instruction and yet they are fresh. Tim presents them in a way that is different from any other method available today, particularly as it pertains to the contemporary worship singer, leader, songwriter, or performer. The information is presented in a way that is easy to follow, and it works!

More information: Hal Leonard Books / The Worship Vocal Book

Backbeat Books has announced it has published The Epiphone Guitar Book, the inside story of one of the world’s leading guitar makers by Walter Carter.

The epic story of Epiphone, one of the world’s oldest and most famous guitar companies, spans three centuries, from its Old World roots in the 19th century to the golden age of American guitar makers in the 20th century and onward into the global market of the new millennium.

Former staff historian Walter Carter recounts the story in The Epiphone Guitar Book, mirroring the story of American business, from an individual luthier to a family business and on to corporate ownership. This is also the story of American popular music, powered by Epiphone guitars, from the big-bodied Emperor that drove the swing bands of the 1930s to the electric hollow-bodies of the 1960s used by the Beatles, to the custom solid-body models preferred by such modern rockers as Noel Gallagher (Oasis) and Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance).

Along the way, Carter considers the effect of new ownership by Gibson, starting in the late 1950s, and the way that Epiphone survived moves to offshore production to take on the strong individual identity it enjoys today. Beautifully illustrated with photographs of all the important Epiphone instruments and the extraordinary musicians who played them, and featuring a collector’s section that provides specifications for every Epiphone guitar made from the 1920s to the present, The Epiphone Guitar Book is the fascinating story of how a name in the world of the guitar became iconic.

The book is available to purchase for $24.99 USD.

More information: Backbeat Books / The Epiphone Guitar Book

Hal Leonard has publishes the 2nd edition of The Ultimate Church Sound Operator’s Handbook, specifically updated for sound people in ministries and churches.

This important second edition of The Ultimate Church Sound Operator’s Handbook is written to specifically address the concerns and needs of the sound person who serves ministries and churches.

The modern church uses many of the same presentation tools that have become common in television, movies, and concerts, placing a unique set of technical expectations on its eager, willing, and primarily volunteer force. This updated handbook blends the relational and technical aspects of church sound in a straightforward and easy-to-understand manner, providing a leg-up to volunteer and staff church sound operators.

The Ultimate Church Sound Operator’s Handbook will help church sound operators gain the knowledge they need to faithfully serve their church membership, leaders, and musicians.

The book costs $39.99 USD.

More information: Hal Leonard / The Ultimate Church Sound Operator’s Handbook

Hal Leonard Book has announced Behind the Boards: The Making of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Greatest Records Revealed, a book by Jake Brown.

The term “soundtrack of our lives” is one commonly tossed around by artists, fans, critics, and historians when discussing rock ‘n’ roll’s timeless hits, spanning every subgenre from pop to hard rock and country to new wave. Now, music biographer Jake Brown takes music lovers into the studio to see how that soundtrack was actually created.

Behind the Boards: The Making of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Greatest Records Revealed is the first definitive rock record producers’ anthology of its kind. Written for both fans and academic audiences interested in the art of sound recording and record producing, the book features intimate first-hand accounts of the making of some of rock’s greatest hits via interviews with the producers who recorded them.

“Every Breath You Take” by the Police, “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd, “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “Beautiful Day” by U2, “When the Levy Breaks” by Led Zeppelin, and “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC all are featured in Behind the Boards, as well as works by Bob Dylan, the Pixies, the Rolling Stones, KISS, Bob Marley, the Who, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Waits, and many more. Brown’s research reaches as far back as Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 album, Electric Ladyland, (Historic Studio A at Electric Lady Studios is shown on the book’s cover) and peers into the future with an exclusive look inside the making of Aerosmith’s upcoming album, Music from Another Dimension.

Featuring exclusive interviews with 31 of producing’s biggest names of today – or any day – including Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel), Dave Jerden (Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains), Bob Rock (Motley Crue, Metallica, The Cult), Butch Vig (Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins), Eddie Kramer (Jimi Hendrix), Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, KISS, Alice Cooper), Don Was (Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Elton John), and Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, John Lennon), Behind the Boards is the last word on how some of the greatest records in music history were made, told by the men and women who made them.

The book is available from Hal Leonard for $29.99 USD.

More information: Hal Leonard Books / Behind the Boards

Sample Magic has announced the publication of Classic Tracks, a book by Richard Buskin.

What really went on behind the doors of the world’s top studios while recording The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Nirvana and R.E.M.? How did producers and engineers deal with the legendary egos of Oasis and Paul Simon? Or the haunted perfectionism of Michael Jackson and Phil Spector? And how – between the drugs, the sex, the fights, the tears and the tantrums – did some of the most iconic tracks of our times ever get recorded?

In Classic Tracks, New York Times best-selling author Richard Buskin unearths the true stories behind 68 seminal recordings.

From rock to rap, pop to hip hop, soul to metal, punk to disco, and jazz to electronica, each chapter draws on original interviews and the recollections of artists, producers and engineers to tell the inside story of an era-defining recording, with in-depth information – including rare original studio photos, lyrics and track sheets – about the relevant recording techniques and creative processes. In all, 31 leading studios from around the world are profiled.

Starting with Les Paul (1951) and closing with The xx (2009), via recordings by David Bowie, Miles Davis, The Doors, John Lennon, The Sex Pistols, Donna Summer, Fleetwood Mac, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Madonna, Metallica, The Pogues, Rihanna, The Who, Justice and many more, Classic Tracks offers rare insight into the mindsets and unique talents of the finest musical artists of the past six decades, and reveals how – often against the odds – some of the all-time best-selling, most influential records came into being.

Classic Tracks includes more than 350 colour and black-and-white images across 420 pages.

Classic Tracks adds to Sample Magic’s list of recent publications that also includes Paul White’s The Producers’ Manual and Marc Adamo’s The Secrets of House Music Production.

The book is available to purchase for the introductory price of £26.90 GBP.

More information: Sample Magic / Classic Tracks