Product Description

Many people grimace at the sound of music theory. It can conjure up bad memories of grade school music classes, rattle the brains of college students, and make self-taught musicians feel self-defeated. Music Theory may seem tedious and unnecessary, especially since not many people can read music.

Luckily, Music Theory for Dummies shows you the fun and easy way to understanding the concepts needed to compose, deconstruct, and comprehend music. This helpful guide will give you a great grasp of:

• Note value and counting notes
• Treble and bass clefs
• Time signatures and measures
• Naturalizing the rhythm
• Tempo and dynamic
• Tone, color, and harmonics
• Half steps and whole steps
• Harmonic and melodic intervals
• Key signatures and circles of fifths
• Scales, chords, and their progressions
• Elements of form
• Music theory’s fascinating history

This friendly guide not only explores these concepts, it provides examples of music to compliment them so you can hear how they sound firsthand. With a bonus CD that demonstrates these ideas with musical excerpts on guitar and piano, this hands-on resource will prove to you that music theory is as enjoyable as it is useful. Don’t get discouraged by the seemingly complicated written structure. With Music Theory for Dummies, understanding music has never been easier!

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14341 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780764578380
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover
Helpful hints on melodies, chords, and music development

The fun and easy way to read, write, and perform any style of music

Need to grasp music theory? This hands-on guide explains the concepts in plain English — from scales, intervals, and tempos to chord progressions, phrasing, harmonizing, and arranging — and shows you how to apply them in compositions ranging from pop and rock to jazz and classical. It's also packed with musical examples you can hear on the CD!

Discover how to:

• Read notes and understand tones

• Keep proper rhythm

• Master major and minor scales

• Build chords and cadences

• Write in popular musical forms

Demonstrations of music theory concepts

Musical examples performed on both piano and guitar

About the Author
Michael Pilhofer teaches music theory and percussion at McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he serves as department head of the Ensembles Department. He has worked as a professional musician for more than 18 years and has toured and recorded with Joe Lovano, Marian McPartland, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland, Bill Holman, Wycliffe Gordon, Peter Erskine, and Gene Bertoncini.

Holly Day has written about music for numerous publications internationally, including Computer Music Journal, ROCKRGRL, Music Alive!, Guitar One, Brutarian Magazine, Interface Technology, and Mixdown magazine. Over the past couple of decades, her writing has received an Isaac Asimov Award, a National Magazine Award, and two Midwest Writer’s Grants.  Her previous books include The Insider’s Guide to the Twin Cities (3rd^, 4th, and 5th Editions), Shakira, and Behind the Orange Curtain: A History of Orange County Punk Rock.

Customer Reviews

Takes You From Basic to Advanced
I ordered this book with some skepticism. I could read music before I go this book but I guess at a very rudimentary level. I have looked through other music theory books and have been left a little bewildered about musical keys, cord construction and such. This book demystifies these and many other musical concepts. I now understand musical keys and many other things that had always seemed very mysterious to me. The book starts off very basically and slowly advances as it introduces you to more advanced concepts by adding more information about how music is constructed. Someone with a firmer background in music may be board by the pace but for others of us it is just right. I recommend it if, like me, you always wanted to understand music but never found someone who could describe it in an understandable way.

I finally put 2 and 2 together thanks to this book
I'm 48, and I've been playing guitar, bass, keyboards and a lot of other instruments since I was 12. Two of them well, all of them by ear. I didn't have a clue what to call anything I did, aside from knowing when I was playing a major, a minor, a 7th or a 9th. But only because better players told me so. Having found some success in other areas with other books in the Dummies franchise, I took a shot at this one.

Turns out I was doing a lot of things right all these years and even being fairly close to correct in the way I described them to my guitar students. Yes, a guy who needs a Dummies book for music teaches kids to play. The nerve, right? Well, I feel a lot better about it now. I'm able to give my students some theory with their Green Day, and using the same matter-of-fact way of describing and discussing it as I found in the book, it gets across quite nicely. I'd bought a different book on music theory that was supposed to be very simple. In fact, it seemed extremely short and unintimidating... at first. Shortest book I ever failed to complete. THIS book, on the other hand, clocks in at 330-some pages and it never bogs down. They stay with a topic instead of flying past it without making sure you are ready to move on. In my opinion, that's the most important quality a Dummies book should have: a flat-out refusal to leave any reader in the dust. I appreciate that. Now if the same authors will just do a MIDI For Dummies book, aaaaand maybe books for Studio-In-A-Box 24Track Digital Recording, Signal Processing, Microphone Techniques, Child Rearing and a few other topics I need help with, life will be complete.

An Excellent Reference
Music Theory for Dummies is the best of both worlds for those of us interested in learning music theory for the first time or refreshing our musical memories. As a child music student I was inundated with music terms which meant little or nothing to me. I faked my way along, despite my ignorance of proper theory or terminology, never thinking it might pertain to me. Only as an adult, who has now written a few songs with the desire to share them, has it occurred to me that I need to know how to write music others can read rather than trying to express myself by humming my songs out. Music Theory for Dummies is a necessity for anyone who wants to truly understand the basics of music, or anyone who already does but needs an excellent reference for refresher or support in learning or comprehending the more difficult aspects of music theory. Music Theory for Dummies is essential for all students, be they beginners, or the more advanced, in need of a simplified backup source for more difficult concepts. Additionally, the drawings and CD are simply a delightful topping on a very solid foundation.