Alfred’s Essentials of Music Theory: A Complete Self-Study Course for All Musicians (Book & 2 CDs)

Music Theory Book
Great music theory book! Lots of information!

A very basic, informative source for budding musicians.
I selected this book with CDs to augment my music lessons as I learn to play an instrument for the first time in 50 years. It has helped me quite a bit to understand why I play what I play, and how to play it better. It progresses in a logical manner from very fundamental basics to harder to grasp material. Unfortunately, there’s no way a book can answer verbal questions that come up, but the CDs do a good job audibly demonstrating concepts. A “Dummy’s Guide” would be a good adjunct to Alfred’s for novices like me.

This is a pretty good book for music theory
This is a pretty good book for music theory. I’ve been approaching it from a guitar/ukulele perspective, and have a bit of a background in music (used to be decent/good in middle and high school band). Pretty much all of the material is covered in the book, and while I’ve seen other reviews mention a lack in detail, it’s all there.If you want to know what an interval is, you should look at the section that deals with them. While there are a ton of specifics you could go into, and while this book doesn’t cover all of music theory, it is a very good primer. Because it is three books in one, it covers three major thrusts of music theory (in my opinion). The first major section covers really basic music (what you would’ve learned in band, and will be a review). The second section builds on this and teaches you some of the more intermediate theory ideas, while the third tries to put it together. Will this make you Mozart? No. But it will certainly give you a good basic/beginner/sort of intermediate understanding of music theory. I like the book, and it gave me a lot of ideas of where to go next with writing songs and playing my favorite instruments. It also gave me a decent amount of piano knowledge. Maybe I should learn that next given the book’s (and music theory’s) grounding in piano.

I like anything published by Alfred
This title taught me all of the basics I’d forgotten. I like anything published by Alfred, good company.If you’re sincere about playing the piano or guitar or guitars :-), no matter if you’re amateur/novice or professional, this bit of software could be for you and enable you to eventually help you to play like a pro, the easier way!EZ KEYS by: ToontrackEZ Keys should help revolutionize the music business. Why? If you can tap out the melody of a song, you can essentially write beautiful music. Indeed, it’s just a matter of time until the major DAW’s add this important feature to their software. AlthoughEZ seamlessly integrates and works well within all of the major programs and hardware.Don’t just take my word for it, uh Forrest:-) Google it and see what you find. I can tell you now, it’s gonna be good!EZ Keys as like having a gifted college music professor sitting beside you everyday as you write and compose your tunes daily, while slowly but surely learning how to write and play. This college music professor is with you everyday while you play, correcting you and helping you to superstardom. or, maybe just stardom. Everyone doesn’t want to be a superstar. The beauty of it all is that you don’t have to go online to do all this. Learning this way bends the learning curve to shorten the time it takes to become professionally proficient at the keyboard. I love this type of on the job training. Hours go by so quickly………..Lot’s of times I start writing and toying around with this program, look up at the clock and two hours have gone by. What seemed like thirty minutes was actually two hours. I love this program. All you have to do is write or play whatever you can mainly create the melody with your right hand, then compile it, then EZ automatically creates the left hand chords for you. If you want to you can also change those first few notes you’ve chicken pecked out (that’s how I do it everyday) and alter them to triad 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths,… on up to 13ths….. and more. Realistically, rarely do you have to go over 7ths.After that Keys pops up a circle of 4ths and 5ths and let’s to toy around with it to see and hear what the neighboring chords look and sound like, then you write some more then compile again, then repeat, then after doing this a dozen or so times, you’ve got a complete song that sounds way above your current level of play. These compositions actually makes us sound like we really can play the piano:-) And the best thing, it really does sounds good! It doesn’t sound amateurish or hokey like those songs we played out of the music books with the finger numbers over and under the notes, telling us which fingers to use when playing a song. Trust me! It don’t get no easier kid:-)You can play a shoestring, if you’re sincere. —John Coltrane—

One of the very best books in this subject

Used this to learn about theory in between piano practice sessions or while I’m away from piano. Excellent book, with helpful exercises and answer key available. I only wish it was spiral bound.