(Part 3) Top products from r/musictheory

>Also, you brought up William Caplin's Classical Form. I think I might benefit from reading something a bit more modern and familiar in its language and teaching style. Would you recommend that book? What are its strengths and weaknesses? I'm a poor high school student and it's kind of expensive for a book, so I'd like to feel a bit more certain about the book's value before I spend what little money I have on it. I'm mostly interested in practical value for use in understanding composition, so that I can apply it in my own writing.

The textbook version, Analyzing Classical Form, is a bit more approachable. That said, Classical Form is incredible. I don't know how much you will get out of it as a high school student, but it certainly does have a lot of great knowledge and perspective locked up inside of it.

To summarize Caplin in one sentence: The process by which (Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart's) music unfolds is based on progression toward a musical goal, and the shape the music takes at any given moment is based on a passage's formal function. If you think of the progression beginning–middle–end (or initiating–medial–concluding in Caplin's terminology), then there are certain characteristics that make something sound like it's a beginning, middle, or ending. Caplin's theory is interested how composers manipulate temporality. Here's an explanatory blurb from Analyzing Classical Form:

>The concept of formal function is central to the theory and analysis of classical form proposed in this textbook. Since it is not an easy term to define, the “Focus on Function”
text boxes will help to clarify the concept.

>Most fundamentally, formal functionality relates to some general notions of time. In many situations in our life, we can experience the sense of beginning something, of being in the middle of something, or of ending something.

>For example, you are now at the beginning of your course on musical form, and at some point you will experience the sense of being in its middle (especially around the time of a midterm exam). Eventually, you will come to the end of the course (with great success, we hope!).

>These general temporalities can also apply to passages of music.Within a theme, some portion of the music expresses the sense of initiating the theme; other portions suggest being in its middle; and other portions bring the theme to a close.The specific terms that we apply to these portions of music refer to the formal functions of the theme.
At this point, we have identified three phrase functions of the sentence theme type: presentation, continuation, and cadential. And we have identified these functions as initiating, medial, and concluding. In addition, we have also recognized two idea functions—basic idea and cadential idea— that operate at a lower level in the structural hierarchy of the work.These functions express a sense of formal beginning and ending respectively. (47)

---


>I definitely can agree with that. I just felt frustrated when I was reading the book because I feel like I already do have a decent understanding of music theory. To expand on the literature metaphor, I feel like I am definitely able to form sentences and understand grammar, etc. But when I was reading the book I felt confused a lot of ideas/concepts/terms that IMO were advanced/obscure enough to need a bit of explanation. I can't think of any examples right now (I haven't read in like 2 weeks) so I guess it's not a very strong argument.

I agree with you, and I wouldn't use Fundamentals of Musical Composition to teach someone new to music. I might recommend it to a budding composer though (as my teacher recommended Structural Functions of Harmony to me; we did a little book club for a while). There's nothing wrong with trying to work through it at whatever level, however. And frustrating terminology is part of the game in music theory, unfortunately, especially in these mid-20th century books. It's not like any of this terminology ever really gets standardized anyway. That said, if you read enough of these things, you start to realize that Schoenberg is much clearer and more concrete than a lot of the other figures. I make a case for Schoenberg's practicality in this thread.

---

There's another really good music book, one that I think could be good for beginners, but is mired with awkward and outdated language because it's old: Tchaikovsky's Guide to the Practical Study of Harmony. (Keep in mind this was translated from Russian to German to English.) There are little conventional things, like calling C major and A minor "parallel" keys rather than "relative" (because in German, they refer to that as a "parallel" relationship). I have to remind myself of this when I read, for instance, on page 21: "The Harmony of the minor scale is built up on the so-called "harmonic minor scale" and consists of the same notes as its parallel major scale, with the exception that the 7th step is raised by half a tone."

Also, it's more common nowadays to indicate chord quality (major, minor, diminished, augmented) in the numeral: I ii iii IV V vi vii° for major and i ii° III iv V VI vii° for minor (adjusted for conventional use of harmonic minor) as opposed to Tchaikovsky's flat I II III IV V VI VII for major and I II III IV V VI VII for minor.

If you're willing to hack through sentences that sound like they were written by space aliens who studied Shakespeare, it's a great little book. I think it's especially good for learning the principles of voice-leading at the keyboard in an easy and practical way..

I really hope no one ever talked like this, but I can't be so sure:

>Hitherto, in all our examples, the movement of the middle voices was determined by the upper voice and thus no opportunity for independence was offered. But as soon as it is no longer dominated by the upper voice, each voice gains in significance, deriving, as it were, a distinct physiognomy and character of its own, which entirely determines the positions of the voices in a chord; so that an arbitrary use of close or wide positions is not practicable. (38)

---

>Again, thank you for spending so much time to respond to my comment, it means a lot!

Aww, you're so welcome!

>I didn't study music theory in general but rather individual songs

Good.

>That gave me a solid grasp on how the most popular chord progressions work together(the all-time classic C-Am-F-G, basic blues scales, A minor pentatonic etc),

Good.

>when I listen to the three aforementioned artists, and when I study their songs, I can see all these wild chord changes, crazy melodies that I can't quite grasp due to my lack of knowledge in certain areas of music theory.

Not really. It's true that a lot of their songs go well beyond the I-vi-IV-V and other diatonic changes, but you can learn the principles through the same process as before.

How did you come up with C Am F G? You studied a whole load of songs before noticing that common pattern in enough of them that you can call it "classic". You didn't feel you had to study theory to get to that point. You just learned the songs you liked, because you wanted to play them, yes? And maybe write songs using similar material?

Now there's what seems like a big leap - a quantum jump - to the likes of Bowie, Elton, Queen (let's stop short of Steely Dan or Radiohead... ;-)). But a useful link here is the Beatles. None of those three would have done anything like they did - they might not even have taken up music in the first place - if it wasn't for the Beatles. Everyone post-Beatles took songwriting inspiration from them - picking up their tricks. (Other linking figures would be Stevie Wonder and the Motown and Brill Building writers.)

I.e., there is a continuum there, in the evolution of pop/rock songwriting. If you can stand paying for a hefty book, I highly recommend this. It takes various kinds of theoretical principles and examines how various Beatles tunes illustrate them. There is free Beatles analysis here, but it starts from the tunes, and I think you'd find it more useful to start from the principles and see how they're applied.

>I'd just like to take all the bits and pieces of information I already possess and place them within a bigger picture.

Well said. You start from what you know, and expand outwards from there.

Here's a couple of simple principles to get you started:

(1) Secondary dominants

This is mostly a jazz thing, but does occur in pop, way back in the 50s (and of course in classical!). It's the principle that any chord in the key (not just I) can have its own major V or V7 chord. In C major, you can have all these:

D7 - goes to G; A7 - goes to Dm; E7 - goes to Am; B7 - goes to Em; C7 - goes to F. (Only the last one really needs a 7th, they're optional on the others.)

Sometimes these are used in "deceptive cadences" - e.g. E(7) might well go to F instead of Am. But generally the reason for introducing these chords is to give more forward momentum towards the following chord.

(2) Mode mixture, aka modal interchange, or borrowed chords

The principle here is basically to blur the distinction between major and minor tonality. A major key can use chords from the parallel minor, and vice versa. It helps to darken the "too bright" major key, and to brighten the too weak or tedious minor key.

One thing that makes this really common in rock is down to which chords are easy on guitar! So you find this principle demonstrated mostly in the major keys of E and A, and the minor keys of Am and Dm, where all the open position cowboy chords can have a role.

The E major key can include D, G C and Am. The E minor key can include F#m and A. (B is already there thanks to harmonic minor.) IOW, both keys can share each other's material. The nature of the tonic chord may be the only thing that defines a key as "major" or "minor".

So, to take a common rock key of A major, you might find any of these chords used:

A, Bm, B, C, C#m, D, Dm, E, F, F#m, G. (No, not G#dim, forget that one. Use E/G# or C#m/G if you want a G# bass note.)

The key of A minor might feature any of these:

Am, Bm, C, Dm, D, Em, E, F, G. (No, not Bdim or G#dim. See above. Bm7b5 in jazz, yes, and just maybe in the writers you mention.) F#m and Cm might even make appearances ("chromatic mediants"), but they would be rarer. Likewise Bb from A phrygian.

Altered chords are actually rare in pop/rock, but one the Beatles (at least) liked was the augmented triad - which can be considered a V(#5) chord, often in secondary use. E.g., C+ can go between C and F or Am or A.

...

Obviously you want to bear in mind hear that Elton John is a pianist (as was Freddie Mercury), so doesn't have the same biases towards certain keys and chords that guitarists (such as Bowie and Brian May) naturally do. Elton had proper piano lessons! He knew stuff!

Anyway, all the above will give you ways of beginning to branch out from the old diatonic key sequences you're used to - ideas for chords you can add. Naturally, don't try and pile them all in at once. Try one at a time.

More importantly, study a few favourite songs by those artists and see if you can identify each chord used as fitting one of the above principles (remembering that songs can also change key in the middle). I.e., identify the key first - the "I" - and then how all the others relate.

Also study how the chords move: if a move seems weird, are there shared tones between the chords? How do the other chord tones move? Is there some kind of moving bass line (typically descending) providing a linking thread? How do the chords harmonise the melody (very important). Can the melody explain a strange choice of chord? Or vice versa?

Because you have an issue of constantly writing in the same key, I feel like your issue won’t be solved by just learning about modal interchange. I believe that thinking about harmony and phrase structure Functionally would be of more use to your process.


Every chord in a harmonic progression serves a function that can be broken down into 3 basic categories:

1. Tonic Function (Major: I, vi, iii) (Minor: i, bIII, bVI)
   
   
   
2. Subdominant Function (Major: ii, IV) (Minor: ii^o , iv)
   
   
   
3. Dominant Function (Major: V, vii^o ) (Minor: V, #vii^o )
   
   
   Each chord flows to the next, so a progression from:
   
   
   Tonic -> Subdominant -> Dominant -> Tonic
   
   
   Is atypical. It’s important to note that Tonics can come after a subdominant (T - SD - T), and the subdominant can be skipped and a tonic can lead directly to a dominant (T - D - T). Tonic chords can also lead to other Tonic chords (T - T), the same goes for subdominants and Dominants (S - S; D - D) so our new chart would look like this:
   
   
   Tonic -><- Subdominant -> Dominant -><- Tonic
   
   
   
   Harmonic progressions serve functions as well, and you can reduce almost every harmonic progression can into 3 basic categories (some would say there are only 2, but I prefer to think about it in terms of 3):
   
   
   
   

1. Prolongation (when you prolong any harmony by skipping or omitting a harmonic Function between 2 chords, or simply repeating the same harmonic function back to back) to for example:
   
   I - V - I
   
   
   I - IV - I
   
   
   i - ii^o - i
   
   
   V - I - V
   
   
   iv - i - iv
   
   
   I - vi
   
   
   IV - ii
   
   
   ii - ii^6
   
   
   I - vii^6/5ø - I^6
   
   Etc etc
   
   
   
2. Cadential function (when the sequence of chords flows from T - SD - D - T) ex:
   
   
   vi - ii - V - I, iv - V - VI, ii - vii^o - V - I, ii - I6/4 - V^7 - I
   
   
   Etc etc
   
   
   
3. Sequential function: when harmonic root movement moves in a fixed pattern. this can, and often, defies normal “chord logic” of a T - SD - D progression. You escape sequential movement by using a Cadential Function set of harmonies. Sequences are really good ways to migrate from one key center to another, or to just provide a continuation before a cadence in the home key. Diatonically, there are 6 kinds of sequences: ascending and descending 2nds, 3rds, and 4ths
   
   Ex
   
   (by ascending 4th) vii - iii - vi - (ii - V - I)
   
   
   (By descending 2nd) V - IV - iii - iii - (ii - V - I)
   
   
   (Descending 4th) I - V - ii - vi - (V/V - V - I)
   
   
   Etc etc etc etc
   
   
   You can interject prolongation and cadential functions in between each sequential chord: I (V - I) - ii - (vi - ii) - iii - (vii - ii) etc. you can also tonicize each chord in the sequence: I - vii^o / ii - ii - vii^o /iii - iii etc etc etc
   
   
   Phrase functions are also a thing, and these are strongly linked to Harmonic Progression Functions this is where both the theory behind natural chord progressions and sets of harmonic progressions come together. Understanding and being comfortable with phrase functions is extremely important.
   
   
   
   

1. Presentation (Prolongation; a small basic idea (b.i.) That repeats twice)
   
   
   
2. Continuation Function (Sequential, Cadential; a fragmented (smaller, incomplete) interpretation of the previous material that repeats, can lead into a cadential progression)
   
   
   
3. Cadential Function (Cadential)
   
   
   
4. Antecedent Function (Prolongation -> Cadential) (basic idea, b.i., followed by a contrasting idea, c.i. that leads to a half cadence)
   
   
   
5. Consequent Function (the same basic idea followed by a varied version of the contrasting idea into a Perfect Authentic Cadence)
   
   
   In a typical musical sentence, you would have phrase structure that looks like this:
   
   
   Presentation -> continuation -> cadential
   
   
   A typical musical period looks like this:
   
   
   Antecedent -> Consequent
   
   
   You can mix and match functions to your pleasure, (one b.i. followed by a continuation function; antecedent -> continuation; antecedent -> continuation -> consequent; presentation -> cadential; etc)
   
   
   Because you write rock music, adhering to Classical Formal structures is not gonna happen. However, each function and it’s interior components (b.i. , c.i., continuation, fragmentation, etc) are used in an altered way very very frequently.
   
   
   I did not cover modulation is this post, but I will link an article below.
   
   
   I hope this helps, bellow I will link some sites and books that could help with understanding these concepts beyond this post:
   
   
   Links:
   http://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/HarmonicFunction.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/sentence.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/period.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/hybridThemes.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/themeFunctions.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/popRockForm-functions
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/Modulation.html
   
   
   Books:
   
   
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Analyzing-Classical-Form-Approach-Classroom/dp/0199987297
   
   
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Songwriting-Berklee-Guide-Perricone/dp/063400638X
   
   
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398

Well, I started playing the trumpet when I was 12, in the 6th grade, and I sat down at a piano one day and realized that playing from white note to white note was a C scale. I started piano the summer after my 6th grade year. I didn't care much for theory until the Christmas after I started taking lessons. My teacher gave me a few leadsheets from a Christmas fake book. We talked about building chords, but he didn't show me the more complicated ones. I bought a book that showed how to build all the chords in each key, but once I started realizing the patterns, I laid it down. I bought The Ultimate Fake Book and started playing songs.

Gradually over time you learn patterns and how chords sound. You can listen to these songs in the Fake Book, and though they might not be 100% completely transcribed, you can get an idea of how certain chord progressions sound. I quit taking lessons after a year and taught myself how to play Boogie-Woogie (I think I might still have a video on youtube called, "How to Play Boogie-Woogie Piano"). This helped with finger independence and learning the blues. Once I learned the blues, I started becoming interested in arranging. This was in I guess 8th grade.

I bought a book called Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble. It was helpful in learning how to orchestrate for a 20 piece band. I made dozens of arrangements just for fun. Learning how to arrange helped me learn how to harmonize.

A lot of other knowledge comes from reading Wikipedia articles on theory, reading random other books, and analyzing scores. Lush Life Music is an arranging company out of England. They let you view three or so pages of every score. I used to print out the samples and analyze. Also, get your hands on a hymnal, any hymnal. Hmynals are choir books, so they're scored in 4 part harmony. Figure out the chords on your own and notate them. That helped a lot.

Also, listen to lots of music, especially live. The best place to hear live music is at church, honestly, every Sunday. You don't even have to be religious, just find a seat near the pianist or organist.

I'm definitely not an academic. My figured bass is weak, and I don't know many classical composing principals, but I read a lot, experience a lot, and generally always love learning. Never let that fact that something is over your head stop you from learning about it. Just listen to lectures or lessons on Youtube, and it will all slowly congeal.

This website is really interesting. as well as Hooktheory.com.

I would suggest that to start learning quickly, get a fake book of some kind, and start trying to recreate the original recordings of songs in them. For instance, you know Bat Out of Hell?. The whole album is filled with great rock piano licks, but the title track's intro is great. Now, all sheet music editions of it begin at the piano arpeggios right before the vocals, ignoring the entire introduction, so I figured out the intro and made a jazz band arrangement of it with the saxes taking the piano riff. I learned a lot doing that, but sadly the arrangement has been lost.

Also, I almost forgot, if you have some spare money, Music Notes sells sheet music for around $5 a song, regardless of the length. Leadsheets are around $1-$2. They also allow you to print off free one page samples. If you struggle with a song, it doesn't hurt to buy a pre-made arrangement or even just print off the sample to learn the introduction. You can even find free sheet music on pages, like Scribd or even just a google search for free piano sheet music.

>12 equally spaced intervals are convenient. We can play some okay chords, and by warping certain intervals to fit the scale, we make anything we play fit inside a small set of notes, so pianos don't need a billion keys. We may miss out on all the most engaging intervals and chords, but since most people have never heard them, they won't feel the loss.

How you are even going to begin to disparage equal temperament music like that? Yes, I get it, there are other temperaments besides equal temperament, that's not huge news. But you better say your prayers to fully modulatory tonality before you go to bed every night as a musician. Do you have any idea what kind of artistic freedom that unlocks in the potential of music? That you can start in one place, go to 11 other different places that each have their own characteristic relationship to the key you've started in, retain the same exact musical proportions you have there that you did in your previous key, and then you can go back? And rather easily, too, with the way our ear for dissonance has developed over the past few centuries. For example, you can go from one key to the key that is farthest away from it in exactly one step: Tritone Substitution

I would absolutely love to know the engaging chords you hear in microtonality. You might begin to realize that the Western tradition (classical music) only ever came around to microtonals after tonality had run only part of its current 400 year race (because's it's not going anywhere any time soon.) Thousands of years after Eastern traditions (the music of Islam, for instance) had unlocked their potential, Western composers come around to microtones? And yet you had still had to go through the slow unlocking of increasingly dissonant intervals across the centuries, starting with unisons/octaves, then 5ths/4ths, 3rds, and 2nds, and then microtones, before you'd have anything to do with it: Emancipation of Dissonance - ignore the crazy metaphysics and recognize the trend for what it is.

There's a reason why we chose tonality to be our main currency over the past 400 years. It's worked extremely well. Microtonal composers are in classical music because of tonality. I understand your enthusiasm for an extremely new development in music that has a lot of potential, but you can't walk around, throwing out book titles like "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony", and get away with it.

I'd like to apologize, because I come on rather strong. But this just gets me so excited, as I'm sure it does you too. As a final appeal, just think about all of the artistic works that equal temperament tonality has given us, all of the works that move a human's soul like nothing else on earth. Literally, just think about everything ever written between Bach and today. Specifics? Maurice Ravel's "Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte"? Sam Barber's 2nd movement from his Violin Concerto? Arvo Part's "Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten"? I just can't understand how someone who has heard music can make that statement. Like I said, I get the enthusiasm, but c'mon

Here's some other stuff for people interested:

Joe Straus' Introduction to Post Tonal Theory

• For solid post tonal and heavily set theory based stuff
  
  Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music by Barry Schrader
  
  
• this book is old but has some cool stuff in it about earlier electronic music and it's cheap
  
  Samuel Solomon's How to Write for Percussion
  
  
• The best percussion book
  
  Rothenberg and Ulvaeus' Book of Music and Nature
  
  
• If you're in to, well music and nature this is a great anthology of writings by people like Cage, Takemitsu, Oliveros, etc. on the subject.
  
  Cope's Techniques of the Contemporary Composer is okay.
  
  
• for composery stuff
  
  My favorite orchestration book is actually the Blatter
  
  Composing Electronic Music by Curtis Roads is a very good new electronic book
  
  The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
  
  
• Practically a must read
  
  On Sonic Art by Trevor Wishart
  
  
• is a must read also

They're actually super useful for airy/spacious voicing of common chords. I can give a few 5 note examples with C as the root (transpose to your heart's content):

C6/9: E A D G C
Cmaj7(6/9): B E A D G (this one replaces the high C (root) from the previous with a low B (maj7th) but you can totally do both for a 6 note chord)
Cmaj7(6/9/#11): F# B E A D
C-11: G C F Bb Eb
Csus(9): D G C F Bb


Using less than 5 notes will be more ambiguous but you can totally use this to your advantage. Nothing wrong with using a quartal voicing/structure on top of a standard triad or even just a 3rd and 7th. Pretty useful for dominant chords:

C9: E Bb D G C (obviously the bottom tritone is not quartal but the top 3 notes are)
C9(13): Bb E A D G (I flipped the bottom tritone from the previous example for a more evenly spaced voicing)

Because quartal voicings can be ambiguous they're a great tool for modulating. They can be placid or intense depending on how you employ them. I first got into using them after reading Mantooth's Voicings For Jazz Keyboard. It's not a book directly about quartal voicings but they're used as a kind of basic building block for many of the voicings in the book. Also, McCoy Tyner is a quartal fiend if you're looking for inspiration.

There is a book called songwriting secrets of the Beatles.

It's the best I've found. Clear and concise. The author also takes into account how the Beatles would have written the songs given their limited theory. My take on it is that they didn't formally understand what they were doing but they had a couple of things going for them that their contemporaries lacked:

1. extensive chord library. They new a lot of different chords and how to apply them. They might not have understood dominant substitution but they new the E7 was great lead up to A. Or where a B6 would fit etc...
   
   
2. vast musical vocabulary. As the other poster said, they were very knowledgeable of many different styles of music. McCartney's father was a part time jazz musician. Classical influences were also very present. Not to mention George Martin's traditional scoring approach (he was instrumental in the songwriting process)
   
   
3. lack of knowledge. I always found really interesting anecdotes of Lennon in the studio saying to Martin or the engineers that he wants the song to do this or that and they reply "it's not done that way", "nobody does that" "it can't be technically done" but it's the Beatles so they humour him. And that's how a lot of innovative or interesting parts were created. They thought outside the box.
   
   
4. rock boot camp. The Beatles early on in Germany sometimes played hours upon hours in clubs every night. They had honed their technique in front of a live audience in a way most artists today don't. . By the time they were recording their first album they already keenly aware of audience taste and how to temper their own choices with what a listener wanted to hear.
   
   Another thing about the Beatles is to understand their recording process because later on, the studio became instrumental in how they approached their songwriting (key change in strawberry fields, reverse guitar solos, limitations of 4 track recording).
   
   There is an INCREDIBLE book about abbey road recording innovations.
   
   Edit. And about the poster that said they stole liberally (in a good way) I would argue that this isn't particular to pop music. All musicians and composers do this.

The progressions

I IV vii° iii vi ii V I

and

i iv VII III VI ii° V I

are the major and minor versions of what I was taught to call a "descending-second" sequence. (Some people call the same thing a "descending fifths sequence".) The latter bits of these sequences seem pretty similar to the progressions that you've provided for us here.

In a sequence, you can repeat the same melodic pattern on different scale degrees. An example of the minor-key version of this sequence in popular music is Fly Me to the Moon.

There are other kinds of sequences as well, such as the descending-third sequence that you'll see in the first six beats of Pachelbel's Canon in D (I V vi iii IV I).

It's good to practice playing sequences, as they're a common harmonic pattern. A popular voice-leading textbook includes these keyboard exercises on diatonic sequences which you might want to practice. The textbook recommends practicing these in every key up to four sharps and flats, in both major and minor unless otherwise specified.

So to a beginner bassist I would recommend two different study materials.

First buy this DVD, Groove Workshop. It's basically a lecture with exercises on the different components of music as it relates to the bass. One of the largest take-aways is that the notes you play are WAY less important than how you play them. They don't have the clip on youtube, but here is him doing something similar live. On the DVD it's just incredibly well done. He lists all the notes in a G major scale, then only plays the "wrong notes" (notes not in the scale) as Wellington lays down a chordal pattern in G. He then switches to playing in G major and the moment he does this, the G major sounds terrible. When he was playing out of key it was aesthetically pleasing, but when he switches to in key he changes how he's playing and it sounds more discordant.

Second, buy this book on building walking basslines. It's a great introduction to walking bass lines. The point here isn't to remember the notes, but rather the patterns and the feel of "walking".

But for more immediate tips do this. Play the root on the kick, the 5th on the snare, and embellish with the octave and 7th in time with the drummer's fills. You can move up to the 5th by hitting the 4th and down from the 7th with stops along the way at the 6th and the 3rd. If you really want to outline the chords play the root 3rd 5th, but be warned this sounds tired very fast.

The above is just my opinion and is provided merely as a quick outline to start getting the feel of moving around a chord.

Great, hope it was helpful. To better understand voice leading try a book like Harmony and Voice Leading (3rd Edition), or another book on tonal harmony. I bet your local library will have some, and a universiy/college library with a music program def. will.

My advice:
live with the WTC for at least a month. Listen to, play, immerse yourself in the fugues, take them apart and put them back together again. They're really one of the best resources available. (If you don't care for the WTC, use some other similar collection of fugues, but you say you like Bach, so I'd recommend that one above the others).

As for other books, I quite like Schubert and Neidhöfer's Baroque Counterpoint, which is the best textbook I've seen that deals specifically with Baroque counterpoint - most counterpoint books deal primarily with Renaissance styles.

When I was in school, we were required to use Kurt Stone's notation guide as a source of first resort for non-standard notation. It's a bit dated by now, but it is very thorough. I recommend it. If you or your library has a copy, take a look. There may some pertinent examples that you can adapt to your purposes.

I'm thinking that you don't need an ossia staff since you are not offering concurrent optional lines. You can just change the staff style for the moments of extended technique. I'd be especially precise about the effect you're looking for. If you care about pitch, even if approximate, you'll need some way to convey that. If you want indiscriminate slapping at whatever string happens to get in the way, you can probably just use an 'x' notehead and treat it more or less like a percussion element.

Lots of things to think about!

I can say as a fellow bassist that my big first step into undstanding and using theorywas when I got Real Book and started doing walking bass lines between chords. Walking basslines are really one of the places where understanding chords is really important on bass because we are playing more than just the root or the fifth.

When it comes deeper understanding of harmony and chords, it kills me to say this, it's helpful to know how to play just a little guitar or even better some piano as you can start to connect the sound and movement or chords better by playing them. Bass, while being the supreme instrument, isn't a chordal instrument. We can play chords on bass but it's really not the same as how they sound on chordal instruments.

If you need help on how to get to started on walking bass lines I've heard good things about the Book Building Walking Bass Lines.

I've been studying algorithmic composition for a while now, and AFAIK the best resources are books about modeling elements of music perception or composition.

Dmitri Tymoczko - A Geometry of Music
Fred Lerdahl

Also, watching brilliant live coders like Andrew Sorensen do their thing can be very enlightening.

> I'd like to see some scientific evidence on the pleasure of music being connected with meeting our expectations

David Huron's book Sweet Anticipation is a great book on this exact topic.

Edit: didn't see someone already posted this. There are other good sources in the bibliography of my diss (p. 111) http://www.nathanwilks.com/dissertation.html

When I was a student we used Harmony and Voice Leading by Aldwell & Schachter. It's an incredibly robust textbook.

I will say that having been through that book (and already having a BMus) really made diving into The Jazz Theory Book an absolute joy. You're right that having a strong foundation is helpful before reading it.

The Complete Idiot's Guide is a surprisingly good resource. I taught myself from this book in 6th grade and ended up with a strong command of theory before high school.

Once you get what you can from that, try
Kostka and Payne. From my understanding this is a very popular book for college theory classes. It also has a workbook that can be useful.

If you spend 20 minutes a day studying theory, you will have a solid foundation in no time.

harmony is far more complex than any one post can explain to you. get a good book. i recommend Tonal Harmony. you can get it used for a good price. you will need to know some basics, like how to read music.

Oh, good point. It would amount to a lot of import tax depending on where you live.

If you're really just starting, have you exhausted all the stuff in The Real Book yet?

https://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Hal-Leonard-Corporation/dp/0634060384

I'd at least expect Girl From Ipanema, Speak Low, and some Bacharach tunes to be in it.

As another starting point, learn how to finger shapes like Amaj7 and Amaj9 and such, but still be able to finger or open string play the root and fifth as your own bass line. What makes it tricky is that the bass is playing root-5 quarters while the other strings are playing the clave. You'll want to have this down before you play a song.

If you don't know how to play fingerstyle, I'm not sure how to teach that in a Reddit comment.

This book is a great resource for learning how to harmonise sections in big band charts - it's what I used all throughout my undergraduate study.

Keep in mind also that Basie charts are generally simpler in terms of harmonisation than the Ellington repertoire, especially early Basie. Ellington was known to take more risks when writing harmonically for his band - Basie and his arrangers usually used a tried and true formula for harmonisation, much of which can be learned from the book linked above.

Thanks for the reply. about the complete musician books, should I buy the workbooks? here are some links to the two on amazon 1 2
, are they really necesary or helpful?

And about the history book, would you recommend studying history?

I'm glad I could help.

I've been reading this book, and it's really helping me learn a lot. There are were one or two parts that I didn't like in the beginning, but I'm finding it to be a great resource, especially for the price.

I just bought Voicings for Jazz Piano By Frank Mantooth. My jazz friends highly recommended it to me. I'm still waiting for it in the mail but I checked out some ideas from it from my buddy. Seemed like the good stuff to me.

Your best bet in this respect would probably be Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations by David Lewin. It almost reads like an introductory course on abstract algebra where all the examples are based on the equally tempered scale. If you have a good background in math it's a straightforward read.

If you are studying this, I recommend "Sweet Anticipation".

Its an emotional and physiological response where your body "freezes" during novel or passive threat (like falling off a cliff).

With so much lip service towards fight or flight response in music we tend to forget that doing nothing might be the best response.

Additionally, the text also talks about comedy in music. Interestingly, comedy is entirely cultural and hard to accomplish in music.

Don't be surprised if the unis don't respond. You're basically asking them for help without paying the astronomical fees that now come hand in hand with degree level study in england ;)

Here's a few books that I had that are really good:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775 - We were told to use this book by clapping the 4 beats, and vocalising the rhythms in the book. It starts off simple but gets hard real fast. Full of deliberately obscure notation that smears beats to prepare you for some bad writing as well!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hearing-Writing-Music-Professional-Training/dp/0962949671/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539085026&sr=1-1&keywords=hearing+and+writing+music

This book is basically the bible of ear training. You could study this book for 5 years standalone, if you wanted to be secure in all the stuff in it.

Aside from that, other stuff was more about production and bass guitar specifically. Those two though, seriously a good combo I think.

I'd recommend picking up a copy of the book "Building Walking Basslines" https://www.amazon.com/Building-Walking-Bass-Lines-Builders/dp/0793542049

​

This book focusses mostly on blues and rhythm changes but does a great job of demonstrating the main ways of moving from one chord to another. As for chords stretching more than a bar you essentially just want to lead to the root or other chord tones just as you would when changing to another chord.

My recommendation - buy a Real Book and just play and study everything in it. This is a big topic and you'll learn it gradually, but one of the best ways is to get some hands-on experience.

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen, is a remarkable and essential book on the subject of Mozart's music (and Haydn and Beethoven as well). It's a model of clarity and style, a book whose insights I return to again and again. In a few instances, such as the discussion of "Opera Seria", it is somewhat dated, but otherwise it's my favorite book.

As a novice first of all you should learn basics of music theory, notation and then harmony. Then look up for works by David Huron (as an engineer myself I find his stuff VERY scientific, helpful and promising).

His most famous work: "Sweet Anticipation. Music and the psychology of expectation."

Get this book and read all of it

For general formatting guidelines, use this.

For other starting points/ answers to potential questions about jazz arranging in general, Tim Davies’ blog is an incredibly useful resource.

But the only real way to understand any type of jazz is to listen to a lot of it. Make sure to listen to a lot of different composers/ arrangers as well, such as Bob Brookmeyer, Thad Jones, Bob Florence, Bob Mintzer, Peter Herbolzheimer, Vince Mendoza, Sammy Nestico, Chris Walden, Mark Taylor, and many many others.

Louis Bellson's book is pretty fun for sight-reading some syncopated patterns.

Caplin’s Analyzing Classical Form is a great textbook on the subject. It starts from the smallest structural units (usually 8 bars long) and works it’s way up to full length sonatas and symphonies, as well as other forms.

For any particular style? It sounds like you're more interested in classical -- the text for my first two years of music theory in college was this one but if you're at all interested in jazz theory I can't recommend this one enough.

The Adler book is definitely a standard, but I've heard a few complaints about inaccuracies. Haven't read it, so I'm not sure. I think the other major go-to is this book by Alfred Blatter. I used it in my undergrad and felt pretty good about what I learned.

You can also supplement it with any music theory textbook. Most people recommend Laitz "The Complete Musician," but there are plenty of others. You can find the pdfs online if you search around a bit and then buy a workbook for an old edition for about 5 dollars on amazon. That'll give you ~2 years worth of college music theory with exercises to master whatever you want. These videos get about 2/3 of the way through any of the books and I think he's making more this summer. This is another professor that gets a little further in the curriculum, but his lectures aren't as well done (they're dry) as the first link.

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.

• Robert Gauldin's A Practical Approach to xth-century Counterpoint (16th and 17th components)
  
  
• Peter Schubert's Modal Counterpoint: Renaissance Style and Baroque Counterpoint.
  
  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.

Hal Leonards Pocket Music Theory & Pocket Music Dictionary both live in my teaching bag for when something slips my mind. Great little texts and theyre cheap as chips.

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen is, if you forgive the pun, a classic. The sections on Haydn and Beethoven will be interesting too, as a contrast.

Some of my favorites:

Messaien - The Techniques of my Musical Language

Straus - Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory

Ross - The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Chinen - Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century

Gottschalk - Experimental Music Since 1970

Perle - Serial Composition and Atonality

Xenakis - Formalized Music: Thought a d Mathematics in Music

Mann - The Study of Fugue

This is not something that I'm an expert on... but this book: http://www.amazon.com/Voicings-Jazz-Keyboard-Frank-Mantooth/dp/0793534852

talks about using quartal voicings (particularly on the keyboard) within a tonal harmonic context.

How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) by Ross Duffin is an excellent resource.

Kurt Stone's Music Notation in the Twentieth Century is still pretty reliable.

They're certainly not all the same, not sure what that would mean. There's overlap in books that cover the same fundamental rudiments, sure, but that's the tiniest tip of the iceberg anyway (and even so, there is a lot to be said for differing pedagogical approaches).

How could this be at all the same as this, for example? Or this and this?

I have this one (http://www.amazon.com/Workbook-Accompany-The-Complete-Musician/dp/0199742790). Looks like it's the 3rd edition.

Some newer counterpoint books that I think lends itself well to self-teaching are the 16th and 18th-century versions by Peter Schubert.

Also, you might want to check out Louis Bellson's book-https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775. There are lots of exercises with over the bar rhythms and half-note triplets.

Blatter's 'Instrumentation and Orchestration'.

Its called the "Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0711981671/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1394825990&sr=8-3&pi=SY200_QL40