World Famous Comics: Contemporary Music Theory - Level One: A Complete Harmony and Theory Method for the Pop and Jazz Musician
Contemporary Music Theory - Level One: A Complete Harmony and Theory Method for the Pop and Jazz Musician
By: Mark Harrison Publisher: Hal Leonard Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Hal Leonard Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 312 Publication Date: January 01, 1999
Product Description: The Music Theory series is designed from the ground-up to explain the terminology and musical structures needed for modern applications. Level One is an introductory course which covers music notation, key signatures, basic scales, intervals, modes, diatonic relationships and 3-and 4-part chords. Level Two is an intermediate-level course covering larger chord forms, "definitive" chords in major and minor keys, substitutions, analysis of key centers in tunes, "upper structure" chords, voiceleading, and pentatonic and blues scale applications. Both levels include reference appendices, a complete glossary of terms, and hundreds of written theory exercises with answers.
I'll add a voice to the chorus. If you're trying to teach yourself piano in one or more popular styles, you can't go wrong with anything written by Mark Harrison.
This book is no exception.
I bought this book even though I already own "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory". Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, but it doesn't compare to Harrison's treatment of the subject matter in this book.
It's the difference between a good presentation and a great presentation.
I've looked at a few treatments of elementary music theory, and although they all cover the same ground more or less, Harrison's book shows the logic behind the suff you have to memorize. That's what separates this book from the others.
For very beginner It is the first of three volumes but I can say that if they had used a little smaller font sizes, all volumes can be in a mid-size book. And the information in all volumes is just for the very beginner. If you got his The Pop Piano Book so don't get them - just a waste of money. It's bad that in the text the writer is always offering you another book of him, sounds like 'i never teach you anything if you don't buy all of my books'. And after all he's got 6 books but the other 5 except the Pop Piano Book, are useless: Don't let the very big font sizes fool you, all the page have only 15-20 sentences, so with a normal size font it can take only 40-45 pages. Buy just a little book about harmony for beginner and you'll get what you expect from this one.
Good for jazz theory, but not concise - skips music notation I teach college level music and was experimenting this semester with this text. I was initially drawn to it because I was looking for a little more modern approach as I also strongly gear students toward being able to play by ear as well. I thought that it would be a good reference for my students to have later in its explanation of theory, too. But I was very disappointed when I got to the section about the Circle of 5ths. It's diagram explains it so that the flats circle clockwise and sharpes circle counter-clockwise. This is backwards to me! I could not teach my students something I felt was unconventional, so I had to avert to a supplemental text. Also, it totally skips introducing music notation (counting rhythm of notes,etc in written music) in the first book entirely! Even though I agree that contemporary and jazz music is best expressed by introducing chord structures,and jazz music is more liberal than what is just written. I just can't personally totally eliminate rhythm altogether and ignore it as if it weren't a foundational element. Also, overall I found it too wordy to make reference to while explaining the topic during class. Good for individual study but not classroom. IT was not concise enough and on some topics skipped around illogically on explaining it.
Excellent for self-teaching and classroom work I am using this book to teach music theory with highschool students. The text is very readable, the graphics are very intuitive. His methodology is very helpful for broad understanding. I highly recommend this book for individual learning or classroom support.
Good teaching; poor typesetting "CMT - Level 1" serves it's purpose wonderfully. It taught me many things clearly where other books failed (such as intervals, and the Circle of Fifths/Fourths). Mr. Harrison is a good teacher, and I would recommend this book to my friends. But I will keep the praises brief seeing as there are many reviews here that do just that for me.
The reason I give this book four stars rather than five is because of the typesetting used. The text is very large, and there is a *lot* of wasted real-estate on each page. If the typesetting had been improved, this book could have been truncated by at least 100 pages, allowing for cheaper production, and finally, a less expensive book for the public. If it's any revelation, I was able to complete this book in only four days, with two-three hours each day (this includes doing half of the exercises).
Also, there is one more complaint. Mr. Harrison is a great teacher, but is not as fortunate in his writing skills. Although this does not take away from the things learned, it is a bit annoying at times. For instance, about every other sentence is terminated with an exclamation mark. There were times I felt like I was reading a chat log from an AOL channel. Also, there are numerous places where paragraphs (and sometimes several pages) were copied and pasted into another area of the book, with a few [music] notes changed here and there. About one-third of the book is a result of copy and pastes from the other two-thirds.
All of that aside, it did exactly what it was meant to do: give me a clear introduction to music theory.
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