Music Theory: From Beginner to Expert - The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide to Understanding and Learning Music Theory Effortlessly (Essential Learning Tools for Musicians) Paperback – March 17, 2018

This book is a most useful to musicians at almost any level to advance their knowledge of music theory. It is well written and well organized, and comes with links to an audio examples which complement the text and make it come alive. I am only part way into the book and I have already used the knowledge in my composing. I had an issue with the audio examples, to which the author responded and fixed. Highly recommended.

Comprehensive, concise and practical. Nicolas does such a good job of covering what’s important to understanding HOW music works, that I can see how it would be overwhelming to beginners. So take heart if you are and want to attain a professional level because this book will take you there.There’s something for every level in this book. Expect to ponder many aspects of this wonderful thing we call music and improve your musicianship as you do. There’s so much information that even seasoned professionals will find “I didn’t know that” topics. At the very least you’ll get different perspectives that will expand your horizons, i.e. there’s plenty of food for thought (that’s not wordy or a waste of time).I particularly appreciated how Nicolas points out crucial information that is easy to not to think much of. For example, page 192 Timbre/Tone points out the importance of this subject. For years I was “unable” to figure out songs by ear because no matter what I did, it “didn’t sound right” to me. When I heard other people play I’d think “yeah, that’s it, but something’s wrong” without having a clue what it was. If only I had known that coming out of the gate.I can only think of two suggestions to improve this book. 1) The word “microtuning” is never used. The subject is covered to a degree with equal temperament, overtone and just intonation, but does not point out how modern synths can easily create other divisions of the octave (19, 22, 24, 27 and 31 divisions are common) and that there is music specifically written for various tunings. 2) I was pleased to find Spirituality and Music covered on page 233. This would be a good place to add the healing aspects of music. Steven Halpern’s Chakra Suite (and the book Sound Health) are good examples of what I’m talking about. When I first seen Steven in the 80’s, He demonstrated how powerful music is and the seminar not only made me a better musician, it changed my life. So if you’re looking for a book to take you to a professional level with music and change your life, this book will help you do that. It’s that good.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.I found the explanations thorough and easy to understand. Scales, chords - how they are built and how they relate, chord substitutions, modes, inversions and extensions all became more clear to me and will give the aspiring songwriter a wealth of ideas to explore and have fun with.Not that you need to be or want to be a songwriter to benefit. All players should know the information in this book.Being such a broad and deep subject, it's impossible to cover all of the aspects of theory in a single book but this little gem certainly has enough that anyone wanting to get a grasp of the more important/fundamental concepts of music theory will be well rewarded.I don't often rate anything 5 stars but Nicolas' book comes close to that standard for me.The (very minor) faults as I see it are an occasional mis-spelling and such, maybe auto spell raised it's ugly head once or twice.I want to re-read it and update this review as I didn't bother making any notes while reading but all in all I would highly recommend this book to anyone with no knowledge on the subject, or someone like me with a more intermediate understanding.I'm sure there are professional players who could gain a lot from reading it.I'll be looking at Carter's other books and hope their quality are as good as this one.I'm very impressed with this book and want to help encourage more from this author so I also paid for a copy.It's that good.

Read this out of curiosity, I love music but I'm not a musician. This book is perfect for the music lover and expands on knowledge for those studying music.