Authors
I spent most of my career delivering process and technology solutions in global high-tech companies. While the insane scale and complexity of corporate projects kept me pumped up for a long time, their lack of meaningful impact beyond their dollars and cents kept me looking for more.
As I was struggling in vain to dig into something deeper, my little daughter led me on quite a different path to discover and unearth a massive turmoil buried for centuries, depriving humans from their best gift of humanity. The truth is that we never figured out how to jump-start a person on the right track to learn music, leading to a music illiterate society of millions across the world. Even with our shiny, high-tech screens, we still lag behind medieval times. Such a waste of a precious gift!
I had to dig much deeper to find easy ways to help not only her, but millions of music lovers from all walks of life in their desire, and fear, to learn music. I sincerely wish that I had these books when I was young.
Contributors
When it comes to work, often, you know the right people to make things happen. I had no such luxury with these books since it was my first attempt at writing books and self-publishing. However, in rare cases, you come across those who you wished you had already known. They make it look easy, when they do their magic. I am thankful to my team for taking rough ideas and turning them into a piece of art to share with you.
Composers
Tamsin Jones studied music at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and at the University of Birmingham in U.K. and in 2000 was awarded her doctorate for her research into the music of Heinrich Schütz. Dr. Jones is a singer and composer, whose choral works have been performed in many churches and cathedrals. Dr. Jones wrote the Musical Instrument Classification as well as the Music Anatomy sections for the adult’s edition to help you with your choice of instrument and with the interpretation of music scores.
Photo by Eden Collins (2015)
Sid Szydelko is a UK-based composer whose work covers a diverse range of forms, from Orchestral and Dramatic scores to Ambient, RnB, and Soul music. “Szydelko’s music is quite extraordinary in its richness and maturity.” - Pierre Schwob, CEO and founder of Classical Archives. “Sid is everything you could ask for in a composer, passionate, talented, creative and committed to his work.” - Siobhan Greene, Head of entertainment, ITV. Sid has arranged beautiful compositions for the final part of the adult’s edition, not only to enjoy, but to bring musical concepts and artifacts together.
Marijana Janevska is a graduate at the Faculty of Music in classical and contemporary composition and performance from Skopje, Macedonia. She has won several state and international awards for composition, including “The 9th Pre-Art competition for young composers” in Zurich and a few national competitions from The Ministry of Culture of The Republic of Macedonia. Marijana wrote the music reading exercises following the methodology contained in this book to dramatically accelerate music note recognition and retention.
Editor
Jelena Borojevic is a PhD candidate of English Literature - Mythopoeia. She is also a writer and editor of fiction, non-fiction and educational books. She is most proud of projects that have helped to bring better education to children around the world. Jelena plays violin and piano, which helped tremendously with the correct interpretation of textual content for editing and proof-reading purposes for this collection of music books across both editions.
Visual Artists
These books contain designs from many gifted artists from around the world, including illustrators, concept artists, 3D designers, and photographers listed in the credit page before the introductory section of the book. Their designs helped me build the visual constructs not only to see but to feel musical elements in action. There are a few that had to endure my perfectionist mind through many revisions that I would like to recognize in this section.
Mary Monette Crall and her team, including Khyle gave me the first experience of working with illustrators by rendering the beautiful, detailed work that you can see in both the adult’s and the children’s edition. Amitabha Nascar and his teammate Soumyajit Sadhukhan are talented artists that can take rough concepts and turn them into expressive characters, which have been illustrated in both editions of these books.
Anton Borysenko is an artist experienced in rendering professional 3D models, interior and architectural designs as well as photorealistic visualizations. He has worked with clients from different countries on a wide range of projects, from 3D floor plans to interactive, panoramic, walk-through, fly-through video presentations. Anton gave another dimension to these books by employing 3D visualizations to illustrate the complex interaction of musical elements.
Join Humanity!