Arabic Musical Scales: Basic Maqam Notation: Basic Maqam Teachings (without CD's)

This is the best book I have found for American beginners. My musical education is heavily weighted in the western classical style, which makes it difficult for me to appreciate much of Arabic music. My ears tend not to hear what is being played. They hear what they think is the equivalent in western scale systems. I do not have the CD to this book, which is prabably a shame. Even so, Arabic musical vocabulary is so important that I benefit immensely from reading the text. The print is large, well formated, adequately cross-referenced, and I understand it. It is supplemental to lessons. The only quibble is possibly that the book does contain more material. But then it would not be a beginner's book.

An excellent resource for those who wish to further their knowledge of world music and exotic scales. Powers is concise and consistent and perfectly informative.

This is quite an elementary introduction to the subject of where the "bent" notes go in maqam scales. There is less discussion of why and when to use them.

This is not a book. It is a handout for the accompanying CDs. It wouldn't add any value to your knowledge not even a guidance to learn Maqam or Maqam notation. Very disappointing.

Excellent book. I would highly recommend the CD's that are sold seperately as well. They are very well done. Very informational and also has improvised demonstrations of the scales so you can hear each scale in a musical setting.

Powers writes that he included more than 40 maqamat; i see 27, plus a few identical scales that start one whole tone higher.The book is very nice, the maqamat are beautiful.

Expand you knowledge base of the World, shed that skin.

too hard to understand for beginner

Billig aus dem Internet kopierter Kram. Absolut unbrauchbar und innnerhalb von ein paar Sekundehn im INternet selbst nachvollziehbar. Keine Hintergrundinformationen nichts. Wenn man sein weiteres Machwerk liest, dann evrsteht man auch warum: Der Kerl hat weder Ahnung von westlicher noch von arabischer Musiktheorie. Aber in heutigen Zeiten kann ja jeder leider veröffentlichen, was er will!

The other review for this book seems to be unfairly negative. True, it doesn't ship with the CDs and it doesn't explain that sometimes maqamat can descend differently to how they ascend. However, these are minor points if you are starting out in this area and have no knowledge of maqamat.Before I got this book I knew nothing about the Arabic musical modes. In the West we are generally used to hearing the same kinds of scales over and over, whereas in the Middle East there is a different common set of scales, a lot of which can sound quite mystical or exotic to us. This book will take you through over 40 of them, though it emphasises that just 17 are enough to have a very good grasp of the modal system. This isn't as hard as it sounds because sometimes a maqam can have just one note difference from another in the same family, though others can, of course, be widly different.What I really like about this book is how Cameron gives a brief description of the moods associated with a lot of the maqamat, from certain ones which are bright and happy to others which are sacred and mysterious, to others which express sadness, sorry and grief. This book also introduces the concept of quartertones, something else which the Western brain generally has no knowledge or experience of. It's good to start with those maqamat which don't include them at first, I've found, then gradually move onto the quartertone ones over time. There I was thinking that some Middle Eastern melodies were just 'out of tune' at times, but it was just that I was unfamiliar with quartertone melodies. Shows my ignorance in this area.If you are relatively acquainted with maqamat you would presumably find this book rather limiting, but if you are just starting to get into this area it's an excellent resource for improvisation and taqsim. I have been putting into practise what I have learned from this book every day for months with good results.