(Part 2) Best music theory according to redditors
We found 398 Reddit comments discussing the best music theory. We ranked the 109 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Yep: Emotion and Meaning in Music, by Leonard B. Meyer and The Language of Music, by Deryk Cooke
You have a lot of questions in this question! Wonderful. To try to make it easier, I'm going to answer some of your questions out of order.
>Is rhythm purely psychological[?].
The way you are describing some of the phenomena here leads me to infer that you are talking about meter and not rhythm (although there is still not 100% agreement between rhythm & timing researchers) Justin London in his book Hearing in Time explains it very simply: "meter is how you count time, and rhythm is what you count--or what you play while you are counting." For the purposes of the first bit of discussion, I will focus on meter.
Maintaining London's explanation, meter is a behavior (the how) we impose on what we hear (the rhythm) in order to generate expectations and to "check" temporally variant (as in, changing timings and rhythms) inputs against our own temporally invariant (as in, our sense of beat). To answer the question, [meter] is psychological in the sense that its a way we organize periodic inputs of sound (but also can occur in other modalities, such as vision or touch.
I highly recommend London's webpage here because it is so easy to understand what he is talking about. However, the psychological literature on meter, rhythm, and timing is VAST.
>Why, when listening to a 4/4 chord progression, does the song seem to 'peak' just as the count (or 4/4 cycle) repeats?
Continuing to interpret in the style of London, the peaking you may be referring to is your sense of expectation (a part of your imposed meter behavior). It is commonly thought that expectations and their violations might be one of the strongest contributors to felt musical emotions, and is of great interest to researchers (see here, here and here). In line with Huron (2nd link in previous sentence), the sense of anticipation is very strong before the onset of where we might expect the downbeat to be, and when the downbeat occurs in the place we expect it to be, it is presumed to be rewarding. This is also assisted by our sense of tracking the chord progression--or harmonic rhythm. For example, if we are already imposing our 4/4 metric behavior, and we have a bunch of harmonic information, lets say the chord progression I-V-vi-IV in pop music, our sense of IV to I (very common in pop) helps us set up an expectation of I being the next chord, on beat 1 of the subsequent measure. As you can see, concerted expectations in both temporal and spectral dimensions can help guide behavior and anticipate what may come next. Keep in mind that these kinds of combinatorial things vary with culture, but metric and beat-related behaviors seem to be ubiquitous.
>scientific reason why we love to headbang?
Motivations behind music-induced movement (foot tapping, head banging, etc) is HUGE right now in music cognition; may researchers are probing everything from vestibular activation to entrainment are being explored. The bottom line is, rhythm, timing and movement are strongly linked (Clarke, 1999 in Deutsch, Ed. and ability to induce a periodic pulse activate brain regions (cerebellum, SMA, structures of the basal ganglia) that are implicated in human movement (see the work of Jessica Grahn. If I were to answer your question in short, we headbang because we find it pleasurable, and what accounts for the variability of why we find it pleasurable (entrainment, social reasons, expectations, agency) is still being worked out.
>I know it's due to the numbers of beats in a measure, but what, scientifically, is a measure? What's a beat?
I'll use London again because he explains it so damn well without having all these complicated notions that rhythm and timing researchers have to deal with, like dynamical attending, non-linear oscillators, and the like. Read through this page since it is both accessible to most readers and also acceptable scientifically, and coincides with the majority of research on the topic. In a nutshell, a beat is a "by-product of entrainment", which is our ability to synchronize with a periodic stimulus; a beat is kind of an event to which we entrain. Loosely, a measure is 'one period' of a periodic stimulus, or groups of beats.
>In a similar vein, are there numbers to show the difference between 3/4 and 4/4?
At the end of the day, these are just two employed behaviors we use to track time-varying events based on our ability to entrain to periodic events. In line with the definitions presented, they are just two different meters, and depending of the culture, 4/4 and 3/4 (or any meter) is used differently.
>Why do certain groups of sounds of certain lengths 'fit,' and others don't?
I think you might need to go into specifics with this one, since there are many several things--timing variability, the level of entrainment we are able to do, style of music--that are factors here.
Rhythm and rhythmic timing is my, I guess subdiscipline, so if you have any more Q's, recommendations to more literature, or if anything is unclear, feel free to ask.
EDIT: broken links
Schoenberg makes a similar observation in Structural Functions of Harmony.
>Structural functions are exerted by root progressions.
>
>There are three kinds of root progressions:
>
>(1) Strong or ascending progressions:
>
> (a) A fourth up, identical with a fifth down
>
> (b) A third down
>
> The term strong is used because great changes in the
>constitution of the chord are produced. When the root
>progresses a fourth up the root note of the first chord is
>degraded, becoming only the fifth of the second chord. In the
>case of the root progression a third down, the root note of the
>first chord is degraded even further, becoming the third of the
>second chord.
>
>(2) Descending progressions:
>
> (a) A fourth down
>
> (b) A third up
>
> They do not posses the conquering power of the ascending
>progressions. On the contrary, they promote the advancement
>of inferior tones. In I-IV, II-VI, III-VII, etc., the fifth of the
>first chord always advances to become the root of the second.
>And in I-III, II-IV, III-V, etc., a tone of inferior importance, the
>third, advances to become the root.
>
>(3) Superstrong progressions:
>
> (a) One step up
>
> (b) One step down
>
> In both cases all the tones of the first chord are "conquered",
>i.e. eliminated entirely.
The text includes examples which point out the roots becoming fifths and thirds in the first case, and fifths and thirds becoming roots in the second case. Schoenberg goes on to suggest guidelines for the implementation of these structures. (edit: formatting)
Check out this book: (full disclosure, I am the author).
Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers: The producers guide to harmony, chord progressions, and song structure in the MIDI grid. https://www.amazon.com/dp/069209329X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Brx8AbH0F0BJX
Godfried Toussaint devotes a chapter to these interlocking rhythms in his Geometry of Musical Rhythm, where he calls them "Complementary Rhythms".
He notes that two of the most important rhythms in sub-Saharan Africa, the 7 onset Bembé and the 5 onset Fume-Fume (in rotation) are complementary and are often played that way.
As an aside the Bembé, in modulo 12 (clock arithmetic) is directly analogous to the major scale and the Fume-Fume is directly analogous to the penatonic.
I'm in the process of reading a book The Inner Game of Music
Back in the 70's I believe it was somebody wrote a book the inner game of tennis (then span it out to golf / skiing etc)
The premise was essentially ways to increase your performance by decrease interference from your brain and increasing things like thrust, awareness and will.
It basically was to my understanding a pioneering book in sports psychology.
It starts off quite simple with a formula:
Performance = Potential - Interferance
Most people want better performance so focus on increasing skills / the potential. Very few take the time / effort / practice to decrease the interference part -- which it sounds quite high in your case.
The book then delves into it more, presents ideas to help understand / cope / improve it. Some exercises and all sorts.
So some music dude hooked up with the original author and wrote one for music.
It sounds like the book may be of some help. Its a little bit "miraculous" in places but its not too bad. Has some nice fundementals with practice / approach.
I think as well part of it is just becoming more comfortable with what you are doing. It almost sounds if you are sitting above yourself when you are playing rather than laying back into it, if that makes any sense.
So I'd recommend Victor Wootens book The Music Lesson a shortish book, a little odd and almost self serving at times, but its an amazing book, really is.
I'd also recommend The Art of Practicing, it goes much more into the approach to the instrument, practicing and performing. Its from a classical piano perspective, but does cater for some other instruments / the musical ideas translate well.
Its quite interesting there is a reasonable amount of overlap between the inner game and the art of practicing. I'd say the art of practicing is better written (albeit written in a little bit of a dull style) and goes into detail more but I do like the inner games interference approach.
Yeah I found these books very helpful and I have a backlog of others to read. Essentially it looking at how you approach music and connect with the instrument.
I first became aware of this when learning how to sing, alot of my blocks to singing were all in my head and changing my approach really helped my voice get better and it translated to guitar. So I started reading more into that in general.
Check out The Time of Music by Jonathan Kramer. I'm working my way through it right now and I'm almost done - it's a fantastic book. There are parts I agree with more than others, but Kramer is pretty clear that he intends the book as a way to prompt discussion/thought/debate rather than as the word of god descended from the heavens, and it's definitely done that for me.
EDIT: Here's a couple other related books that have ended up on my reading list but I haven't gotten to yet.
Justin London - Hearing in Time
Christopher Hasty - Meter as Rhythm
Yeah... I really don't condone self-teaching for many reasons, but obviously you don't want to hear that right now, so this is just a bit of a disclaimer.
Personally, I think if you're going to study on your own, it's really worth it to get a good background in the "bookwork" elements of singing, like vocal anatomy and pedagogy, as well as language work.
On that end, I would recommend books like Doscher's The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, McKinney's The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults, Miller's The Structure of Singing, and McCoy's Your Voice: An Inside View. These are really not easy reads, per se, but they should give you a really good foundation in understanding what's going on physically, and being aware of potential problems in vocal health and hygiene, which is arguably the biggest reason to study with a teacher. (In other words, a good understanding of the physical vocal structure can help prevent unknowingly contorting it in an unhealthy way).
I would also strongly recommend some study in language, diction, and text. Even for non-classical singers, it's worth it to know about how diction and articulation works. Diction for Singers, A Handbook of Diction for Singers, and International Phonetic Alphabet for Singers would be a good start. (And in general, a working understanding of IPA is crucial).
You can also work on text analysis - I'm not really a poetry/text specialist so I can't recommend any specific books, but I'm sure there are many out there.
Marchesi's Bel Canto: A Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method is another resource to look into, as it contains many exercises designed for technical practice - I liken it to the Hanon exercises commonly found in piano curricula. However, I will definitely warn that these exercises can be easily done incorrectly and can lead to the development of very bad habits, so please proceed with caution and be aware that there are many ways to execute the exercises, some of which are not healthy.
In addition, I would recommend a broad study in music theory, music history, and ear training. [Musictheory.net](http://www.musictheory.net] and Teoria.com are well-respected websites that offer lessons and exercises to learn beginner to intermediate level music theory concepts. Good-ear.com is another website I often recommend that focuses more on ear training. I would also recommend checking out the sidebar and FAQs over at /r/musictheory for more details.
In addition to these websites, some books worth mentioning include Berkowitz's A New Approach to Sight Singing, Music for Analysis, Caplin's Classical Form, Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music, Grout's A History of Western Music, and Schoenberg's Structural Functions of Harmony. While of course you don't need to have a doctorate in music theory to begin singing, I think it can only be helpful to have a really broad basis of understanding in various parts of music, as they directly affect your ability to read, understand, and interpret music.
Anyway, that should give you a pretty decent start. Please feel free to post if you have any additional questions.
In one of our FAQ topics, the study of counterpoint is mentioned in the top post. There, two series of books are recommended, each with a 16th century and an 18th century component.
These are really the two standards of counterpoint teaching today. Fux is often read as well, but I personally don't really recommend reading historical treatises as a first introduction to a basic concept. I've been taught from the Gauldin 18th century book and am about to teach from the Schubert Renaissance book. I think I would have to say that I prefer Schubert as a classroom textbook, but I'm honestly not entirely sure which one I would prefer as a self-study text.
As far as learning to read music, Master Theory is a good place to start.
Specifically for the snare drum, I've heard good things about Podemski's Standard Snare Drum Method.
Chart Topping Drum Beats might also be a good way to learn how to read drum-specific music.
There are probably good free resources online too.
Here some more references if need be:
https://www.amazon.com/Algorithmic-Composition-Gerhard-Nierhaus-ebook/dp/B00DZ11AIC
https://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Musical-Rhythm-What-Makes-ebook/dp/B00CLZSUN6
https://magenta.tensorflow.org/music-transformer and https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.04281
EDIT: actually randomness in music was by no way invented by Cage but already applied e.g. by Ockegehem, Bach or Mozart.
I'm not sure if this helps, but I've seen this book being mentioned in a somewhat similar thread => The Inner Game of Music. I've just started reading it, so I can't really tell you a lot about it aside from the description:
> The Inner Game of music is that which takes place in the mind, played against such elusive opponents as nervousness, self doubt, and fear of failure [...] Green begins by discussing what makes up a good performance. He invented the formula P = p - i, where P is the level of the performance, p is the potential of the performer, and i is the level of mental interference during the performance. He explains how to decrease the amount of i (interference) in order to bring the level of P (performance) as close as possible to p (potential).
That being said, you really shouldn't be so harsh on yourself. It's said that you are your biggest critic. Sometimes that's a good thing. But if it gets to a point where it affects your performance, maybe you should take a step back, take a break and find time to rediscover the pleasure of singing. I've been playing guitar for quite some time and sometimes I really get bored of it and become stuck in the same riffs and same songs. So I let it go for a while and do other things. When I come back, it's almost always a breath of fresh air.
PS: virtual hug \^_^
You can usually get older editions of those books for significantly cheaper. That would be my recommendation. Those books are really the ones that are vetted, tried and true.
2nd edition Aldwell/Schachter for $15
1st edition Clendinning/Marvin for $10
There's only one edition of the Laitz, I think, so if you wanted that one you'd just have to bite the bullet.
I think this book by Roger Matthew Grant is pretty much exactly what you’re looking for. “Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era”
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/beating-time-and-measuring-music-in-the-early-modern-era-9780199367283?cc=us&lang=en&#
Also, Ruth DeFord is a specialist in this area, and has a book on rhythm in early music, albeit somewhat earlier than what you’re talking about https://www.amazon.com/Tactus-Mensuration-Rhythm-Renaissance-Music/dp/1107064724
The ground rules come from learning basic theory so there's no quick fix in this regard. Getting lessons is the best way to go but you could also try the autodidact route: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Dummies-Audio-CD-ROM/dp/0764578383
Alternatively, You could just use your instinct to compose complimentary melodies. Record yourself singing a melody and then loop it back while you experiment over with a new different melody and/or rhythm, and repeat until you feel you're satisfied. As always experiment and practice and you'll get better at it.
> I don't think music really can be randomly generated like this, or at least not with something so primitive.
Obviously, to write quality generative music, you need to be able to write quality music. I.e. you need to understand compositional structure, music theory, what makes a good melody, etc. You can't expect to generate good music without this understanding. Writing quality music is difficult in any medium or compositional domain.
That said, using an Nth order Markov model and a lot of analyzed music from the same style (e.g. the works of Bach, Mozart, etc) as input, you can create quality music and have absolutely no idea why or how it's quality. This would be more along the techniques successfully employed by David Cope.
However, these analysis-bases techniques don't deal with meaningful interaction or note/beat-level changes, both primary issues in interactive software (like a game). To get quality procedural/generative/interactive music in this domain, you need to employ a more directly-compositional approach. The best efforts in this area are those that use probabilistic techniques and compose music in a way that is quite analogous to traditional composition, but instead of composing particular rhythms, melodies, or structure, you compose these elements using [probability distribution functions] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution). Until recently, there haven't been too many books detailing this approach, but now there are.
Edit: One more thing -- there may be more music than you realize that employs this sort of probabilistic approach. When it's good, you don't notice it. It just sounds like music.
Wow, thats an interesting question. I have a book on my 'to-read' stack called "Music and Probability" - http://www.amazon.com/Music-Probability-David-Temperley/dp/0262515199 - maybe you could draw some connections on your own?
Music Theory Remixed by Kevin Holm-Hudson, is a great book that covers all the typical concepts of a four semester university theory course (Theory I through IV) but supplements all the concert music examples with music from pop music. It's pretty fantastic. Sort of like a more relevant Tonal Harmony... I think it's fun to hear modern examples of cadences, modulation techniques, etc. along side examples from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.
Tonal Harmony, by Kostka and Payne, is in my experience the most commonly assigned text for Theory I - IV courses. It's very good.
Straus' Introduction to Post-Tonal Harmony, is incredible. This book helped me fall in love with post-tonal music. If you need to study post tonal music, this is the book to get.
Check out this book. I found an ebook of it years ago and half of the pages were blurred out so I never got around to finishing it. In the first few chapters the author explains why the 12 note scale came to be and how it was designed.
The 12 note system also has a lot to do with how our ears and brains work. A half step is the smallest musical interval that humans can easily discern. That's not to be said that a quarter step or eighth step can't be discerned with practice and training.
"Form in music"
>I'm trying to put together a plan of materials to go through with the intention of becoming an "expert" (very adept, lets say graduate level) in theory over the next several years.
So, at minimum, you'll need to know tonal (Schenkerian) analysis and post-tonal analysis. The fourth edition of Joseph Straus' Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory is good for post-tonal. My Schenkerian class didn't use a text, but Cadwallader and Gagne seems to be a thing now.
At the graduate level, studies are motivated by the student's research interests. It sounds like you are interested in what Dmitri Tymoczko calls "the extended common practice."
For breadth, read journals and publications. MTO is free, Spectrum is a big one, and so it JMT. Here are the last five recipients of the Wallace Berry Award (and you can read more here):
Steven Vande Mooretele - The Romantic Overture and Musical Form from Rossini to Wagner
Daniel Harrison - Pieces of Tradition: An Analysis of Contemporary Tonal Music
Ruth DeFord - Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music
Jack Boss - Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Music: Symmetry and the Musical Idea
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis - On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind
Given your interests, I'd definitely read the Daniel Harrison book.
/u/Jay13232 mentioned Persichetti. If you're going to read it, do so after you get a handle on set theory (from Straus). It's a good book, but our modern methodology is better for describing that repertoire in my opinion. Persichetti and Hindemith are like whacking nails into a board with a wrench (using ideas appropriated from tonality to describe music that doesn't follow those principles). Allen Forte, John Rahn, Robert Morris, and Howard Hanson gave us a proper set of hammers.
Well anything that falls under "cross-cultural" usually winds up with the ethnomusicologists.
You sound like you'd be more interested in the music cognition side of music theory (not my area at all). Again, Music Perception is going to be your best bet here. You might also check out David Huron's book, Sweet Anticipation, which deals with anticipation in music from a psychological perspective. Juslin and Sloboda's Handbook of Music and Emotion has a lot of the cognitive side of things as well, if you're interested in that aspect. Finally, David Temperley's Cognition of Basic Musical Structures or Justin London's Hearing in Time might be worth a look.
I can recommend a couple....
A Practical Approach to 16th Century Counterpoint is a modern work that digs into the idioms. If you want to read the theory of the era, it's hard to beat Zarlino's Le institutioni harmonische, published in 1588. If you read Italian there are three different scans of 16th century editions available free on IMSLP
My theory professor in undergrad wrote a book that I loved. We used it before it was published, so it was still a work in progress. But my high school didn't have music theory as a class, so I was a little behind everyone else, and this book really made a lot of sense to me. Music Theory Remixed: A Blended Approach for the Practicing Musician https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199330565/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ImVOybYGM0VRJ
In no particular order:
This might sound funny but the BEST "all-in-one" theory introduction for me so far is the sample pages of a book called "The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis", on amazon. Every other place I can think of either focuses too much on one part, or misses out on a crucial part of the basics probably because they assume you aren't a complete beginner.
The aforementioned book is where I wish I had gone to on day 1.
r/musictheory also has an faq thread. I read through openmusictheory.com but it's certainly too fast for complete beginners.
The following sources all agree that 3/8 is a "simple triple" meter. I haven't found any yet that describe it as compound. So, yes, "compound single" would be the exception, though I acknowledge it might be conducted that way with some frequency.
https://www.amazon.com/Musicians-Guide-Theory-Analysis-Third/dp/0393263053/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature#Simple_time_signatures
http://openmusictheory.com/meter.html
http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/15
I used the 4th edition of the Kennan text in my orchestration course at conservatory and quite liked it. Kennan also wrote a very good book on counterpoint, so there's that as well.
If you want to read some Fux for counterpoint, get Alfred Mann's translation of the work of Fux — The Study of Counterpoint: From Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum.
Walter Piston's Counterpoint is also a classic.
Basically, if you really want to understand these topics you'll need to read several books on each on top of doing a whole bunch of score study.
Music theory is not different on a guitar than on any other instrument. And it gets very hard to get music theory correct when it is taught by largely self-taught guitarists, because they have a tendency to think every shape they play requires a name (a trait shared by musicians on most chromatic instruments).
Go get a basic music theory book like Music Theory for Dummies or Music Theory: From Begginer to Expert. After youv'e gone through and really understood what's in those texts, you'll be ready for more advanced stuff like Mark Levine's Jazz Theory or Walter Piston's books such as Harmony or Counterpoint.
Alternately you could look at texts on arranging and orchestration at that point as well.
Stay away from instrument specific texts, particularly those related to chromatic instruments (of which the guitar is one) because you'll almost find something that is a well-intended, but mistaken, concept. Also avoid texts aimed at Berkelee school of music. While they are a great school in terms of their performance degrees, they have an odd fascination with modes that is shared by virtually no other music school in the world.
My friend and I were recently talking about how standard notation isn't the universal language it once was and, in learning guitar, TABs just made more sense for the learning process. I mentioned that, if anything, the piano roll should be integrated into the younger music curriculum due to how relevant it is.
Lo and behold: https://www.amazon.com/dp/069209329X
That's a great idea for introducing people to theory who aren't traditionally trained. After all, it's an awkward added step to have to mentally translate everything through treble and bass clef and then into a piano roll when standard notation isn't really a medium you'll be using enough to have it feel like anything more than a speed bump.
For a challenging book on the relation between mathematics and music, check out Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals.
It's Ottman: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Sight-Singing-9th-Edition/dp/0205938337
Thank you for sticking with me (and hopefully some others) on this. One of my grandsons is 11 years old and I intend to help clear the way for him to become a fine musician. You have helped us both.
A book like this will contain lots of rhythmic source material:
https://www.amazon.ca/Music-Sight-Singing-Nancy-Rogers/dp/0205938337
Lookout for these on kijiji at the end of the school year as you're guaranteed to find a 2nd year music major unloading one.
With exercises like the ones in that book, you can practice speaking rhythms (even using simple 'da da da' or 'ta ta ta' syllables) or clapping them out. And making sure you always do that with a metronome. I found this kind of instrument-free work really helps in internalizing rhythm.
For example, when you're learning a piece (say, as a guitarist), put your guitar down. Get a metronome going and try to clap the rhythm. Try to speak it out loud. Try clapping your hands or tapping your foot to the metronome while speaking the pattern against that steady beat. Move your body to the pattern in some kind of way. When you pick the guitar back up and look at that same bar of music, you will have another level of rhythmic understanding of it. It will be memorized, and internalized independent of any muscle memory.
Also, doing work like this daily will seriously enrich your rhythmic comprehension. Like comprehending written words–where you don't need to think about each individual letter and the entire word just is what it is–eventually, even the most complex written rhythms begin to indicate specific patterns.
Beyond that, you can start looking at songs in a dimension you never thought of before. Re-imaging a jazz standard as a waltz or in 5, looking into polyrhythmic work (where you keep two independent rhythms steadily moving), or even just changing the feel of a familiar song.
I don't know much about western music but your question piqued my interest and a quick search yielded this, which looks interesting:
Cool Math for Hot Music: A First Introduction to Mathematics for Music Theorists
>i tested a few
What testing methodologies did you employ? I find double blind to be significant in this regard.
>the other one had voices, voices sound, or what you ppl call acapella, i hate acapella, hate all acapella versions of regular songs
Which one was A capella? Which by the way originally meant to wear a small cloak.
>it's just noise
Yes. The Rest is Noise
>it just had no meaning
This might help. Or this. Especially chapter 8.
Here is the mobile version of your link
I used Elementary Rudiments of Music when I first started learning. There's also a theory course available on Coursera.
Edit: Also if you're taking lessons most teachers also teach theory, though in my neighborhood they are usually separate lessons.
Wow, there is some great advice in this thread! Theory is not particularly hard, but we've imposed some frameworks on it that are efficient, but obscure.
The fact that major/minor, sharped/flatted, diminished/augmented all refer to adding or subtracting a semi-tone from a note, or that 'dominant' can refer to the fifth note in a major scale, or the fifth chord in a major key are at the root of the confusion.
There should be a guidebook.
It's wise to take the broader view and start with what you're currently playing. If you're playing open chord songs that consist of major and minor chords, learn what the distinct notes are for each chord. Then go look up what the notes are if you change that chord from a minor to a major or vice versa.
(All of the below examples are based on the A Major Scale, from which all of the chords in the key of A Major are derived: A B C# D E F# G#)
You'll find that only one note changes, and it's the note in the middle of the alphabetic sequence. We call that note the 3rd and you'll find that the minor chord has a 3rd that is a semi tone flatter than a major. Work that out for all the chords you know. Do that as you learn new chords.
Example: (The A major triad: A C# E, the A minor triad: A C E - see that we've 'flatted' the C# to a C)
You've probably learned that major and minor scales are seven tone scales. A lot of theory is based on what we do to those individual tones. Major and minor (triad - three note chords) are based on the 3rd tone of the scale (See example above).
As an aside, pentatonic scales are a subset of major/minor scales, where they've removed the two tones with the highest chance of clashing.
Diminished and Augmented chords are based on the 5th tone of the scale.
(Although we typically don't diminish three note chords, if we did, we might get; A minor diminished: A C Eb) I don't want to get into diminished too much - it's an outlier because there are subtleties.
Major 7th, Minor 7th, Dominant 7th are, you guessed it based on the 7th tone of the scale. And yes, there are 9th, 11th, 13th chords.
(Example: A Major 7th: A C# E G#, A Minor 7th: A C E G, A Dominant 7th: A C# E G)
We also have suspended chords where we might substitute the 3rd tone with a 2nd, 4th, or 6th.
(Example: A sus 2: A B E, A sus 4: A D E)
We might even just throw those rules out and have Major Minor 7ths.
So yeah, there's a lot going on, but if you try to learn as much about the current chord set you're playing, you'll find it starts to make sense.
Also, Barbara Wharram wrote a great book that Royal Conservatory teachers use as a theory primer called: Elementary Rudiments of Music. It's a very approachable workbook. https://www.amazon.ca/Elementary-Rudiments-Music-Barbara-Wharram/dp/0887970044/ref=sr_1_2/168-4402758-7301632?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481846745&sr=1-2
The "Master Theory" series of workbooks is what I got started on back in middle school. I'm looking through it right now and it should translate fine for adult learners too!
Here's the first one. If I remember correctly you probably won't need anything past book 3, after that it focuses on arranging.
There are tons of companion books published through Piano publishers who make graded material. Get Bastien's, or Alfred's, etc. theory books. They are designed to go with the lessons books, though she would have to do some "catch up" to the playing level. But you can do that in an ongoing manner in weekly lessons.
The "Master Theory" is also a good one.
https://www.amazon.com/WP205-Bastien-Basics-Theory-Primer/dp/0849752701
https://www.amazon.com/L173-Master-Theory-Book-1/dp/0849701546/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549472583&sr=1-1&keywords=Master+Theory
If you have the patience, Harmony & Voice Leading by Aldwell & Schachter, hands down.
It depends on how much of a "Beginner" you are. I went through Music Theory for Dummies before I moved on to the above monster of a textbook. The Shaping of Musical Elements and its second volume are also some recommendations. However, they also require a deal of patience (and possibly a knowledgeable friend/teacher if you'd like your work examined). The aforementioned Laitz book is also a great text worth of perusal.
I wish you the best of luck in your learning ventures!
I really do like Laitz, but the book can be pretty dense, especially if you're trying to teach yourself. Clendenning and Marvin's book takes a lot of Laitz's approaches but is a bit more accessible, in my opinion.
Autogenerated.
I just published a book called, “Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers.” AMA.
Here is the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/069209329X
A little more info: I’m a college professor, PhD in music composition, and Ableton certified trainer. I started Slam Academy, and have a bunch of online classes about music theory and Ableton live.
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