Reviews for Tonal Harmony With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music

The average rating for Tonal Harmony With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-23 00:00:00 John Hagerty I've had this book for awhile, and while I've used it as a reference, I decided to read it cover to cover. It was originally recommended to me from a musician's forum, as one of the better books on music theory. Indeed it is pretty good, with some caveats. 1. This book is for people with a beginner to intermediate level understanding of music theory. It's not really the best introduction for someone with zero experience with music because it demands that you understand certain key things right off the bat. 2. It sticks to pretty much what it says on the label. You're not going to get anything discussing time and rhythm here, like in most books of basic music theory, even though technically it's outside the purview. 3. It moves fast. After each chapter, do the exercises, and then go and woodshed it out with your particular instrument (which might be a bit tricky for folks playing non-chordophone instruments. This book is more about application of music theory than really having a high end understanding of it. 4. If you're like me, much of the book is a bit of an intellectual exercise. I'm just trying to understand enough to create a melody and harmonize a simple song. This book gives you enough of a grounding that with work, you can wrap your mind around the jazziest of chords and basic improvisational playing. That's more than I needed, but nice to know, nonetheless. 5. Probably, the only real downside for me, is that this book is really made for aspiring musicians and not songwriters looking for ways of figuring out an interesting melody and harmonizing to it. However, if you're just in it to jam, know what you're jamming, and how to figure out how to play a new song quickly and then embellish it to make it your own interpretation, then this is the music theory book for you. In summation, if I had to pick one book on music theory, this one wouldn't be it, but if I were to create a list of ten books to recommend, it certainly would be on the list of "must-haves".

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-11 00:00:00 Kevin Mcinroy Here's a blurb from my blog, where I wrote about this book before joining Goodreads: This book has been recommended several times by a Talkbass member named JTE. I didn’t look into it until the other night because I have Music Theory for Dummies downstairs, and Bass Guitar for Dummies upstairs. Well, I found it online and realized that I leafed through this years ago at Barnes & Noble, but didn’t buy it then, because I didn’t yet know what music theory was or how it applied to bass. I thought, at the time, that I needed to look at bass-specific books (how-to-play). Now that I’ve read more, I can understand its value. Even more, I looked at some of the inside contents on the author’s website and really like how its presented, so I grabbed it. Amazingly, Amazon shipped it yesterday, and its supposed to arrive today. Its travelling halfway around the country to get here in what I consider record time. ---------- After having gone through the book, I can say that it illustrates many music theory topics in memorable, evocative ways which help to enable understanding and recall of the topics. I really enjoy Edly's way of writing and would recommend this as a companion book to any musical method book that a student/learner uses for general instruction. ---------- A link to my original blog entry can be found here: