Product Description
Authored by Mac Robertson, Robbie Clement & Will Schmid, this innovative method teaches 5-string, bluegrass style. The method consists of two instruction books and two cross-referenced supplement books that offer the beginner a carefully-paced and interest-keeping approach to the bluegrass style. Now available with CD! Covers easy chord strums for the beginner; learning tablature; right-hand rolls characteristic of bluegrass; techniques such as hammer-on, slide and pull-off. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Hal Leondard Banjo Method - Book 1
This is a good book for a beginner. It covers the basic elements of traditional bluegrass style banjo playing. I stress it's good for beginners. It doesn't have much in the way of intermediate or advanced techniques. Also, there is very little music theory or explanations of the material. Overall, it's a good book to start with.

Good Place to Start
This is a very good foot in the door to the world of Bluegrass Banjo and banjo music. Highly recommended because of the included CD, which takes you through the book, explaining how each roll should sound.

Banjo technique
this is a very good starter book for banjo players. the tab is straightforword and easy to follow.

Good Value
This book is a good value for your money; complete with instructional CD. Nice and easy way to learn a few basic chords & rolls as well as some additional techniques to spruce things up.The only downside is many of the tunes on the CD are actually two banjos playing.This can make it difficult to follow along, especially as the songs become more complicated.All in all a good place to start, even if you have no experience reading music or playing a stringed instrument.

Pretty Good Start
This is a very helpful book for those who are starting from scratch learning how to play the banjo. However, I had already had about a month worth of lessons before my teacher told me to get it and the first 20 or so pages were of things that I learned in the first 2 lessons. This is a great book and it's fun when you start getting into the songs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An underrated hard SF pleasure
Clement's *Mission of Gravity* was the engaging tale of the adventures of Barlennan, a sea captain among his caterpillar-like people, on the high-gravity world of Mesklin.In *Star Light* Barlennan and his sailors go with humans to the even stranger world of Dhrawn, a "crusted star" of the type mentioned by Harlow Shapley.Dhrawn circles the feeble red star Lalande 21185, which actually exists (although the planet is fictionalized).Most of the book is the story of a huge landship crossing Dhrawn's solid surface crewed by these nonhuman sailors, amidst bizarre dangers, and trying to keep Barlennan's strange plan secret from humans.
The characters, despite being mostly from Barlennan's world, Mesklin, are well drawn and the setting is well realized.
Readers bewildered by the melting and freezing of Dhrawn's ammonia-water hydrosphere will do well to consult a phase diagram.These can be found in textbooks or in Forward's *Flight of the Dragonfly*.(Much of Forward's writing is homages to Clement. ... Read more

Product Description
Includes more solos and standard licks for melodic-style banjo; fiddle tunes; playing back-up; use of the capo; more music theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great format, not so great arrangements
There are some good qualities of this book and I will use it as a reference from time to time. Still, I think the negatives outweigh the positives; for me anyway.

First the good: (1) Some interesting and rarely included tunes like "Railroad Bill" and "Sittin' on Top of the World".(2) I like that the melody tab, words, and "solo" tab stacked on three lines so you can get the sense of the tune easily and know exactly where you are in the tune at any point. (3) The price I paid - $7 is tough to beat for a banjo instruction book.

Now the not-so-good: (1) The "solo" arrangements don't emphasize the melody in the right spots. A great arrangement sounds like the tune if played fast or slow. These arrangements often hit the melody notes one beat too soon or too late and sometimes doesn't return to a note enough when the melody note is held for a measure.Approximating the melody works great if you are playing backup, but not as a "solo". (2) All tunes are in low "G", whether it works for them or not.Not unusual for the banjo, certainly, but in tunes like "Railroad Bill" where you have to go down to a "B" chord for a measure, it is best to start playing at a higher "G" (the "F" position "G" above the open "G") or pick a key with a little more room at the bottom ("A" would let you go down to "C"). The author tried to substitute a B7 and it just sounds wrong to me. (3) No CD. Maybe the arrangements are great, but I am simply playing them wrong. How would I know?

Lame
Book is lame. Would not recommend it for beginner banjo players. Much better are the banjo encyclopedia (ross nickerson) or the best way to learn is with DVD's (highly recommend Murphy Method dvds) ... Read more

Product Description
In a universe created by Isaac Asimov, six starfaring races coexist under a shaky truce, and when they discover traces of a completely unknown race, their precarious world is thrown into disarray. Original. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Read something else by Hal Clement
The style in "Fossil" is totally different to other books by Hal Clement. Much too wordy, repetitive and boring. I got the impression that he might be trying to imitate Asimov's style -- which I'm not fond of, but of course opinions may differ on that. For a good book by Hal Clement, try his excellent "Mission of Gravity", or "Close to critical" instead.

A Great Continuation Of The Isaac's Universe Series!
This book is a great continuation of the overall Isaac's Universe concept.The other three books are great, as is this one.This book is a great continuation, in novel form, of the Issac's Universe series.I wish morebig name sci-fi writers like Hal Clement would write about this universewhich Isaac Asimov created.I would recommend for anyone that likes goodscience fiction to read this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

My first Hal Clement, but it won't be my last.
This book starts with the alien, before introducing the human.Then Dar, the Abyormite, meets up with Nils, the Earthling, and they proceed to have adventures.Gradually, the truth about the planet, Dar's people, and, well, *somebody else* becomes known.The first half of this book, maybe the first two thirds, would make a great movie.

The last part is probably too talky for a movie, but I really quite liked it.The stuff on planet formation is particularly interesting, because this book came out in 1957, and there has been a TON of discoveries in the field of extrasolar planets, starting in the 1990s.I would have expected Clement to be utterly, spectacularly wrong about this subject, but it seems he isn't too far off.Maybe he was playing it safe?

I have mixed feelings about the ending, and I can't really say why, because that would be a spoiler.I don't have any trouble recommending this book.I'm reading an airship book now, by another author, but will be reading Clement's _Mission of Gravity_ before too long.I've read good things about MoG.

Robinson Crusoe in the Pleiades
Marooned Earth teen and bug-eyed, little green man trek across a fire and ice planet.

Hal Clement (pen name for Harry Clement Stubbs) wrote this in 1957. That accounts for the hard-science, pulp magazine, Jules Verne style.

The focus of Cycle of Fire shifts from pedantic close-ups to disorienting time lapses; where suddenly a month goes by in half a sentence.

Typical survival story and fairly easy to read. Up until the last section. Suddenly, the author dumps a load of interesting but dry orbital mechanics, geology, paleontology, genetics, political science, morals and sociology in your lap. The looming mystery is dispelled and all is revealed and solved by analytical rationalism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

For SF Historians
Published in 1974, this is a dated volume of historical significance.Many of the leading science fiction writers of the time contributed essays.The one on science fiction publications by Frederick Pohl is particularly interesting and infromative.The bibliography is valuable.Recommended for those interested in the hhistory of science fiction. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume contains the complete Mesklin writings of Hal Clement. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Things are very very heavy there...
I had to chuckle to read that little snippet in the Booklist review at the top of the page. Here are the classic Mesklin novels, stories, and some essay material under one cover at long last... what, you've never read them? Scroll back up and click the yellow button.

Although I, for one, would argue that Needle is a more important work, Mission of Gravity has to be a close second in Clement's long career as a "hard" SF writer. This novel takes extreme but entirely plausible science (at least, plausible as of the era: not much has changed in physics and chemistry, but we know rather more about computers) and uses it to build one of the most extreme worlds imaginable and then explores it thorougly, from equator to pole.

The aliens are not very alien acting, not withstanding that they look like nothing so much as a catepillar in a lobster suit and have blood of liquid methane, but the byplay between the human scientists and the aliens and the amazing landscape is still pretty nifty forty or more years on.

StarLight and the other Mesklin material is interesting too and this book is the cornerstone on which later writers or works, such as Larry Niven or the Harlan Ellison "Medea" project draw their inspiration. It's still good. ... Read more

Product Description
Four scientists, one guide—and a dangerous beast following their trail. Nothing unusual from the looks of things, except that they are all in a planet far away from Earth.
Robin Lampert, Take Mitsuitei, Hans Krendall and Ndomi Sulewayo, and their guide John McLaughlin, get together to scour the wilds of Viridis and take what scientific information the land can offer. They discover puzzling yet wondrous mysteries, yet little do they know that the the land itself is unwilling to give them the answers.
... Read more