About this book

Exploring Theory is designed to accompany the computer program Practica Musica®, version 7 or later, though it can easily be used alone. Practica Musica supports the text by offering learning activities coordinated with each chapter of the book, helping the student to find the reality behind the abstractions of pitch, harmony, and rhythm. In addition, there are activities, including even notation tools, for students who want to continue to more advanced topics. However, this book’s audiovisual examples and interactive quizzes can on their own provide some of that extra reinforcement and stimulus and will help to clarify each lesson even without the software. Practica Musica is available for both Windows and Macintosh computers.

For more information about Practica Musica visit:
www.ars-nova.com.

The subject matter covered in the text is that of an introductory music theory course, though some chapters will at times go well beyond the essentials of an introduction. Similarly, the software has something for both beginners and more advanced students: the higher levels of play in each activity can be challenging to anyone, while the correction capabilities and friendly patience of the computer should help even the shyest novice.

If students are able to practice their basic skills with the computer there will be more time in class for those things a computer can’t do, which include both discussion with the instructor and group activities such as singing in parts.

This 4th edition of Exploring Theory contains extensive revisions and additions to the text, and features many new music examples presented as videos. The ability to see music examples animated and played offers exciting new potential for the student.

I want to give special thanks to Patricia Carbon for her tireless work both in traditional editing tasks and especially in the work of reshaping Exploring Theory as an ebook production and in selecting, creating and voicing the new live music examples. Cynthia Dwyer was of great help in transferring the 4th edition to an online format and proofing copy; Paul Tolo provided many hours of expertise in the conversion of the layout and video content for use with html5.

Introduction

Music is today a universal language - the only language understood by all people fortunate enough to have hearing. Its varieties are without number: from Europe's Gregorian chant, renaissance polyphony, baroque fugues, classical symphonies and romantic operas, to Indian ragas, Indonesian gamelan, Chinese Guoyue, and many more national traditions. America's jazz and rock have their origins in blues and ultimately in Africa, yet blues also incorporates elements of harmony deriving from Europe. Another strain of American folk tradition comes from the British Isles and France, featuring the European violin, now become a fiddle, combined with an African-derived instrument, the banjo, and a Spanish one, the guitar. Composed music in multiple voices still incorporates principles of counterpoint developed hundreds of years ago in Italy, among other places. The world is filled with a seemingly infinite variety of music and yet humans can understand it all regardless of their personal origins because its fundamental elements derive from universal physical principles. This is the language that unites humanity, and the task of this book and its accompanying software is to give the student an understanding of the elements common to all music and how to become literate in the written notation that has evolved to represent it. To do that we'll focus on the basic materials of tone and rhythm: scales, the beat, the combinations of tones that create harmony, and the ways in which melody and harmony can combine to form meaning.

From the autograph manuscript of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5