Author: brycon
Date: 2023-10-28 00:54
Quote:
As I never had a good musical theory education in school all my self-gained knowledge is good and helpful but I am missing a structure to help me understand things I am sometimes musing about.
I think that the music theory most people receive in school isn't particularly useful. It's more helpful to invest that time and energy into building strong fundamentals in ear-training, singing, spelling intervals and scales, rhythm exercises, basic keyboard playing, etc.--things that now get grouped as "musicianship" skills.
The issue with music theory education is that students learn things as "rules," divorced from the actual experience of music making. They know, for example, that a deceptive cadence occurs when scale-degree 5 in the bass moves up to scale-degree 6 and could provide this answer on an exam. But, importantly, they can't recognize by ear a deceptive cadence in a piece of music they're playing and therefore can't perform it in an expressively appropriate way.
The two textbooks most conservatories and universities use are Steve Laitz's The Complete Musician and Carl Schachter's Harmony and Voice Leading. I had both Laitz and Schachter as teachers: both are brilliant educators and musicians, and Schachter, in particular, had a huge influence on the way I think about music. Having said that, both texts are a little "wordy" and aren't super friendly for beginners. I would suggest starting with Seth Monahan's excellent YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgZH3Vee7xE&t=406s
Monahan is a professor at Yale University. So you're getting an expertly crafted education for free online. These videos, then, could be augmented by the Laitz or Schachter books, which could provide further depth and examples on the things that interest you.
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
