Hello!
I am an incoming Freshman who is studying music at the University of Arizona. I pre-ordered most of my text books, and just received one of them today. I took one look inside the book, and I can’t even understand what the first page is saying/asking. I did do the theory placement test, but none of the test material had anything that approaches the material in the book. It was mostly scale identification, intervals, and various other concepts that weren’t anything overly challenging. I placed into “Music 120A”, which I believe is the very beginning theory and composition class. Am I going to have a hard time in this class if I can’t even understand the first page? Will the professor expect everyone to know what these concepts are? Any help would be wonderful. The other text books that I’ve looked at for my other music classes look standard and manageable. Not this one! Thank you in advance.
I wouldn’t stress over it. Your teacher might not use the book. You wouldn’t believe how many teachers want you to buy a book and you end up only using one page.
Thank you so much for the advice! Wow, that’s pretty ridiculous. What a waste of money!
@muggy98 I’m sure you’ll need to be good at identifying types of scales or chords/intervals, so if that’s what the first page of the book covered, I’d suggest rereading it (or reading it more carefully). I’m sure you will understand it. Make sure you play those chords or scales on a piano or other instrument; that’ll allow you to recognize those elements faster.
I have also had classes which “required” one or more textbooks, but hardly ever used them, or only used them for reference (while posting lecture notes or textbook problems online).
It may not be a waste of money. I remember a number of math textbooks that were unfathomable at the beginning of the term but which made sense when looked at in conjunction with class lectures. Music theory is probably very similar in that regard.
A lot of people will look down upon me for suggesting this, but this is how I learned throughout undergrad: you may not necessarily understand the material right now, but try your best to use flashcards with important terms, concepts, sentences, etc. and drill, drill, drill the material until you’ve committed it to memory. If you drill it into your memory, you’ll be able to recall the facts and be able to piece together the material much quicker than if you were flipping back and forth between notes.
For me, this REALLY helped with the critical thinking process because although I’d not learned the particular situation on the homework/exam, I knew all the necessary facts in order to piece together the solution and truly understand what the homework/exam question was asking. The method is not completely perfect, but I had MUCH more success with this method of learning in all my classes than any other method.
Again, lots of people might get mad at me for suggesting such a thing since they probably don’t see it as “learning”, but I feel like it’s learning if all the parts are there in your brain for you to come up with the solution when you try to piece them all together.
Which music theory textbook is this? I’ve had experience with several, and some are easier to understand than others.
Music theory almost always uses the textbook a lot because of the examples and practice exercises.
From what little I found online, it looks like that is not the very beginning music theory course (there appears to be one for those with no experience). If so, you may have some difficultly if you don’t know what’s in the first chapter, since this is usually a review chapter. I would suggest you work hard to try to understand it now. I think you can be successful in the course, but you may need to go to office hours for extra help. There’s no shame in that. The majority of the students in my college music theory classes have needed extra help (I took a rigorous AP music theory, so I knew most of the material already).