Harmony

What Hacker News says

1. swileySep 2020
   Math books are very cheap and very information dense. I'm going through Mendelson's "Introduction to Topology" right now. It's very good and cost only $10.

   Harmony by Walter Piston (and also "Twenty First Century Harmony," the book it inspired) is IMO one of the better books I've read on western music theory. I got my copy used for $20.

   SICP is nice to loan out (and also nice to read, it covers some pretty weird and advanced topics near the ends of the chapters), my girlfriend is going through my copy. ~$20.

   A couple Oreily books for whatever you're doing at work ~$120 (although double check, believe it or not there are a couple duds.)

   UML distilled by Martin Fowler is very good. ~$20?

   The art of electronics is a great book, I personally learned a lot from this kind of weird book titled "Basic Pulse Circuits" I found at a used book store for ~$10.

   Then leave the extra $100 for whatever interesting thing you find at good book stores (I've had the best luck in college towns in Appalachian Virginia.)

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2. swileyDec 2019
   If you want something structured like a math book, I learned from Walter Piston’s “Harmony.” I can’t find a place to pirate it (actually I did find an incredibly low quality scan somewhere after a week of searching) but it’s not an expensive book. I found it used (signed by “dean Howard” I think) while wandering around in my favorite book store in Lynchburg (Lynchburg and Charlottesville both have amazing small bookstores if you live in VA I would totally recommend checking them out.)

   I think the only thing you’ll need to know going into it is how to read sheet music.

   It doesn’t really go too much into counterpoint or melody if I remember correctly, for those there are couple YouTube channels I ended up watching that are pretty much just a narrator analyzing other people’s music:

   1) 8bit music theory

   2) Richard Atkinson

   There are others but those are my favorites.

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3. lioetersAug 2019
   This might depend on your personal preference and approach, but I like books with high information density, with pieces that I can chew on for a long time - even if much of it is beyond my understanding at the beginning (or even at the end). Here are some of my favorites:

   The Jazz Theory Book (Mark Levine)

   Huge series of play-along books by Jamey Aebersold

   The Geometry of Musical Rhythm (Godfried Toussaint)

   Harmony (Walter Piston)

   A Geometry of Music - Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice (Dmitri Tymoczko)

   Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (George Russell)

   Augmented Scale Theory (Javier Arau)

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4. evoxedMar 2012
   Perhaps relevant to some other HN users...

   This list has a recommendation for Introduction to Tonal Theory over Piston's Harmony. I am not familiar with the former, but I found Walter Piston's books to be fascinating and generally very good. It's an older book and so, as I've found with most textbooks from its time, it is somewhat lacking in explanations of certain examples– but then, the internet will supply you with more than you need if you're already reading the material.

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5. evoxedMar 2012
   Just checked my shelf– I have the third edition of Harmony and 4th of Counterpoint, terse is a fair judgement. I'll have to give the later editions a look, but judging by the reviews (and the Revised by MARK DEVOTO tag...) I'm not going to like what I see.
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