Reddit Reddit reviews Tonal Harmony

We found 17 Reddit comments about Tonal Harmony. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Tonal Harmony
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17 Reddit comments about Tonal Harmony:

u/spoonopoulos · 19 pointsr/musictheory

There are a lot of courses. Any specific topics you're interested in?

Edit: I'll just list a few anyway that I've used in classes (this may not reflect all professors' choices for the same subjects).

Tonal Harmony: Kostka-Payne - Tonal Harmony

Counterpoint 1: A Berklee book by the late professor Rick Applin. Some also use this Fux translation/adaptation

Counterpoint 2: Bach Inventions & Sinfonias (any edition, really)

"Advanced" Counterpoint: The Well-Tempered Clavier (again, any edition)

Early Twentieth-Century Harmony: Persichetti - Twentieth-Century Harmony

Post-Tonal Theory/Analysis: Straus - Intro to Post-Tonal Theory

Instrumentation/Orchestration: Adler - The Study of Orchestration &
Casella/Mortari - The Technique of Contemporary Orchestration

Western Music History - Burkholder/Paiisca - A History of Western Music (8th or 9th edition)

Conducting 1 - Notion Conducting

Conducting 2 Notion + Stravinsky's Petrushka

Berklee's own (jazz-based) core harmony and ear-training curricula use Berklee textbooks written by professors which, as someone else mentioned, come unbound and shrink-wrapped at the bookstore. You can find older (PDF) versions of the Berklee harmony textbooks here. Of course this list only represents explicit book choices - there are a lot of excerpt-readings, and there's a lot of instruction that isn't found in these books even in the associated courses.

u/RMack123 · 8 pointsr/musictheory

Most college music theory texts have a companion workbook filled with quizzes and practice problems/questions. Where I went to undergrad we used Tonal Harmony and the school I'm going to now uses The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis. Not sure if that qualifies as being "accessible," but it's good material if you're willing to part with all those dollars. Text books sure are expensive.

u/optigon · 3 pointsr/IWantToLearn

Happy cake day!

You’ll want to learn music theory. A pretty standard book that I read was called Tonal Harmony. It may be a little heavy, but it will give you the underpinnings of Music theory in a comprehensive way.

With that, songs usually have lyrics, which that book doesn’t explain. In fact, I’m in the middle of a pretty good book on songwriting called Tunesmith It really gets into meter, rhyming, etc. that goes into how lyrics are put together with quite a few examples.

u/superbadsoul · 2 pointsr/piano

What exactly is your goal? When you say you are producing, do you mean to say that you're creating electronic music and don't know how to build the musical structure behind it?

With electronic music, you have the advantage of not necessarily needing to apply much music theory at all. Depending on the type of sound you're going for, you might only need to learn just a few simple chord progressions and keep recycling them (or just use samples). Of course, if you do study music seriously, you could combine your understanding of harmony with your production know-how to create something that sounds a lot more original than the typical run-of-the-mill EDM, like these guys.

If you want to just poke around, you can just memorize a few chord progressions in a single key. Maybe try a few youtube videos like this one.

If you want to dive in and really understand how things work, you'll need to learn what chords and scales are, learn the different types of chords, learn how they relate with each other, and learn how they're notated. It's a lot to take in. If you're still interested, grab yourself a music theory book (this is the one I learned from in college which starts with the very basics of reading music) and get to work. Taking piano lessons will be a great help for music production as well, and since you are probably not aiming to be an actual pianist, you could save money by taking some group keyboard fundamentals classes instead of hiring a private teacher, perhaps at a local community college.

u/TheBlackDrago · 2 pointsr/APStudents

I wouldn't recommend self-studying this. A lot of the test is based on skills that you pretty much need from music as u/ChubbyMonkeyX said. Honestly, it is an extremely hard exam if you don't have a solid background in music. But it probably possible. If you need a textbook for self-study, I recommend this. If you need a review book, I recommend Barron's AP Music Theory Review book.

u/BrandonAdamPhoto · 2 pointsr/piano

You can buy the books for every individual grade online. Either in PDF form or an actual copy. Most grades are a series of scales or arpeggios to play and an assortment of pieces suited to the difficulty. Most if not all can be found here http://shop.abrsm.org Schirmers Library also has books of exercises (which can be found free). If you’re interested in theory this is a pretty standard college text book on the subject Tonal Harmony

u/WeDaBestMusicWhooo · 2 pointsr/musictheory

This guy is a college music theory teacher and he's uploaded like 50 videos of his classroom lectures and he's excellent at explaining things. Every lecture is very clear, concise and too the point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDPWP6HUbk&list=PLw9t0oA3fHkxx1PgYpiXrMUPXaOiwh6KU&index=1

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I think his lessons are based around readings from this book, which is a little confusing to some people, but is a very standard college level music theory texbook https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0078025141/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1550514584&sr=8-3&keywords=tonal+harmony

u/65daysofslumber · 1 pointr/classicalmusic

Tonal Harmony is the standard for music students

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0078025141/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687782&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0073327131&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0PNRPDC4XH3KGDR045MK

Some of the examples given in the book are meh, but it will definitely cover pretty much everything you need to know

u/mattguitarcoach · 1 pointr/guitarlessons

This isn't specifically guitar, but this is a great book - a little on the expensive side though: https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0078025141

Have you looked at doing some cheap courses on Udemy? There would be some good information on there! I've been thinking about making a course on there myself

u/MrFishy5555 · 1 pointr/violinist

Beautiful violin!

I don't know how well-received this book is, but it's what my university uses for it's music major Theory courses. I've enjoyed it so far. I also really enjoyed this book when I used it in high school. The Suzuki volumes are a decent place to start repertoire-wise - especially if your teacher doesn't use the Suzuki method. Depending on whether you're interested in pop/classical/etc. different books can be recommended as well.

u/puzzlevortex · 1 pointr/WeAreTheMusicMakers

heres the book that we used to learn harmony when i went to school at berklee school of music. also Im sure theres some good harmony tutorials on youtube.
https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-B-Music/dp/0078025141/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496005511&sr=1-1&keywords=tonal+harmony

u/wafflesarebetter_imo · 1 pointr/musictheory

I super recommend reading Tonal Harmony! (I'm sure you can get a better price though, amazon is notorious for overpriced textbooks). It explains things really well in an easy to understand way, and it still goes deep into harmonically challenging and interesting waters.

u/DavisonY · 1 pointr/Composers

Hey, hope I can help! Music composition and theory background -

 

It is great that you can come up with melodies - that is one of the hardest battles. To be quite honest with you, there is proper ways of doing voice leading in tonal (and atonal) harmony, but really no one cares if it is "proper" anymore outside of some collegiate settings. Basically, if it sounds good to you, chances are it will sound good to others (tonally speaking - atonality is not liked so much here in the west).

 


The textbook I used in school was called "Tonal Harmony". It was a good textbook, but I didn't think it was worth it outside of learning the basics. What has really helped me as a composer has been learning to play and improvise on the piano. Even musicians like myself with little piano training should be able to go up to a piano and "bang" out notes and add simple left hand chords to them. Piano music (and choral scores) are all about voice leading - it is what makes the instrument (and voices) sound good.

 

Next time you have a chance, play a melody on the piano. Try and identity what chord sections of your melody use and try that. Keep in mind that just because your melody has "C E G" in it does not necessary mean you have to use a C major chord. Try an A Major (there will be dissonance with the c/c#), an A minor 7 (A C E G), etc. Let me know if you have any questions. =)

u/Sermoln · 1 pointr/musictheory

Hey, similar situation here and this is what I recommend

The Everything Music Theory Book has lined up pretty much exactly with my high school music theory class, but I haven't finished yet. It seems to be a great baseline to make sure you know what you need to: it has the same tricks everybody uses, workbook questions/answers, and you could look back in it anytime you need to remember something. (I have the second edition, not sure if it's superior)

Although I don't own it, my teacher has taken a lot from it: Tonal Harmony, apparently any music theory class you'll take in college will use this book, and my director says there's no need for the newest edition.

These two books should be enough of an entrance to music theory, without boring you. Supposedly there's plenty of resources online; I especially love the youtube community around it.

u/whynotziltoid · 1 pointr/musictheory

http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Stefan-Kostka/dp/0078025141?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

A book refering mostly to classical music (probably exclusivly) but its an immense source of knowledge of music theory and practice in general. It's written for academic purposes but is easily read by laymen :)

if you want a book that covers classical theory and harmony this probably the best.

Phillip Tagg's 'Everyday Tonality' is also good but a bit more advanced :)

u/kingpatzer · 1 pointr/Guitar_Theory

Knowing theory won't really help you create better songs. It will help you understand what's going on in a song and can help you solve many compositional problems for arrangements. But that's not the same thing.

I'm not trying to dissuade you, I'm a theory geek myself. But I do want to convey what theory will and won't do for you. Having a good ear for melody and a sense of song structure is far more important for making a great song than theory is.

If you want some great theory books, I can heartily recommend the text Tonal Harmony, by Kostka and Payne as well as Harmony and Voice Leading, by Aldwell, Schacter and Cadwallader

While pricey because of their academic audience, these texts avoid much of the confusion rigorous texts demonstrate, particularly with regard to the importance of modes to understanding the relationship between melody and harmony.

For really expanding your understanding of harmony on the guitar, and if you like Jazz, Johnny Smith's "Mel Bay's Complete Johnny Smith Approach to Guitar" is an amazing book, but requires a lot of hard work on the part of the student (not least of which due to Smith's insistance of writing the music in actual pitch using bass and treble cleffs.