Finally, you can learn how music works, and take advantage of all the incredible sounds available to you! And what’s more, you can do it in a straightforward, practical manner that will get you up and running quickly. While learning to read music is a very useful skill, the time it takes can be a massive roadblock for many in the journey towards learning music theory. This is an unfortunate circumstance, because learning to read music is not actually required in order to understand music theory itself. Put another way, you can understand how the notes work together before dedicating significant time into learning how to represent them in sheet music. With this in mind, Elements of Music T heory takes the unique approach of teaching you music theory first, then when you decide you are ready, how to read standard musical notation. Elements of Music Theory is a complete instructional resource for beginning and intermediate musicians keen on self-study. It takes you through all important topics in a clear, logical manner, building on previous steps. You begin with the basics, including note names, how scales are built, and how chords are built from scales. With these building blocks, you next examine how simple elements are combined into chord progressions. You eventually progress to advanced topics, such as functional harmony, modal interchange, exotic scales and harmony, odd time signatures, polymeter and polyrhythm, among many others. If you have always wondered why certain collections of notes or chords sound the way they do, or how to create new sounds that seem out of your reach, then this book is for you.