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

As an adult music student, this is a great addition to my lessons.

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: Toontrack EZ 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. Although EZ 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---

Based upon the "most popular" reviews, I bought this book thinking it would be useful for advanced learning. Many reviewers have commented on the amount of effort they had to put into it even with years of musical experience. This is a beginning music book suitable for anyone playing any instrument. It is "difficult" because it is concise. I've got several books that cover the same concepts in this book - for examples modes. This book takes only a couple of pages to present modes. You have to do more work obviously to understand the concept more generally because of the concision. This also shows up in the relatively few examples provided to illustrate a concept. Students like a lot of good examples and the authors make a trade off here, seeking brevity. Beginners will find this challenging as many reviews disclose. This book is more about basic terms and definitions and not about music theory or composition or more advanced musical learning. The version I got is soft bound and apparently combines three former "books" into one book of 146 pages. It also includes 2 CDs. Frankly, I found the "most popular" reviews misleading and do not find this book useful since I have several books that cover the same information. The wisdom of the crowd is not nearly as wise as the Internets would have you believe. Those reviews told me more about the reviewers than the book. Summary: Excellent concise introduction to basic music terms, definitions, and concepts. It is useful to anyone interested in learning the basics regardless of instrument.

For the CD version, the "ear training for lessons" is usually missing the one measure count off. This makes some of the questions difficult to answer if not impossible for a student. Good basic music theory book to incorporate with music lessons if you are an instructor or motivated student.

I’ve played classical guitar for over 15 years, and this is the first time the theory has really started to click. Got a great deal on a used like new copy. Overall an excellent purchase, and I only wish I’d ordered it sooner.

What a fun way to review and learn new music theory. Instruction is clear and in very small packets of information. You immediately get feedback on whether you understand the concepts. The ear training that is interspersed is absolutely invaluable, as are the review pages. I got this book primarily for the information in book 3, but was shocked almost from the beginning to find little tidbits I had never learned before. How all my life did I miss the relationship of tetrachords to key? Simple, I had just memorized the circle of fifths. Wow, what a difference in understanding. This is a great adult and teen learning tool. My guess is that it would work well with smart, serious kids as well. As with any music learning it is probably helpful to have access to a keyboard or fretboard while using it. Even a little free keyboard app would work. If you aren't looking for Kostka and Payne (Tonal Harmony) level training, this little gem is a real winner, eye opener, key to understanding. I wish I had gotten it as a kid when I was first learning to read music and play an instrument. As a result of my experience with this book I have subsequently investigated other books from the same publisher (Alfred Music). I am currently using two others that while structured differently are on par with this Essentials of Music. Amazing.

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.

Each page has exercises. Each lesson has a review quiz. Answers are in the back of the book. Each lesson has audio tracks for learning by ear. Bring your highlighter and pencils. I love that they combined 3 books and a teacher's answer key in one book! I also love that the exercises make it a workbook too. I am learning piano with Piano Adventures but Alfred's is reviewed as neck and neck with them. This book impresses me greatly. They really start at the beginning. Notes, staffs, lines and spaces. I have seen a fair amount of youtube music theory videos but I wanted a complete source for reference and to fill in any gaps.

Me llegó antes de lo previsto, y es todo lo que esperaba. Al haberlo comprado de segunda mano tenía algunas cosas escritas que tuve que borrar, para poder hacer los ejercicios yo misma. Pero aparte de eso, muy contenta.

This is a perfect practice book for music theory

I am very happy with this book, i have learnt a lot, i have finished 1st part. Its explained very nicely.

The book is OK. Very clear, lots of exercises. Thank you

I purchased this product when starting to learn the violin as an adult beginner. I had no previous experience in learning how to read music so this book was a godsend. This main book is split in to three different sections. It is clearly and concisely written and easy to understand.It contains a lot of practical exercises for writing music and also a review at the end of each chapter. It also uniquely contains two cd's along with ear exercises to improve your listening skills. As a workbook that you can do in your own time I would highly recommend this book for all ages. This book has allowed me to get the most out of my lessons with the teacher so we could concentrate on playing the violin as opposed to trying to tackle the music theory as well. I can not find anything to criticise in the content as it is good basic material. I would state that whilst working through the work book some pages did become loose from the binding.