But if you can sing written music, you can imagine any music theory concept and hear things as they happen in songs in real time.EMedia Music Theory Tutor School Edition teaches music theory with over 400 engaging lessons in rhythm, melody, and harmony. Music theory isn't worth much if you can't hear what's going on. Singing is the most reliable and fast way to improve your ear. If I was only able to do one thing I'd do this. This basically is a music theory book except you're forced to sing everything. Work through that simultaneously with your music theory textbook. If you really want a good ear get Karpinskis sight singing books, both the book and exercises. "Functional Ear Trainer" is your easiest and safest bet for music theory as far as apps go. "Super Sightreading Secrets" is a wonderful little book on learning to sight read quickly.ĭo some ear training. Maybe get a beginner piano book and work through that as a prerequisite.
If you can't read music too well practice sight reading very easy pieces 15 minutes every day on the keyboard. Get an old edition of the accompanying workbook for the books. It would be nice if we had an actual beginner section.īesides that just get a textbook. It's like by beginner means at least few years of musical school here. It would help you a lot if you can figure out why you want to learn music theory and how you want to apply it and expand in this direction.Īlso it baffles me how this sub throws / to a clueless person as clearly this sites are more like cheat-sheets than actual source to learn from ground zero. So by rules we mean - common patterns used in music of type X and time-period Y. It is cultural and psychological thingy and is highly subjective and flexible. The most important part which is kinda avoided in books is that Music Theory is not much of a "theory" as fellow STEM adept can expect. Read noob version, it gives you basic ideas and you will be able to start asking questions and understand answersįill the gaps with this sub (there are plenty of detailed answers but you need to know what are you looking for to make use of the search button)įill the gaps with a youtube, it helped me a lot actually.Īnd you should be ready to dig into expansive/advanced books. So, as you can see there is no good book for study on your own or at least I was unable to find one. But it is quite good to fill you with basic info. Also some ideas they convey are kinda give you a wrong perception on a subject and exercises can be whacky and lack explanation. In the end, I decided to skip it for now as it was very hard to understand what kind of material they give to you and how much of it is chewable on your own.Īs for noob-friendly books you need to be aware that they drastically simplify "the actual theory" part, and even scales and chords are not explored properly to my taste. To be safe you need to use ISBN.Į-version of some books (and probably online materials as well) are not available outside of USA
Also, they are very confusing to buy:Īnswers to exercise can be sold separately and for teachers only without any mention of it on amazon pageįor the access to the online exercise you need a working key, be aware of it if you aim for used versionsįor some reasons amazon lists different books when you switch format (paperback, hardcover etc).
If you actually want to read about it in more conversation-like form with some historical explanation here is some popular noob-oriented books:Ĭomplete Idiot's Guide to Music The (I read this one)Īcademic grade books is very expensive (easily 120$+), also material assumes that you have a teacher to fill the gaps.
It can be hard to grasp if it is yours first time to deal with it. Notation & basic therms in this books are given in a remainder form. The side bar of this sub is academic-like. Next, there is two type of books/materials: noob-friendly and academic-like. Notation & basic therms (notes, scales, rhythm, chords etc) aka building blocksĬomposition & analysis (harmony, arrangement, forms) aka actual theory Was in the same boat, here is my experience.įirst thing music theory is a broad topic, lets split it in two parts: