Book Reviews: Introducing Theory of Music

Introducing Theory of Music is a new pre-Grade 1 book from Trinity College London (TCL) billed as a precursor to its Theory of Music Workbook series. It is written by the same author as the graded books, Naomi Yandell, and has a similar layout and typeface. It takes students practically from basic note values through to time signatures, combining notes and rests, names of the treble and bass clef notes on a stave, and how to write accidentals.

Understandably, much pre-Grade 1 material such as this is targeted at younger children, but it's clear that this book has been thoughtfully designed to appeal to a wide demographic of learners. The font is quite large, but there are none of the cartoons or colouring-in exercises that you often find in beginner theory books, which can be off-putting for teenage and adult learners. Like Trinity's graded workbooks, the language is clear and concise, with eye-catching ‘Did you know?’, ‘Remember’ and ‘Handy tip’ boxes that nicely break up the pages. I particularly like the visual aid of drums under notes and rests to show their length in beats and to help learn counting, with a larger drum used to emphasise downbeats when time signatures are introduced.

Introducing Theory of Music is also available digitally as an ebook, which, in other words, is a PDF download of the physical version. For a book with the subtitle ‘first writing skills for musicians’, this throws up some interesting challenges. Unless you're printing the ebook at home, you probably want to work through it on a mobile or tablet, which means ‘writing’ the answers with your fingertip – much more cumbersome and less accurate than using sharp pencil. Of course, the game changes if you own a digital/smart pen, but a straw poll of my students suggests these are still far from commonplace.

Overall, the Introducing Theory of Music book is an excellent, clear and well-structured introduction to music theory that will engage a variety of age groups. The ebook is slightly cheaper than the physical version, but remember it is just a PDF download, not an app or an interactive document optimised for mobile or tablet.