$29.95
Plays on Windows or Mac
For a free view of the complete text,
and
to order, see below
BASIC
MUSIC THEORY
is a CD-ROM which teaches music theory starting from the beginning, requiring
only a love of music. It covers in detail the principles of melody, harmony,
counterpoint, sonority, form, rhythm and meter, and value, and contains many
musical examples, brought to life with a click of a mouse.
When a musical example on screen is clicked,
your computer's default media player appears as the music starts playing. The
player can be stopped while playing, then backed up in
time, and the music replayed, making it possible for those new to music theory
to learn at their own speed, stopping, going back, and repeating until the
musical sense is clear, all without having to read music or to play the piano.
In short, with this CD-ROM, persons not trained in music can for the first time
learn in detail how music works, and by so doing, enhance their enjoyment of
music.
The emphasis throughout is on how we respond to music—after
this bit of music, why this following bit? What do we expect to happen next, and
does it? How does this bit change our response, and how does our response grow?
In this approach there are many insights for trained musicians as well as
untrained, and a new appreciation for the complexity and depth of music, and
above all, insights on how we evaluate music, and on how it changes our lives.
The text is in dialog form, and for clarity, in Basic
English, an idiomatic English using 850 words. The CD-ROM runs on Windows 98SE
or later, and on Mac OS X.
I WENT
TO HARVARD
COLLEGE, and have a degree in Music
from the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Among my
teachers at Harvard were Richard Ellmann, I. A. Richards, Irving Fine, and
Walter Piston. While at
Harvard I was a jazz musician, playing in Boston and in Cambridge. For 29 years
I was President of Stanley Air Tools, Division of The Stanley Works, first
designing the tools, then starting the business.
YOU MAY VIEW THE TEXT of Basic Music Theory free-of-charge. This is the complete PDF file of the CD-ROM, but contains no sound files. The PDF file should be viewed in Adobe Reader 6.0 or later. If you do not have this already on your computer, it may be downloaded free-of-charge from Adobe.com (15.5 MB Windows, 20.9 MB Mac).
To view the text of Basic Music Theory free-of-charge, click here. After viewing the text, if you want to learn the principles of music theory and improve your skills in hearing music, send me a check for $34.95 ($29.95 for the CD-ROM plus $5 for shipping) to the address below and I will mail you Basic Music Theory, A CD-ROM on the Art of Hearing Music, which includes the sound files. If you will do the work, it will change your life.
Hugh L. Whitehouse
766 Sand Dollar Drive
Sanibel FL 33957
—Hugh L. Whitehouse