How To Understand Music

Basic Music Theory takes you through the sometimes confusing world of written music with a clear, concise style that is at times funny and always friendly. The book is written by an experienced teacher using methods refined over more than ten years in his private teaching studio and in schools. --from publisher description.

This powerful little 52 page music theory book is a great place to start for any music lover wanting to understand how music works. Also a YouTube sensation with over a quarter million students, this method shines a fresh light on music theory. The most basic and necessary topics in music theory are covered in depth here, using easy to understand visual aids and straight-forward English. This book applies to anyone who plays any instrument. The Musical Alphabet - Begin to associate pitch with letters. Scales - Use those letters to build scales, the most basic building block in music. Intervals and Musical Distance - Use scales to build intervals and create beautiful harmony. Melody - Use scales to create beautiful melodies. Harmony - Create chord progressions that make your melodies sing. Inverting Intervals and Chords - Learn to manipulate your intervals and chords for more interesting sounds. The Tritone - Use this spicy interval to create tension and resolution in your audience. Other Types of Chords and Their Functions - More chord flavors so you can begin mixing unique sounds together. The Circle of Fifths - This secret ingredient for knowing all chords and scales instantly is covered in depth. Borrowing Across Keys - Learn to borrow from other scales to create a mixture of feeling. Modes - Learn modes to create even more melodies!

Improvise for Real is a step-by-step method that teaches you to improvise your own music through progressive exercises that anyone can do. You'll learn to understand the sounds in the music all around you. And you'll learn to express your own musical ideas exactly as you hear them in your mind. The method starts with very simple creative exercises that you can begin right away. As you progress, the method leads you on a guided tour through the entire world of modern harmony. You will be improvising your own original melodies from the very first day, and your knowledge will expand with each practice session as you explore and discover our musical system for yourself. Improvise for Real brings together creativity, ear training, music theory and physical technique into a single creative daily practice that will show you the entire path to improvisation mastery. You will learn to understand the sounds in the music all around you and to improvise with confidence over jazz standards, blues songs, pop music or any other style you would like to play. And you'll be jamming, enjoying yourself and creating your own music every step of the way. The method is open to all instruments and ability levels. The exercises are easy to understand and fun to practice. There is no sight reading required, and you don't need to know anything about music theory to begin. Already being used by both students and teachers in more than 20 countries, Improvise for Real is now considered by many people to be the definitive system for learning to improvise. If you have always dreamed of truly understanding music and being able to improvise with complete freedom on your instrument, this is the book for you

A workbook that discusses the main elements of tonal harmony, and contains numerous music examples and exercises for working. Particularly helpful to bridge the gap between Grade 5 and Grade 6 theory, and also very useful material for all higher-grade theory exam entrants, and for A Level, Diploma and undergraduate music students.

In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented. Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner takes us through the major breakthroughs and glorious failures in the art and science of recording. An American soldier monitoring Nazi radio transmissions stumbles onto the open yet revolutionary secret of magnetic tape. Japanese and Dutch researchers build a first-generation digital audio format and watch as their "compact disc" is marketed by the music industry as the second coming of Edison yet derided as heretical by analog loyalists. The music world becomes addicted to volume in the nineties and fights a self-defeating "loudness war" to get its fix. From Les Paul to Phil Spector to King Tubby, from vinyl to pirated CDs to iPods, Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever pulls apart musical history to answer a crucial question: Should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? The answers he uncovers will change the very way we think about music.

Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!

The main purpose of the book is to explore basic music theory so thoroughly that the interested student will then be able to easily pick up whatever further theory is wanted. Music history and the physics of sound are included to the extent that they shed light on music theory. The main premise of this course is that a better understanding of where the basics come from will lead to better and faster comprehension of more complex ideas.It also helps to remember, however, that music theory is a bit like grammar. Catherine Schmidt-Hones is a music teacher from Champaign, Illinois and she has been a pioneer in open education since 2004. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois in the Open Online Education program with a focus in Curriculum and Instruction.