The Common Sense Mom

Dispensing the common sense wisdom you expect from Mom.

Book Review

The Complete Idiot's Guide to
Music Theory
by Michael Miller

Perhaps you are like me. Maybe you had several years of piano lessons in your youth. Maybe your parents shelled out countless dollars paying for those lessons. Sure, you know how to play the piano...as long as nobody else is listening. But, your skills are rusting away, and you've never really learned to make music. I learned more about music by reading this book of music theory than I did during 11 (!) years of piano lessons. In fairness to my teachers, perhaps they would've had time to teach me more music theory if I had practiced as I should have.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory contains a lot of elementary information about reading music that will help anybody starting from scratch. If you can already read music, you may just want to gloss over these sections to see if there are any gaps in your knowledge. I started to slow down and read carefully when I came to the chapter on major and minor keys. Likewise, I was paying special attention when studying chords and chord progressions. The whole chord-progression thing was entirely news to me.

Much of the information is geared toward those who wish to write or arrange music. I just want to do a better job making music. So, again I glossed over parts aimed at a different audience. The section on embellishing was helpful...but I think it could have been fleshed out a little more with practical examples.

The author comments on music theory in general--he is not specific to the piano. He discusses a number of instruments which was interesting, but not pertinent to my study. Each chapter has written exercises for practice (with answers in the back of the book). In addition, the book contains an audio CD with exercises for ear training. I did not use the CD, so I can't really comment on it. I hope to have time to get back to that someday because I have had zero ear training. I'd like to see what a difference that would make in how I listen to music.

I found myself with some unanswered questions. Why would someone write a song in the key of F instead of the key of G (or vice versa)? Or, why G-flat instead of F-sharp? Why would you use 3/4 time instead of 6/8 time (or vice versa)? I'd like to know more about sycopation--maybe it could even be a whole chapter.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory is definitely worth the time to read and study. I can see it as a great foundation for a semester course for a homeschooled high-school freshman or sophomore.