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Re: Suggestions for a practical music theory almanac

Author: Grendel McGrenadill
Date: 2023-10-29 13:51

Wow. So much info. Thanks a lot!
I should have mentioned my level of knowledge a bit better.
So I do / did play drums professionally in a jazz, pop and sometimes theatre context. I also fooled around on the piano once to prepare for a music school entrance examination. For that I also learned the basics in theory and ear training. Circle of fifths, scales, the likes.
I did not end up in that school for various reasons, mostly since I was already on the road a lot.
Down that same road I also picked up the guitar once or twice and also created some music for performances and moving pictures.
However all of this was done more by trial and error and once could say that I do lack a lot of the theoretical knowledge to explain what I did.
I actually do agree with "brycon" though that musicianship skills are usually more helpful "in the field" however, I am a curious person and I like to learn.
A while back I picked up the clarinet, an instrument I always liked and always wanted to play. The Stein book and some tips from actual players in real life plus the very helpful "tomplay" app did allow me to practice in a more or less successful way.
What I came to notice though, is that very often my mind gets a bit to discombobulated trying to figure out the whys and hows.
As a simple example: Last week I decided to start practicing the minor blues scales on the clarinet in the easier keys and I started to write them down.
Of course I ended up with quite some accidentals strewn through the staffs.
Then I of course added a key signature to the beginning. In the case of the F minor blues scale I used f / Ab. Now that got rid of most of the accidentals of course, but: I do not know if this is the "correct" way / approach to do this.
And with correct I don't mean "fit for an exam at music school" but "making sense to other musicians" in the context of good legibility and simplicity.
( That reasoning I gained from years of re-writing drum charts created by various non-percussion persons for the sake of usefulness in action )

In case of theory I still catch myself imagining a piano keyboard in my head and then counting the keys to find and name an interval to another note.

All those things do help sometimes but now I figure it might just be helpful to put a bit more structure in that whole endeavour especially since I am learning a new instrument which has its beginnings within the "classical" music world.

From my experience I would argue that once you have a solid basis of theory in a topic you can figure out a lot of stuff by logic reasoning.

That said however, there are unfortunately some awful books around which use pointless things like mnemonics for remembering note names... even though the alphabet is quite a strong mnemonic in itself.

So this is the reason I was asking for something like the Keith Stein book, because what I really liked in it was that he did not give some "secrets", "special sauce", "hacks" and what not but instead presented the fundamentals in an understandable way.

I will now make a coffee and check into all the examples given here.

Thanks again!

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