Longbow Publishing is the source of some very good theory, piano and pedagogy products. Longbow is located in Surrey, British Columbia and the goal of the company is to provide unique and flexible study resources to students, private teachers, universities, retailers and libraries across North America.
My previous post detailed the History products. Also available are:
- Theory books: the Ultimate Music Theory series; Mary Fraser’s Harmony/Counterpoint/Analysis textbooks and workbooks (I haven’t found better counterpoint or analysis books than); and Keyboard Theory and Piano Technique, a book that is very useful for but not limited to anyone learning piano as a second instrument.
- Piano Books: 2 volumes of Take the Lead, a guide to playing lead sheets (I haven’t seen or tried this one); and all the grades of the British Columbia Conservatory of Music books, which are similar in format and grading to the RCM books.
- Forrest Kinney’s new Pattern Play books have become very popular in the last year. Available from Longbow are several books that he wrote prior to publishing Pattern Play. They focus on melody, harmony and creativity. These are not available on the U.S. or International site.
- Pedagogy: Piano Pedagogy: A Practical Approach by Edward Parker is available with a companion CD-Rom that is full of extra study materials. This book is a comprehensive pedagogy book, written to aid students in their ARCT Pedagogy degree, but useful and informative for any piano teacher. The CD is also available separately
There are sample pages of most products available for online viewing. The service is excellent.
Thanks for the tip, LaDona. I must check out the Counterpoint and Analysis texts.
The Analysis text is just that – a text. It doesn’t include the music to be worked on, but it gives lists of repertoire that should be analyzed. It’s very concise.
A note from Linda Sheppard of Longbow:
The Pattern Play books were originally published by Forrest through his own company and those are the books I distribute, then Frederick Harris remodeled the books into a series of five publications with basically the same material, presented a little differently. His original books have more text.