Skip to Content
It’s Music, Not Theory, Damn It!
book

It’s Music, Not Theory, Damn It!

by Bill Gordon
January 2016
Beginner to intermediate
70 pages
2h 7m
English
Kohler Music Press
Content preview from It’s Music, Not Theory, Damn It!

10. HOW’S, WHY’S, AND OTHER STUFF

- Why This Book

Music is a language. It has an organization and vocabulary, a grammar and structure, a texture and architecture. And none of it is theoretical: nothing that makes music music is a theory, therefore this book.

It’s patterned after parts of the Berklee College of Music’s harmony and music structure curriculum, which is based on pioneering and wonderful work by Joseph Schillinger in the 1920’s, which he brought into being because he, too, thought the notion ofmusic theory pretty lame. He wanted to shed some light on what had become an absurdly complicated and oddly unnecessarily complex way of looking at the structure of music that had evolved in the 19th century. Schillinger did for music what Carl ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

On Music

On Music

Theodore Gracyk
Music Science

Music Science

Alistair Croll
The Classical Music Industry

The Classical Music Industry

Chris Dromey, Julia Haferkorn

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780991155521