A survey of books, resources and courses to study everything about music and sound in the broadest sense.
- Music theory
- Music composition
- Listening guides
- World traditions
- Sheet music
- Microtonal music
- Ear training
- Sound design
- Electronic music
- Notable instruments
- Mixing
- YouTube channels
- Maps of music
- Resources
- Other lists
Rock harmony is arguably the simplest of the three (rock, jazz and classical), and there are high chances that you're more familiar with this culture (rock/pop) as a listener. So it makes sense to start here and expand into jazz and classical harmony later on - as they share a lot of concepts.
- HookTheory - A database of many rock songs and some jazz songs and game tunes focused at harmonic analysis. Comes with a melody-harmony online editor HookPad and two must-read online books on pop/rock harmony which explain Roman numeral analysis, secondary chords and modes. You should probably start with those books unless you already have a college degree in music. You can read them in two weeks if you focus enough.
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David Temperley. The Musical Language of Rock - A book that summarizes a corpus study of aspects like harmony, melody, rhythm, timbre and form on 200 rock songs. Also his papers. Also his other books: The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures, Music and Probability
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David Tagg. Everyday Tonality II - The author proves that applying classical harmony framework to all of modern popular Western music gives poor results, and that one must accept the wide existence of music in different modes, scales and non-tertian chord structures on our TV and radio.
- Christopher Doll. Hearing Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era - The author focuses entirely on chords and progressions, examining different effects and combinations analyzing and referencing over 600 songs.
The books below give an intro into music notation and are good for a beginner, although they ultimately go pretty far into things like four-part writing, Neapolitan sixth and sonata form. They will probably take a good year or two to study.
- Steven G. Laitz. The Complete Musician - A standard modern book on classical harmony with introduction into a form and XX century techniques. Audio examples are freely available
- Andre Mount. Fundamentals, Function, and Form - An online book with audio examples
- Mauro Braunstein. Offtonic Theory - An online book that is spiced up with Jewish Chasidic examples (in addition to classical and rock ones) and an intro into Arabic maqamaat music
- Sean Butterfield. Integrated Musicianship: Theory - An open-source, interactive, online textbook for college-level music theory courses
- Robert Hutchinson. Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom
- Mark Gotham, Kyle Gullings, Chelsey Hamm, Bryn Hughes, Brian Jarvis, Megan Lavengood, John Peterson. Open Music Theory
- Hrvoje Staneković. Musical harmony, theory with examples from piano repertoire – Several harmonic analyses of piano scores of Bach and Chopin with a very thorough introduction
YouTube videos with harmonic analyses:
- David Bennett Thomas - A very thorough analysis of carefully picked pieces from different styles.
- mDecks Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro YouTube channel - Worth checking many of their educational videos. Especially the playlist on harmony fundamentals
- Frans Absil. Musical Analysis: Visiting the Great Composers - A lot of classical pieces from Bach to Shostakovich are analysed bar-by-bar
- Artusi: Interactive Music Theory and Online Skills - a free online auto-graded course that teaches you four-part writing right in the web score editor. It shows all errors in the voice-leading (parallel fifths, tritone leaps, jumps on augmented intervals, forgotten preparations, voice crossing)
Jazz knowledge roughly splits into three parts: rhythm, harmony and solo.
- Joe Mulholland, Tom Hojnacki. The Berklee Book of Jazz Harmony Kindle Edition - A book that describes all traditional concepts of a jazz harmony language (secondary dominants, tritone substitution, modal interchange, modulation, modal harmony). Each chapter analyzes a special piece written to showcase the very discussed chapter topic (unlike other books that analyze existing jazz standards). I'm not sure whether a Kindle version comes with a code to access the website with audio recordings of those pieces, the paperback one does. This is a new book using Berklee approach, so it supersedes the books by Barrie Nettles and Richard Graf
- The Jazz Standards Progressions Book - Hundreds of popular jazz standards manually analyzed by authors of mDecks to highlight jazz-specific harmonic patterns (tritone substitution, ii-V-s, to-minor, chord scales). Alternatively, you may buy Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro with the paid 1300 Jazz Standards add-on to explore all progressions on a tonal map
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Paul F. Berliner. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation
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Martin Norgaard. Descriptions of Improvisational Thinking by Artist-level Jazz Musicians - Seven jazz artists recorded an improvised solo. After completing their improvisations, participants described the thinking processes that led to the realization of their performances
- Dariusz Terefenko. Jazz Theory: From Basic to Advanced Study - Also has a companion website with a workbook.
- 🎥 Jazz Piano Practice Session - Major II V I & Turn Around Licks - Introduction into solo building strategies
- 🎥 Analysing a Jazz Solo - Straight, No Chaser (Davis, Coltrane, Adderley, Garland, Chambers) - Analysis of notable solos of the time
- The Jazzomat Research Project - A corpus of transcribed solos. The book: Inside the Jazzomat
- Seven volumes of Jerry Bergonzi (starting with "Melodic Structures") to gradually build up your solo language from tiniest parts exploiting all scales and note permutations. Trailers, website
- Joe Riposo. Target and Approach Tones: Shaping Bebop Lines - A small book focusing on the join notes in between changing chord scales.
Bach's chorale harmonizations are a reference for everyone studying classical harmony in relation to voice-leading. Harmonizing a chorale melody is a part of UK college final exams.
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Chris Gill. Harmonising Bach Chorales - A short book describing all aspects of pretty regular bach language (at least those 320 chorales written within minor/major modes) - voice-leading, cadences, modulations, chromaticism.
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David Huron. Voice Leading: The Science behind a Musical Art - An accessible scientific explanation for the traditional rules of voice leading, including an account of why listeners find some musical textures more pleasing than others. Introduces the concept of auditory scene and its parsing, explains how ear anatomy leads to masking, cites many other psychoacoustic researches as well as statistical analysis of music corpora.
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ChoraleGUIDE - A concise explanation of the topic
There are many ways to paint chorale scores to reveal their harmony:
- colortriads (broken, an open issue)
- Vincent Persichetti. Twentieth-Century Harmony - A book from 1960. Audio examples on YouTube
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Schenkerian analysis - Considered harmful: Lodewijk Muns. Why I am not a Schenkerian
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The Future of Music: Towards a Computational Musical Theory of Everything
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Charles Rosen. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
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Jonathan Biss. Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas (six-part course on Coursera)
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Robert Gjerdingen. Music in the Galant Style - And the Wikipedia articles on Galant Schemata. Also Daniel Heartz. Music in European Capitals. Also L. Poundie Burstein. Journeys Through Galant Expositions
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James Hepokoski. Sonata Theory Handbook - And the Wikipedia article on Sonata theory
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Research by Dmitri Tymoczko:
- Books and articles
- Local Harmonic Grammar in Western Classical Music - the harmonic syntax of Western classical music can be captured by a simple maplike grammar without recursive generative rules
- When in Rome corpus which has links to other corpora
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Craig Stuart Sapp. Harmonic Visualizations of Tonal Music - also the website with many keyscapes
- 🇷🇺 Г. Банщиков. Законы функциональной инструментовки
Some of these books feel pretty esoteric even if they are a serious research.
- David Huron. Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation - (Published in 2006) Describes decades of research on how people expect the continuation of a certain musical phrase, and how music is balancing on being a mashup of expected and unexpected. The author also developed a set of Unix utilities called Humdrum to ground all his future statistical music research work - as far as in late 80s. Feels like the audio examples were promised but never delivered.
- 🇷🇺 Кудряшов А.Ю. Теория музыкального содержания - Я пока не понял, в чём смысл. Но читается сложно, как типичный русский консерваторский учебник.
- A Generative Theory of Tonal Music - An attempt to build a linguistic grammar for common-practice (pre-20-century) music. This work is also continued in the essay, the second book where the switch from generative grammar to preference rules occurs, and the path is reflected in the third one.
- A website of Milton Mermikides - A lot of YouTube lectures and blog posts from a British composer.
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David Fuentes. Figuring Out Melody - At some point I was googling whether there's a book specifically on a melody line
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Edwin Gordon. Learning Sequences in Music: A Contemporary Music Learning Theory
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Thomas Mark. What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body - how to gain fluidity without injuries
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Meinard Müller. Fundamentals of Music Processing. Audio, Analysis, Algorithms, Applications
- Ed Friedland. Building Walking Bass Lines and Ed Friedland. Expanding Walking Bass Lines and many other books - the book should contain the code to access audio examples at the publisher's website
- Scott Jarrett, Holly Day. Music Composition For Dummies - A light overview on motives/phrases, the role of harmony and orchestration, ideal to understand something without graduating from college first. Although the book of Belkin (see below) is also approachable (the book of Schoenberg analyzing Beethoven's sonatas is less so). The companion prerequisite book on music theory for dummies also exists.
- Alan Belkin. Musical Composition: Craft and Art - A modern book on composition covering topics like motive/phrase, writing for singers and players, forms. Also his YouTube channel with videos on applied harmony, counterpoint and orchestration.
- William Russo. Composing music: a new approach (1983) - Gives a progressive set of exercises for paper-and-pencil composers familiar with music notation to overcome the fear of the blank page.
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Peter Edwards. Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition - A six-week Coursera course that starts with four-part writing rules and goes into textures, chord substitutions, 2:1 counterpoint with examples from Mozart and Beethoven.
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Building Blocks - A music theory and composition course in an online DAW from the creators of Syntorial (see below)
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Art of Composing - An email course
- The Visual Listening Guide - An approach to visualize the structure of a symphony using small piano rolls and pictograms of instruments.
- Kristine Forney, Andrew Dell'Antonio. Enjoyment of Music: Essential Listening - also has other (longer) editions
- Terry E. Miller, Andrew Shahriari. World Music: A Global Journey - A survey of ethnic music traditions from all over the world. Audio CD examples are on YouTube
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Lark Camp is hosting free online sessions during COVID times: August, February, some past recorded sessions
- Johnny Farraj, Sami Abu Shumays. Inside Arabic Music - A modern book on all aspects of Arabic maqam music (instruments, forms, rhythms, modulations), with an emphasis on a new researcher look on the actual structure of maqam modulations. Two authors previously created two websites on the topic: http://maqamlessons.com/ and https://www.maqamworld.com/. Also a YouTube channel
- Nizar Rohana. ‘Ūd Taqsīm as a Model of Pre-Composition - The most detailed description of what happens in taqasim of Al-Qasabji and Al-Sunbati. Comes with a survey of Arabic music theory from Scott Lloyd Marcus "Arab Music Theory in the Modern Period", which PDF I can't find anywhere
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Kareem Joseph Roustom. A Study Of Six Improvisations On The Ud By Riyad al-Sunbati - Contains transcriptions and analysis. Audio. Also, scrolling videos with analysis by Dimitri Mikelis
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🏴 http://taqasim.net/ - An oud and darbuka school in the City of London and remotely (I learn to play oud there). Technically, you can learn basics of oud using just their books ("The Mukhtar Method" series), although tuning an oud by oneself at the beginning is a pain.
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Maintaining a Musical Tradition in Arab-America: An Oral History of Abdel Karim Bader - Contains a lot of reflexion on how Arabic music skills are transmitted from a teacher to a student. Sadly, I can't find any audio recordings mentioned the thesis
The central concept here is radif. There are several complete radif recordings, both instrumental (Radif of Persian Music on Tar by Morteza Neydavoud in 6 volumes) and vocal. I haven't yet found the books with transcriptions mentioned in a Bruno Nettl work.
- Matthew James Kay. A Return to Brotherhood: Nationalism, Globalization and The Negotiation of Identity in Romani Brass Band Music in Serbia - The author describes his visits to a Guča festival and to a Romani village to interview musicians
Find a gamelan ensemble in your city, come and learn to play it. You can instantly start playing saron and then gradually expand your skills.
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🇷🇺 В Москве можно прийти научиться в Gamelan Dadali
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Jo Hilder. Central Javanese Gamelan – A concise reference
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Marc Perlman. Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory
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Dewa Alit - A modern Balinese composer born in 1973. A lecture on his piece
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"The concept of pathet in Central Javanese gamelan music", paper.
Also see chapters in the book of William A. Sethares below
- http://www.oldmusicproject.com/oneils1.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7jNIFmvpzg&list=PLqKVRZsoDhsYyhvyf2xVdmsuOUCfENYE7
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Kzr07-f9I&list=PL89aHnZ0FvtUOpqhKjU0qbzIwrVJC88Ql
- William A. Sethares. Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale - Why we divide octave into 12 equal parts, how is it related to string harmonics and how to create artificial timbres that make music in other tunings more consonant. With audio examples
- Easley Blackwood. Microtonal Compositions. He also published an article "Blackwood, E. (1991). Modes and Chord Progressions in Equal Tunings"
- Artusi - A huge set of free online courses on ear training (melodic, harmonic, rhythmic dictation), four part-writing and counterpoint where you type notes directly in the browser. (Does it make Counterpointer obsolete?)
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Miranda Wilson. Integrated Musicianship: Aural Skills - An open-source, interactive, online textbook for college-level music courses
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SoundGym - Ear training for mixing engineers: EQ, compression, stereo image, gain, reverb
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ToneGym - Intervals, chords, rhythms (with some gamification)
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Perfect Pitch - Intervals, chords, scales, inversions
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🇷🇺 Сольфа - Музыкальные диктанты. Советую также попробовать MacGAMUT Dictation на Artusi
- Syntorial - An educational app that asks you to repeat the synth sound you hear and progressively gives you more controls to manipulate. Has a free trial of 22 lessons, with a full course of 199 lessons. Demo on YouTube
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🇷🇺 XSSR Academy - Курсы по саунд-дизайну и созданию музыки к играм от аудио-инженеров Wargaming
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Learning Synths from Ableton - A very basic online one-hour intro into synths
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Helm - A free and open-source easy-to-grasp VST synth with a very friendly interface, a tiny blog on its emergence, a complete manual on 32 pages and a more powerful sequel Vital made by the same engineer
- Andy Farnell. Designing Sound - Starts with a very thorough introduction into physics of sound and progresses into Pure Data concepts and creation of sounds of fire, rain, jet engine, insects. Browse wav examples at practical series pages
- Richard Boulanger, Victor Lazzarini. The Audio Programming Book - Mathematical and programming techniques for audio signal processing with source code examples in C
- 🇷🇺 Антон Маскелиаде. Твой первый трек - Очень вдохновляющий учебник по созданию электронной музыки в Аблетоне для начинающих с посылом "у вас сразу всё начнёт получаться" и "не дайте внешней критике загубить ваш талант". Разбирает строение треков (элементы гармонии, форму, сведение), много примеров из Radiohead, есть разделы про психологию начинающего музыканта и сетап домашней студии. Также есть большое дружелюбное комьюнити, интенсивные курсы, ежемесячная рассылка, справочник по эффектам Аблетона
- Tidal Cycles - A live coding environment with a painful setup that allows you to compose loops using code. Useful for very tricky rhythmic patterns. Watch people doing it. Also look at Hydra to code visuals for your algorave. Also a book edited by its creator describing the algorithmic landscape.
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Against The Clock - Electronic musicians are asked to create a track in 10 minutes.
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J74 Progressive - A Max for Live tool set for Chord Progression and Harmonic Editing in Ableton Live
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LYRA-8 - An unusual hardware noise-drone-dark-ambient synthesizer with an ability to instantly create horror film soundtrack. It's not MIDI so you play with knobs, not with the keyboard. Upside: no harmony skills required. Downside: harmony skills don't help much. Watch and listen
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OP-1 - A physical device replacing all aspects of the DAW. Best design instantly forces you to chip in - resist! Borrow from a friend, play for three days, then watch it sitting on the shelf for two months, return and buy me a coffee for saving you $1k. Red Means Recording - Aquamarine and its arrangement for the symphony orchestra.
- David Gibson. The Art of Mixing - A visual approach to represent a mix. The same book as a great and amusing YouTube educational movie from the 1990s, in stereo. Also, The Art of Producing
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🇷🇺 Wikisound - Бесплатные многочасовые ютьюб-курсы по компрессии, эквализации и пространству микса, а также платные курсы по DAW'кам и синтезаторам.
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🇷🇺 Digital Arts - очные курсы звукорежиссуры и аранжировки в Москве от Марка Брянцева - хожу, советую
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Guy Michelmore - A composer of music for film and television
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Andrew Huang - Electronic music production
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🇷🇺 Институт музыкальных инициатив - О музыкальной индустрии
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🇷🇺 Нескучный саунд - Разборы гармониии Богемской рапсодии и саундтрека к Final Fantasy, трёхчасовые стримы по записи и сведению треков, введение в теорию музыки на клавишах.
- Every Noise at Once - a giant map of all music genres with Spotify examples
- Музпросвет: история западной популярной и андерграундной музыки с 1960-х годов, также есть в виде книги
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A modern composer Fazıl Say describes the structure of his Istanbul Symphony: part 1, part 2, home video
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Courses at American universities, eg. CCRMA
Real-time feed of new resources: https://t.me/keetezh
Contacts: cxielamiko@gmail.com, https://t.me/vitalypavlenko