Inside the Music

Bookwatch, July 1999
"A fine, basic guide to composition, improvisation, and the foundations of making music...provides musicians with fine keys for fine-tuning achievements."


Book Description
For those who want to learn the inner workings of music without, as author Dave Stewart notes, "getting bogged down in a lot of fearsome technicalities," this is an enlightening exploration of the theory and practice of music. Picking up where The MusicianÕs Guide to Reading & Writing Music leaves off, Stewart uses the same amusing style, clear examples, and practical advice to encourage readers not just to read music, but to write some of their own. The book sheds light on tonality, chord sequences, scales and modes, tempo, rhythm, improvisation and composition, chords and chord voicings, MIDI, and more. 128 pages, 6 1/8 inch. x 9 1/4 inch.


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Instrumentalist, composer, and magazine columnist Dave Stewart makes the basics of harmony, composition, and improvisation easy to understand. The humorous 121-page volume includes a surprising amount of material and makes the murky depths of theory palatable for even novice musicians. Half of the book is dedicated to chord-voicing instruction and is generously illustrated with standard notation, chord symbols, and guitar chord diagrams. The chapters on rhythm address polyrhythms, rhythmic cycles, irregular time signatures, and the thorny question of what drummers do. Information about improvisation will help you lose your inhibitions and actually start improvising. A chapter is devoted to computers and MIDI, an area of interest even to acoustic guitar players in this technologial age. Stewart's personal and friendly style helps him achieve his stated aim- "to present the inner workings of music in a terror-free way" - and it's an entertaining book even if you aren't in the market for music theory instruction.


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