Fundamentals of Piano Theory: 1

I’m an adult taking piano lessons. Although I’ve been playing a few years, my first teacher neglected to teach me basic music theory. My new teacher asked me to buy this work book to aid me in learning what I missed. Overall, it’s very good… but I would not recommend it unless you have a teacher. The assignments are often very unclear as they don’t always give you an example of what they want you to do. There is also not an answer key, so unless you have a teacher to look at your answers, you have no idea if you’re right or not. So… yes, it’s a good work book, but I took away a star because the assignments need explanations.

I purchased the first 5 books in this series based on the positive reviews and my teacher's recommendation. Having worked through these books, I wish I would have saved my money (and time). I'll begin with a few positives, these books are designed as workbooks with many examples to help a student understand the concepts and also contain musical examples a student can play. Unfortunately, each subsequent book in the series re-hashes (or exactly duplicates) a large amount of content from the prior book(s). I certainly appreciate repetition in learning, but I can easily just re-review the material from the prior book. I feel lucky if I get 10 new pages of material in each subsequent book, which isn't a great value for my money. As an example, The Four Periods of Music history overview is repeated over-and-over again in every book (once would have been enough for me). In addition, the headers of sections on a page are in roughly 20+ point font with lots of whitespace, you don't get much content per page.Overall, I don't plan to continue with this series. In my personal opinion, there's better options to learn music theory.

I really like the way the book is set out, but there are no answers to check if I got the questions right! How am I supposed to correct my mistakes and learn where I went wrong without answers?

My daughter's piano teacher asked the parents to buy this book for her while she's taking lessons. I think it has great theory and not a lot of extra for the kids to learn piano. My only gripe is that the binding can't take the abuse of a 6-year-old. The cover fell over after a few weeks of use - again, probably due to my daughter not knowing how to gently handle the book.

I have students who have gone through all 11 levels…they have no problems passing AP theory! Fantastic books.