Music Fundamentals: A Balanced Approach, Third Edition combines a textbook and integrated workbook with an interactive website for those who want to learn the basics of reading music. Intended for students with little or no prior knowledge of music theory, it offers a patient approach to understanding and mastering the building blocks of musical practice and structure. Musical examples range from Elvis Presley songs to Filipino ballads to Beethoven symphonies, offering a balanced mixture of global, classical, and popular music.
The new edition includes:
- Additional vocabulary features and review exercises
- Additional musical selections and 1-, 2-, or 3-hand rhythmic exercises
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The addition of guitar tablature
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A revised text design that more clearly designates the different types of exercises and makes the Workbook pages easier to write on
- An improved companion website with added mobile functionality
The author’s balanced approach to beginning music theory engages student interest while demonstrating how music theory concepts apply not only to the Western classical canon but also to popular and world music. With the beginner student in mind, Music Fundamentals: A Balanced Approach, Third Edition is a comprehensive text for understanding the foundations of music theory.
Module 1 - Basics of Pitch
Module 2 - Basics of Rhythm
Module 3 - Basics of Rhythm: Extending Duration, Anacrusis, Rests
Module 4 - Accidentals
Module 5 - Rhythm: Simple Meter Expanded
Module 6 - Major Scale
Module 7 - Major Scale Key Signatures
Module 8 - Rhythm: Compound Meter
Module 9 - Minor Scale
Module 10 - Intervals
Module 11 - Traids
Module 12 - Rhythm: Compound Meter Expanded
Module 13 - Triads: Roman Numerals
Module 14 - Inversions of Triads
Module 15 - Seventh Chords
Module 16 - Form in Music
Appendix 1 - Musical Terms
Appendix 2 - Acoustics
Appendix 3 - C Clefs (Alto and Tenor)
Appendix 4 - Modes
Appendix 5 - Other Seventh Chords (Major, Minor, Half Diminished, Diminished)
Appendix 6 - Basic Guitar Chords
Biography
Sumy Takesue is an Instructor at Santa Monica College, teaching theory and class piano. She has taught at the University of Hawai’i (Hilo) and the University of Southern California.
