Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert - Nicolas Carter

Author: Nicolas Carter

Genre: Nonfiction, Music

Series: Music Theory Mastery, #1

Rating: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: Informative but certainly not for beginners. It will scare them away from music theory.

The book begins with explanation on basic musical components such as tones, notes, scales, and intervals and gradually builds its way up the musical ladder with octaves, scales, chords, modes, key signatures, time signatures and a whole lot more. It stops just shy of reading music, as this topic is to be covered in the second volume of this series.

On the pro side, the book is quite comprehensive for every single topic and subtopic. Chords for instance covers not just the basic triads and tetrads but go all the way to thirteenth chords and even their inversions. The author clearly has a lot of musical expertise and it shows in the content.

Furthermore, there are Soundcloud links for audio examples for certain tricky concepts. While this idea was a flop on my Kindle (I was too lazy to type out the site address on my comp/phone just to hear the audio 😁), I am sure it would make a ton of difference to those reading the book on their Kindle for PC or their phone Kindle apps.

As a self-taught musician, I was looking for a way to add theory to the musical understanding I already have. I did enjoy some of the content: the explanation of octavial differences in the same note, the method why musical scales are realigned to fit in a stave as much as possible, the details about scale formations, musical intervals and their harmony/dissonance... But my existing familiarity with music helped tremendously. I am sure I would have felt lost had I been a newbie.

The title makes it sound like the book takes you from beginner level to expert level; in other words, that it is aimed at beginners. This is true only if you are a beginner with an innate aptitude for music. If you are a dabbler seeking to learn music theory at a basic level, this book will scare the heck out of you and you might not even want to attempt to understand music theory some other way. For example, the topic on notes includes extensive mathematical calculations about note frequencies. Why was this needed? Why would a beginner need to know modal reduction or thirteenth chords or the phrygian mode or chromaticism? Easier bits such as scales and chords come later in the book but by then, many readers would surely be frightened out of their wits or bored out of their minds. There’s a difference between practical music theory and technical music theory. Some topics are better left to experts. Beginners need a more accessible, user-friendly approach towards learning.

The book also becomes somewhat repetitive in its content. The approach is akin to reading a Wikipedia page on the topic, with everything under the sun covered per chapter, making it overwhelming.

There has undoubtedly been a lot of hard work put behind this book. However, I wish the stress had been more on the practical than the expert-level theory. Technical music experts will find joy in this book. Beginners, no.

I had assumed that reading music would be a part of this book itself, but as it wasn’t, I am still going to give a try to the second book. Let’s hope it is more layperson-friendly.

Do note that the book uses American music terminology. No semibreves and minims and crotchets but whole notes and half notes and quarter notes in the content.

The book is available on Amazon Prime.