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Half-Life 2: The Musical.

It's a bit hamstrung by the fact that I'm animating it entirely in Source Filmmaker, despite not having a computer that's even halfway reasonably capable of running SFM. It's also hamstrung by the fact that surprisingly few of my friends can sing.

The big sort of show-stopping number is an extremely energetic big-band piece during Ravenholm called "A Night On The Town," which features Gordon Freeman on bass and lead vocals, Father Grigori on piano and other lead vocals, TF2's Sniper, Scout, Demoman, and Heavy playing saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and drums, respectively, and a solo section in which Sniper and Scout each get a blistering solo while Gordon and Grigori dance ballet with shotguns in the graveyard. It's equal parts completely ridiculous and awesome. Here's the rough cut if you're interested in a sneak peek (warning: MIDI horns).

Edit: Changed file permissions to "anyone with the link" so now you can actually listen to it. Coulda sworn that's what I had it set to before, but whatever.

Use worldcat.org.

http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=extended+techniques

This should give you almost all of the major books on the topic. You'll probably want to refine your search to avoid all the non-music books...

"Exercises in Melody-writing: A Systematic Course of Melodic Composition" by Percy Goetschius sounds like a book you may be interested in. you can find it here.

Anything by Ned Rorem.

Arcana books, edited by John Zorn.

How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll is a great read, but not a bio.

Stephen King's On Writing should be a required read for any creative person.

Thanks! would you happen to have any experience with this book? as well?

I enjoy the Rimsky-Korsakov book you've linked to. It's pretty informative.

Of all the orchestration books I have studied, I think this may be my favorite.

The Blatter book is a bit pricey, but worth checking out. If you don't want to spend that much, just pick up the one you're already interested in.

Also, this is a good one too.

Harmony is the relationship of tones to one another. This is projected vertically as chords, and horizontally as chord progression, melody, and voice leading.

A person studying harmony should hope to understand how the pitch content (and later, formal and rhythmic content) of music is organized, how it unfolds over time, and alternative solutions to harmonic problems. This knowledge is useful for composers, theorists, and performers alike. It increases the depth of your listenership as well.

Music does not progress or become obsolete like science does. There is no equivalent in music of the heliocentric model of the solar system supplanting the geocentric model in astronomy: Beethoven did not replace Mozart, Mozart did not replace Bach, nor did Bach replace Palestrina. Musical language and musical appreciation is cumulative: all of the systems and all of the methods can (and should) coexist. For a musician, gaining theoretical knowledge only adds to their intellectual riches. The outcomes may or may not be immediate, but they are lifelong.

I would encourage you to get some music history under your belt too. Harmony has a historical context and development. I've been listening to the Audible lectures on music from The Teaching Company lately, and I've found them to be informative while still accessible to a layperson. I'm on Robert Greenberg's lectures on The String Quartets of Beethoven right now, and it's good stuff.