Read Music: Notation Fundamentals Made Easy

I have been teaching my 11 year old Goddaughter to play the piano for the last three years. I have a copy of “How to Read Music” and found we were frequently referring to it. She asked me to get her a copy for her birthday so she can refer to it while she is doing her practise. It is certainly a very useful tool to keep by the piano.

Reading music is actually easier than I thought – especially after getting this book. Roger Evans definitely simplifies it to its simplest form. I can now play a full song on the organ, but I used the bottom row of keys – haven’t gotten good enough to use both the top and bottom row together as of yet. Glad I bought this book because when I forget something, I effortlessly refer back to it in this book.

Brand new condition. No bends, scratches or writing. Very good simple and basic instructional book for beginner music students. I will be using it to teach my elementary school aged children.

Content of book

This book exactly — EXACTLY — fulfills any reasonable expectation for a general use manual of musical notation. It does not waste words but uses exactly the number needed to its purpose. It is rich in illustrations. Really, it is a “technical manual” that clearly presents everything a music student could want to know about musical notation “starting with the ABC of it, right down to the XYZ of it.” (h/t Sammy Cahn) It doesn’t waste “white space,” but lays out its material as if no publisher were fretting over the expense of every page. (Extravagant use of white space can actually distract from the material and require needless page flipping.) In the back of the book is “a short musical dictionary” of eighteen pages, which also serves as an index referencing page numbers in the body where the subject is treated in more detail. This “dictionary” exhibits all the virtues of the book. The type is a size that is easily readable with nicely sufficient line spacing. The defined words are in bold. Indentations nicely keep the reader on track without being wasteful. Even in this dictionary section, there is lavish use of very small illustrations of symbols and features unique to music. Best of all, this compact little book (of 112 pages) can be easily gripped along the spine with one hand as the pages flip by under control of the opposite thumb. That is to say that you can easily pick it up, flip through the dictionary for what you want, and then flip over to the needed location in the body, almost in one motion. In short, the modest size, light weight, and binding make this book very convenient to handle and to use.

So why if I love it so much, do I dock it a star? Well, I owned (and lost) an earlier edition of this book that is not noticeably different except in the cover and paper used. Ugh! The previous edition used a bright white paper of nice quality and finish; this new edition uses an off-white, more natural-colored paper, with a coarser finish. It is not horrible, not at all. But is detracts noticeably from the elegance of the book and the pleasure of using it. I will note that it is pretty inexpensive so I suppose economy of production was a serious factor, IMO an awful choice by the publisher to save a couple of bucks.

I have’nt throughly looked through it but seems to be in good condition even though it’s used love the simplicity of using it. And how it goes in depth and how you can practice with it using other instruments if u have one. So that’s a great feature of the book.

I bought this book for my daughter who has taken in interest in music and who has taught her self Uke. She is now learning guitar and wanted to get into some music theory. This book seems like a quick, good starting point for her. She understands it easily. It has both piano and guitar examples on it’s pages. She finds this very helpful. It seems like a good stepping stone to the meatier theory stuff if she decides to go that far.