Studying Music

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I've begun to study music. I'm really into some types of music and I revere musicians but music has always mystified me. To play music seems to require incredible skills that should be beyond most people. I don't see how anybody can develop an ear for different pitches or manage the coordination required to hit the right keys or memorize the notes to a piece of music. But I hate to be completely ignorant on a subject so I'm only looking to expand my knowledge of music to the extent that is possible.

It seems that you can at least study music theory to improve your understanding of music without any great skill. I've recently read the book The Complete Idiot's Guide To Music Theory by Michael Miller. I learned how to identify the keys on an unmarked keyboard; C is always the white key to the left of two black keys and F is the white key to the left of three black keys. I've also memorized the position of the notes on the staff; F, A, C, and E are the notes between the lines which you can remember because they spell FACE. I still have to memorize some of the scales.

I've bought the standard college textbook for an introductory course in music, The Enjoyment Of Music, Nineth Edition, Shorter Version by Joseph Machlis and Kristine Forney. It covers music theory and music history with an emphasis on classical music although the latest version of the textbook is very up-to-date with a chapter on internet radio, MP3, webcasting, and Napster. Most of the book's illustrations are of famous artworks making it almost seem like a typical art history textbook. It seems a bit pretentious to me. I bought a used, cheap textbook on Amazon but it did not come with the student resource CDROM or the four music CDs so I have to order them separately before I can get started. The book frequently refers you to a CD to listen to something so you can't read the book very well without the other materials.

There are many web sites for music students. If you need blank sheet music for practicing your notation you can print some out by going to http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/. You can get free music notation software at http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/. There are many tutorials online for music theory http://www.8notes.com/theory/. If you don't own a musical instrument, you can at least download the Musical Keys program at http://www.bapuli.co.nr/ which is a piano keyboard with 128 instruments.

posted by Robert Robbins @ 9:10 AM