JOHN LENNON'S LEGACY CONTINUES with Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video. This beautiful full-color book features interviews with music and songwriting tips from outstanding musicians including John Legend, The Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, Macy Gray, The Eagles' Don Felder, and The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, with a foreword by Yoko Ono Lennon. "This is precisely the kind of project that John would have loved," says Ono. Filled with photographs and featuring a companion DVD-Rom, COME TOGETHER is part how-to, part celebrity interviews, part technological showcase, and part travelogue. It's truly an enlightening read for music aficionados, fans, students, songwriters, producers, engineers, teachers -- anyone with an interest in music. The non-profit John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a professional mobile recording and multimedia studio outfitted with the latest in audio and video technological advances as well as traditional musical instruments. Since 1998, the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus has provided free hands-on programs to hundreds of thousands of people at high schools, colleges, Boys and Girls Clubs, music festivals, concerts, conventions and community organizations. Across America throughout the year, students work with the staff of onboard engineers to write an original song, record and mix the song, and create a music video of the song's performance - all in one day! Many celebrity recording artists work with kids on the one-of-a-kind Bus, providing music and production expertise as well as guidance and encouragement. A portion of the proceeds from this book go toward supporting the non-profit John Lennon Educational Tour Bus.
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You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
--John Lennon
--John Lennon
The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a nonprofit initiative blessed by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono Lennon, and supported by a host of civic-minded corporate sponsors, exists in order to encourage young people to embrace and explore their musical and visual creativity, and to inspire them with the possibilities of today’s most cutting-edge creative tools. Traveling the country to the tune of some 65,000 miles every year, the bus is a mobile recording and video production studio boasting the latest in audio and video technology. Students chosen to work on the bus typically spend an eight-hour day working under the guidance of the bus’s staff of young audio engineers.
Visiting students spend the morning hours brainstorming, composing, and recording an original song, using either instruments they’ve brought along for the purpose or those supplied by the bus. You’re not a musician? No problem—the engineers will help you learn and perform a part on the instrument of your choice, or you can get down to work on the song’s lyrics, again with help from the engineers if you need it. After lunch, work begins in earnest on the video. While one engineer stays behind to work on the final mix of the song, another is off with the students, video camera in hand, scouting good locations, setting up shots, and filming the kids in lip-synced performances and assorted additional footage that will be edited together later that day.
The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus brings people together, shining the light of creativity, opportunity, and inspiration into the lives of young people especially, many of whom have never seen that light so clearly as on the day they spend making music and video on the bus.
In this book, we’ll get a 10,000-foot view of the recording and mixing processes as practiced on the bus and an overview of the technology with which music is being made today. Readers who are new to computer-based recording or who are considering getting into it will find plenty of helpful food for thought. Today’s recording gear is undeniably astonishing, but the truly good news is that prices are trending downward for most equipment of this kind, so that studio capabilities that once cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars are now available for pennies on those dollars. Technology has trickled down and brought to more people than ever before the freedom to create professional-quality music and video projects.
Along the way, we’ll also hear the thoughts of many of the celebrity recording artists who have worked on the bus. Over the years, many of them have taken time out of their busy performing schedules to come on board and work with groups of kids and to talk about the subject of songwriting. These celebrities play an important role in the bus’s success, lending their star power and expertise, all in the service of pushing the bus’s mission forward.
The accompanying DVD is a smorgasbord of Lennon Bus entertainment. You’ll find interviews with celebrity songwriters and performers, videos of some of the best student works culled from the past ten years, and more. It’s an audio/video snapshot of what the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is all about.
Yoko Ono has referred to the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus as a "quiet revolution." As you’ll see on the DVD, it is certainly a revolution of a kind. But it’s not all that quiet. Enjoy the ride.
| Watch videos about the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus | |
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About the Author
Mark Garvey has worked in publishing since 1988. He is the author of Searching for Mary (Penguin) and an award-winning feature writer. He is also a musician, a music-technology enthusiast, and a former recording engineer. Mark lives in Cincinnati with his wife Deb, son Sam, and daughter Sarah.
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More About the Author
Mark Garvey lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. In his day job, he is an executive editor publishing technical and how-to books for a large Boston-based publisher. His freelance writing has touched on many subjects, including purported apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde, and cutting-edge music technology. His latest book, Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, is a history of and homage to the famous little book of writing advice and the men who created it.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring story of the positive power of music making through educational outreach.,
By
This review is from: Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video (Paperback)
"Something like this should be parked outside of every school in America."
Vernon Reid, Artist-Producer and founder Living Colour At minimum, a copy of Come Together should be on the desk of every community leader, school principal, and district superintendent in every city across America. Much has been written about the social trends leading to the result that music education is becoming an endangered part of the curriculum of many school systems today. However, there is still hope. Based upon the accounts of Mark Garvey, the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is living proof that hope is not lost. It just hasn't gotten to you yet. Come Together is an enlightening narrative documentary for both musicians and non-musicians, young and old. It is a unique testament to the positive power of music making and the many talented people who work on all levels to make it happen. Garvey presents the why and how of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus project from its start in 1998 to the most recent stops in late 2006. He provides unique insights into the condensed production schedules, physical and technical requirements, and also various elements of the creative process itself, which when all work as planned, results in a professional-quality finished product equal to what we normally see and hear from the major record labels. Additional inspiration for songwriters, engineers, and producers is provided through the eclectic voices of several of today's major artists such as Don Felder (guitarist and songwriter for the Eagles), Macy Gray (film and recording artist), Al Jarreau (Grammy-winning jazz vocalist), and the Bacon Brothers (yes, Kevin Bacon the actor and of "six-degrees" fame, together with his equally talented brother Michael). You learn quickly that with a little imagination, a relatively modest budget, several civic-minded leaders and a few other dedicated people in the mix, almost any community can begin to plant their own seeds of inspiration and opportunity. Seeds that will blossom and multiply in the youth by empowering them like the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus does. Traveling over 65,000 miles a year crisscrossing the country between January and October, the state-of-the-art mobile recording and video production studio offers selected students the very latest in audio and video technology and the staff to make it all work - with only one session to get it right. I had the privilege to be on the bus myself in January while at Macworld 2007, in San Francisco. It was a genuine thrill seeing the actual set-ups, speaking with the engineers, and watching a final product of the local band called Eat the Beat and their production titled "Here Come the Cops." They had a little help from Bob Weir, guitarist, singer-songwriter and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, now leader of his own band, RatDog. The professional gear and technology tools are a result of some generous sponsors such as Apple, Roland, Maxwell, Audio-Technica, Neutrik, Glyph, Propellerhead, Ableton, NAMM, along many others. As a non-profit outreach educational program, the staff and expenses are underwritten by sponsorships and donations. In fact, a portion of the proceeds from sale of the book itself will go to support the program. For educators and community leaders, Come Together is a field manual for mapping out the path to the crafts of song writing, music recording and video production for youth in a community. It also explains in detail the underlying technologies used to make it all happen. You immediately understand why so many kids are attracted to these avenues of creative expression and surprisingly what little is actually required to make music-making possible for them. Imagine a disparate group of youth with no common thread other than their love of music, or for that matter only a knowledge of music, coming together on a bus in the morning and leaving in the afternoon with an original song, launch-ready CD, and professionally-produced music video of their very own, packaged and ready for the real world. The good fortune has been granted to hundreds of youth all across the United States since 1998. Kids who would not otherwise have had the opportunity, without the initial spark and vision of Brian Rothschild and David Sonenberg, and the active support and encouragement of Yoko Ono Lennon. As a result of these efforts it appears that John Lennon's social awareness and passion for musical expression lives on nearly a quarter-century past December 8, 1980. Not only in his legacy of music, art and writings, but it is blossoming in the lives of a new generation of youth through the seeds of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus and the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Mark Garvey's story of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus and the accompanying DVD showcasing some the best works from the first ten years may inspire you to think about your own community and the ideal of empowering youth through acceptance, encouragement, experimentation and artistic freedom. As John Lennon would say "Imagine."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I like it.,
By
This review is from: Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video (Paperback)
I got a copy of this at the launch party at Macworld and I have to say its a really nice book. Its very hard to describe though - one section will have a story about Mos Def writing a song with kids and then you'll go to a whole diagram on how the power system on the bus works. There are profiles of the people involved, there's a lot about how the whole thing came together and there's a lot of the book dedicated to the "how to" of making music and video distilled from people that do it everyday. There's a really nice mini-bio on John in the back and tons of pictures. Big Ups to Jeffro for being the Studio Manager and getting a whole section devoted to him.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding survey,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video (Paperback)
COME TOGETHER: THE OFFICIAL JOHN LENNON EDUCATIONAL TOUR BUS GUIDE TO MUSIC AND VIDEO tells of a nonprofit mobile recording and multimedia studio that travels the country providing hands-on audio and video production opportunities to students. Now in its tenth year, it has achieved much - and COME TOGETHER explores its history using celebrity interviews, technological discussions, and how-to information to blend travel and engineering insights under one cover. An outstanding survey, highly recommended for both general-interest lending collections up to college level holdings specializing in multimedia education.
Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch
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