Elements of Music (2nd Edition)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 480 pages
• Published by: Prentice Hall
• Edition: 2nd Edition July 5, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0131584154
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0131584150
• Book Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 2.1 pounds

About The Author


Joseph N. Straus teaches at Queens College of the City University of New York. He has written extensively on topics in music theory and is a former president of the Society for Music Theory. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Reader Reviews
The book is ok to work with, however, very vague in explanation to describe certain parts. It's great that the book describes many parts of reading a scale, etc., but horrible due to its lack of composition it delivers and explanation to its parts... Example: There is an exercise about Triads and Seventh Chords, however, it never teaches you other parts where it consists of ONLY 2 notes to create as a Triad... as a matter of fact, there is no such thing as a triad when there's only 2 representable notes on a grand staff. That was my main concern when it comes to learning about it. The Circle of Fifths and learning how to count the number of accidentals is very old styled and not something a child would actually understand. And lastly, the old style of counting the many semitones on a grandstaff just to know if the notes are augments, diminished, etc. is time consuming... Lastly, for the exercises again, there are statements saying that the notes on the staff are just there for decoration, so ignore those, and the ones in the paranthesis... THIS IS BY FAR THE WORST I'VE SEEN YET. When it comes to learning the notes specifically, other notes will protrude and disrupt the learning sequence of a student, which will further confuse him/her in the future. I've been asked many questions how to do these works on the excercise and it's really redundant and useless. I would say this book is by far not at its potential in teaching someone a basic learning ability towards music theory... but hopefully there will be many revised editions to come to finally make this worth buying... Comment (1) | Permalink | (Report this)