The Ploger Method

For over forty years, Marianne Ploger has been teaching music lovers of all ages, interests, and aptitudes to discover their own musical gifts. She has found that it is not the ear that requires training-it is the mind. When the conscious mind knows what it is supposed to do, it effortlessly syncs with natural aural perceptions. In this book, Marianne shares the secrets that have helped hundreds develop more fluency and musicality in hearing, performing, reading, and writing music. Essentially, music is made up of few basic elements: 12 pitches, 11 di-chords, and rhythms grouped into two and/or three beats. Concrete descriptions of what to listen for in each of these elements, discovered by Ploger, will help you to develop the mental and aural skills needed for fluency and musicality. Techniques are provided to help you avoid common psychological pitfalls in the learning process. Find out how easy it is to read in any of the seven clefs, while developing skill in the French fixed syllable system employed at major conservatories throughout the world. After establishing familiarity with the basic elements, learn how to use your newfound knowledge and skill to identify more sophisticated forms, such as chords, modes, scales, polyrhythms and mixed meters.

This title covers Marianne Ploger's original discoveries, observations and theories regarding musical intervals and how they are perceived. Also covered are her theories regarding Real Time Modulation, an approach to modulation that can easily be applied in improvisation, and other approaches to understanding the modes and other methods for aurally "tracking" music in time.

Aural Education: Reconceptualising Ear Training in Higher Music Learning explores the practice of musical ‘aural training’ from historical, pedagogical, psychological, musicological, and cultural perspectives, and uses these to draw implications for its pedagogy, particularly within the context of higher music education. The multi-perspective approach adopted by the author affords a broader and deeper understanding of this branch of music education, and of how humans relate to music more generally. The book extracts and examines one by one different parameters that appear central to ‘aural training’, proceeding in a gradual and well-organised way, while at the same time constantly highlighting the multiple interconnections and organic unity of the many different operations that take place when we interact with music through any music-related activity. The resulting complex profile of the nature of our relationship with music, combined with an exploration of non-Western cultural perspectives, offer fresh insights on issues relating to musical ‘aural training’. Emerging implications are proposed in the form of broad pedagogical principles, applicable in a variety of different music educational settings. Andrianopoulou propounds a holistic alternative to ‘aural training’, which acknowledges the richness of our relationship to music and is rooted in absorbed aural experience. The book is a key contribution to the existing literature on aural education, designed with researchers and educators in mind.

[Includes 59 photos/illustrations and 30 maps] The hedgerow country of northwestern France-the Bocage presented a trying challenge to the U.S. Army in 1944. During the Normandy invasion, U.S. forces faced a stubborn German Army defending from an extensive network of small fields surrounded by living banks of hedges bordered by sunken dirt lanes. German forces fighting from these ready-made defensive positions were, at first, able to curb most of the American advances and make the attempts very costly. For the U.S. Army, busting through the difficult Bocage country required tactical, doctrinal, and organizational ingenuity. Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, 6 June-31 July 1944 shows how the U.S. Army identified and overcame the problems of fighting in difficult terrain. The adoption of new tactics combined with technical innovations and good small-unit leadership enabled American forces to defeat a well-prepared and skillful enemy. In the hedgerow country, the U.S. Army eventually brought the separate components of the combined arms team-infantry, armor, and artillery-to bear on the enemy simultaneously. The resulting successes were costly but effective. Combat in the Bocage demonstrated the U.S. Army’s capability to fight and win in a new and hostile environment.

pt. 1. List of patentees.--pt. 2. Index to subjects of inventions.

Nowadays, Chromatography is the most versatile and widespread technique employed in modern chemical analysis and plays a vital role in the advancement of chemistry, biology, medicine and related fields of research. Because of the inherent simplicity and ease of operation, it can be used together with a wide range of detection systems, including electrochemical, photometric and mass spectrometry, being an invaluable laboratory tool for the separation and identification of compounds. The purpose of this book is not only to present the latest state and development tendencies of chromatography, but to bring the reader useful information on separation sciences to enable him to use chromatography on his research field. Taking into account the large amount of knowledge about chromatography theory and practice presented in the book, it has three major parts: applications, theory and sample preparation. The book is also intended for both graduate and postgraduate students in fields such as chemistry, biology, biotechnology, forensic, medicine, pharmacology and engineering, and as a reference for professionals and practitioners.

Closing with the Enemy picks up where D-Day leaves off. From Normandy through the "breakout" in France to the German army's last gasp in the Battle of the Bulge, Doubler deals with the deadly business of war-closing with the enemy, fighting and winning battles, taking and holding territory. His study provides a provocative reassessment of how American GIs accomplished these dangerous and costly tasks. Doubler portrays a far more capable and successful American fighting force than previous historians-notably Russell Weigley, Martin Van Creveld, and S.L.A. Marshall-have depicted. True, the GIs weren't fully prepared or organized for a war in Europe and have often been viewed as inferior to their German opponent. But, Doubler argues, they more than compensated for this by their ability to learn quickly from mistakes, to adapt in the face of unforseen obstacles, and to innovate new tactics on the battlefield. This adaptability, Doubler contends, was far more crucial to the American effort than we've been led to believe. Fueled by a fiercely democratic and entrepreneurial spirit, GI innovations emerged from every level within the ranks-from the novel employment of conventional weapons and small units to the rapid retraining of troops on the battlefield. Their most dramatic success, however, was with combined arms warfare-the coordinated use of infantry, tanks, artillery, air power, and engineers-in which they perfected the use of air support for ground operations and tank-infantry teams for breaking through enemy strongholds. Doubler argues that, without such ingenuity and imaginative leadership, it would have been impossible to defeat an enemy as well trained and heavily fortified as the German army the GIs confronted in the tortuous hedgerow country of northern France, the narrow cobblestoned streets of Aachen and Brest, the dark recesses of the Huertgen Forest, and the frigid snow-covered hills of the Ardennes. Marking the 50th anniversary of the American victory in the Battle of the Bulge, Doubler offers a timely reminder that "the tremendous effects of firepower and technology will still not relieve ground troops of the burden of closing with the enemy." As even Desert Storm suggests, that will likely prove true for future high-tech battlefields, where an army's adaptability will continue to be prized.