Foundations of Music and Musicianship [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Damschroder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1992

Designed for the beginner with little or no background in music, this book presents a programme of instruction for mastering the fundamental concepts of music theory. Taking an active hands-on approach, it emphasizes the development of mucisianship skills and concepts as well as discriminative listening over the routine memorization of facts.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The strengths of this text are many. I find the prose and explanations to be exceptional in both writing style and clarity, a rarity in elementary music texts. The examples are well chosen and are based on tunes familiar to the majority of students: again, this is not always the case! On a more specific level, I am pleased with the way intervals are presented; they are tied exclusively to diatonic scales and not discussed as abstract pairs of pictures, which is infinitely more instructive to the student."

"This text strikes a balance between teaching goals for non-music majors as well as those for music majors who need thorough review; i.e., the text gets into harmonic analysis very much in line with what most college undergraduate music majors do."

"I think my students will find the new edition even more user friendly--it explains things very clearly and moves forward at a more even pace. There is a good mix of exercises, examples, and helpful hints." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

David Damschroder teaches music theory at the University of Minnesota. He is author of LISTEN AND SING (Schirmer) and the forthcoming AN ESSAY ON HARMONIC ANALYSIS. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Schirmer Books (April 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0028706625
• ISBN-13: 978-0028706627
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 2.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,053,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine text to begin learning the grammar of music, May 18, 2004

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Foundations of Music and Musicianship (with CD-ROM) (Paperback)

What a fabulous resource for an introductory course in music! The book is aimed at liberal arts students who want to take a course in the fundamentals of music, however, I think (way) back to my music theory course in high school and this would have been a terrific text for that kind of course as well.

Since music making is an activity that involves your mind (and heart), I appreciate Prof. Damschroder's emphasis on learning through doing. Students will sing, clap, and play their way to understanding the basic grammar of music. The text starts at the very beginning of musical notation and works its way through rhythm, meter, scales, accidentals, chords, and some chromaticiscm. By the end of this one term course the student understands the basics of harmonizing simple melodies and can detect errors in notation and matching what they hear with what is written down. There is a good basic glossary and an appendix with additional musical notation helps. An index is also provided.

Another terrific resource is a CD that contains the musical examples and exercises in the book so the student can work on his or her own and drill themselves a bit and actually work the problems in the book while listening to the exercises through their computer. I like the fact that the student can choose to hear the examples and exercises as a piano, violin, clarinet, oboe, horn, or saxophone if there are pitches. If they are rhythm exercises they can listen to them as a piano, harp, clarinet, vibraphone, drum, or woodblock. It may seem a little thing, but having taught ear training, it does help students to hear examples in the sound they are more familiar in hearing. String players hear strings more easily, woodwind players like to hear woodwinds, and so forth.

The book also comes with a large fold out chart of the keyboard with each key diagrammed to its exact place on the bass or treble clef. This can be of immeasurable help to non-keyboard players trying to get oriented to reading two staves as a single unit and how they map onto those white and black keys.

This is a real achievement and I hope it gets widely adopted. It certainly can help students in classes, but it is so well done that someone who was interested in learning this material could work through it on their own with the CD. It might help them to have someone they can go to for help now and again, but things are explained quite well in this book.

Oh, and when you first try to use the CD, make sure you go to the preferences FIRST and select the proper output mode for your computer.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Attention High School Music Theory Teachers..., June 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Foundations of Music and Musicianship (Paperback)

Text is well sequenced with content as well as supporting worksheets. There is no irrelevant information in this book to the subject area of Music Theory, as compared to other books which include impertinent information.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I wouldn't give this any stars, if I could., April 15, 2006

By 

Tamara Mady (MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foundations of Music and Musicianship (with CD-ROM) (Paperback)

I definitely do NOT recommend this text. Unnecessarily complex for incredibly easy to understand topics, indirect and non-linear in its explanations, and just plain silly.