Theory for Today's Musician

Theory for Today’s Musician, Second Edition, recasts the scope of the traditional music theory course to meet the demands of the professional music world, in a style that speaks directly and engagingly to today’s music student. It uses classical, folk, popular, and jazz repertoires with clear explanations that link music theory to musical applications. The authors help prepare students by not only exploring how music theory works in art music, but how it functions within modern music, and why this knowledge will help them become better composers, music teachers, performers, and recording engineers.

This broadly comprehensive text merges traditional topics such as part-writing and harmony (diatonic, chromatic, neo-tonal and atonal), with less traditional topics such as counterpoint and musical process, and includes the non-traditional topics of popular music songwriting, jazz harmony and the blues. Written by an experienced textbook author and new co-author, both active classroom teachers for many years, Theory for Today’s Musician is the complete and ideal theory text to enable today’s student to accomplish their musical goals tomorrow.

New Features to the Second Edition:

• An expanded unit on form that includes introductory chapters on sonata & rondo, to prepare students for learning form
• New "Back to Basics" online drills, keyed to the text, allowing students to brush up their fundamentals as needed
• New musical examples, including over 80 new musical excerpts from both art and popular music repertoires
• Expanded in-chapter exercises to promote and facilitate classroom interaction
• Carefully edited in response to market demands to create a more streamlined, flexible text
• New audio of musical examples (for both text and workbook), 50% re-recorded for improved audio quality
• An updated and relocated Chapter 33 on song composition in the jazz and popular folk styles, applying principles of text setting, melody composition/harmonization
• Companion website that houses online tutorial with drills of basic concepts

Ralph Turek is a theorist, composer, author, jazz pianist, Professor Emeritus of The University of Akron, and a veteran of thirty-five years of teaching in the music theory classroom. He is known for his textbook Elements of Music, which was previously used in theory and analysis courses for over twenty years in the US and abroad.

Daniel McCarthy, a familiar name in contemporary music, has over 100 published compositions and numerous recordings of his music. He is Director of Composition Studies at The University of Akron School of Music.

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