ABSTRACT

The package (ISBN 978-0-415-73036-5) contains the second edition of Theory for Today’s Musician (ISBN: 978-0-415-66332-8) and the Theory for Today’s Musician Workbook (ISBN: 978-0-415-66333-5). The package is available for print books only. Ebook users should purchase the textbook and workbook separately.

Theory for Today’s Musician, Second Edition, recasts the scope of the traditional music theory course to meet the demands of the professional music world, in a style that speaks directly and engagingly to today’s music student. It uses classical, folk, popular, and jazz repertoires with clear explanations that link music theory to musical applications. The authors help prepare students by not only exploring how music theory works in art music, but how it functions within modern music, and why this knowledge will help them become better composers, music teachers, performers, and recording engineers.

This broadly comprehensive text merges traditional topics such as part-writing and harmony (diatonic, chromatic, neo-tonal and atonal), with less traditional topics such as counterpoint and musical process, and includes the non-traditional topics of popular music songwriting, jazz harmony and the blues. Written by an experienced textbook author and new co-author, both active classroom teachers for many years, Theory for Today’s Musician is the complete and ideal theory text to enable today’s student to accomplish their musical goals tomorrow.

New Features to the Second Edition:

  • An expanded unit on form that includes introductory chapters on sonata & rondo, to prepare students for learning form
  • New "Back to Basics" online drills, keyed to the text, allowing students to brush up their fundamentals as needed
  • New musical examples, including over 80 new musical excerpts from both art and popular music repertoires
  • Expanded in-chapter exercises to promote and facilitate classroom interaction
  • Carefully edited in response to market demands to create a more streamlined, flexible text
  • New audio of musical examples (for both text and workbook), 50% re-recorded for improved audio quality
  • An updated and relocated Chapter 33 on song composition in the jazz and popular folk styles, applying principles of text setting, melody composition/harmonization
  • Companion website that houses online tutorial with drills of basic concepts

part |4 pages

Part One: In Lieu of Fundamentals

chapter 1|15 pages

Assorted Preliminaries

chapter 2|13 pages

Intervals

part |2 pages

Part Two: Diatonic Harmony

chapter 3|13 pages

Basic Harmonic Structures

chapter 5|19 pages

Harmonies of the Major and Minor Scales

chapter 6|17 pages

Cadences/Harmonic Rhythm

part |2 pages

Part Three: Melody

chapter 7|21 pages

Melodic Pitch and Rhythm

chapter 8|20 pages

Embellishing Tones

chapter 9|25 pages

Melodic Form

part |2 pages

Part Four: Voice Leading

part |2 pages

Part Five: Basic Chromatic Harmony

chapter 15|18 pages

Secondary Function I

chapter 16|14 pages

Secondary Function II

chapter 17|18 pages

Modulation I

part |2 pages

Part Six: Counterpoint

chapter 18|25 pages

The Art of Countermelody

chapter 19|13 pages

The Fugue

part |2 pages

Part Seven: Advanced Chromatic Harmony

chapter 20|23 pages

Mixing Modes

chapter 21|18 pages

Altered Predominants

chapter 22|14 pages

Other Chromatic Harmonies

chapter 23|22 pages

Modulation II

chapter 24|21 pages

Harmonic Extensions and Chromatic Techniques

part |2 pages

Part Eight: Form

chapter 25|24 pages

Binary and Ternary Forms

chapter 26|16 pages

Introduction to Sonata Form

chapter 27|8 pages

Introduction to The Rondo

part |2 pages

Part Nine: Music in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

chapter 28|20 pages

Syntax and Vocabulary

chapter 29|17 pages

New Tonal Methods

chapter 30|31 pages

Atonality and Serialism

chapter 31|27 pages

Harmonic Principles in Jazz

chapter 32|16 pages

The Blues

chapter 33|15 pages

Shaping a Song