Re: Unanswered Question #1

On Apr 8, 8:58 am, paramu...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (paramucho) wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 09:32:28 -0700 (PDT), ttw6...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> >Shephard's book is interesting. I found it useful. The only objection
> >I had was that he considered the augmented sixth chords to be a
> >species of "dominant" harmony. That seems common from about 1880 to
> >1930 or so. There was nothing wrong with the progressions, just the
> >concept. Orem's book on composition (I haven't seen his others) does
> >the same.
>
> I've just ordered a copy of Orem's harmony textbook. I looked for
> Shephard's and Orem's books atwww.bookfinder.comand was amazed to
> see just how many are available for purchase. I mean, are there really
> that many people collect old harmony textbooks?
>
> Ian

That is encouraging! To me it shows that there are a lot of people
that want to get to the source rather than by authors that jumped on
the bandwagon and paraphrased (or more lately copied and pasted) the
information from the older masters of theory. It seems almost that the
pattern today is to get a job teaching, write your own text book that
has different terms and organization of material and then sell it to
your class. Then you hope that it will catch on and you will make some
money with your book as well as having disposed with one of the
requirements for academic advancement by having a published work.
Anyone can publish a book these days and many do, but very few have
anything new to say. (just look at Wiki!)

I, myself, may publish a book if I can get it finished. This however
will not be on theory per say. Instead it will be on pragmatic methods
that will allow general music to be taught to students mostly at the
Middle School level and still fit the criteria that teachers have to
follow with the various restrictions placed on them. I have found a
way that allows lay students to learn the thought processes of
musicians (and the associated history and terminology etc) to students
of varied as well as no musical experience all in the same class.

However, I would only even think of writing a theory book if I found
something new to say. All the authors don't seem to share my views on
this. If I were forced to publish something along these lines by a
school or some other means, I would write a book that would serve as a
workbook or companion to one or several theory books that were used by
the students. There would not, for instance, be anything wrong to say
have a publication that fit the class that would show various points
of view by different theorists other than the ones that were used in
class. THIS is what should occur rather than rewriting the old ones
and presuming that one's personal point of view is the all and end
all.

Sorry to expound! Its been a tiring week and trying to put a new
concept of teaching on paper is not an easy task! (and its only
Tuesday!)
LJS