Informative and entertaining, this book discusses a number of widely-accepted misconceptions about music and offers in their place practical and logical ideas regarding human perception of music and its relation to traditional systems of notation. The writing style is informal, humorous, and assumes little or no previous knowledge of music. Drawing on his extensive background in the music world, the author shares in a light-hearted but logical way the practical experiences and careful thinking that led him to his conclusions. Despite its folksy accessibility, the book is well grounded in scholarship. A basic premise of the book is that, like spoken language, music should be experienced as sound before it is learned in its symbolic form as notation, and that when music is presented this way, a learner is better prepared to navigate the tangles and perplexities of traditional notation.
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Editorial Reviews
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Why doesn't formal music training make a difference in success? Is there a difference between traditional teaching patterns and the realities of the music world? Eskelin focuses on a host of musical myths and realities which are commonly taught as gospel, but which form barriers to music education. -- Midwest Book Review
About the Author
Gerald Eskelin is the author of Components of Vocal Blend and The Sounds of Music: Perception and Notation.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Controversial? No. Worthwhile? Perhaps!,
By
This review is from: Lies My Music Teacher Told Me (Paperback)
Apparently this book is a lot more controversial than I thought, judging from the profusion of Amazon reviews, both positive and negative, some showing rampant misunderstandings of music theory (worse than Eskelin's!). Yes, there is a little problem with Eskelin's tone in the book. (Eskelin talks down to his audience, spends too much time trying to justify himself through his credentials and ego-puffing anecdotes, and tries unsuccessfully to use simple English and simple concepts to explain music theory--the result being occasionally almost incomprehensible prose and sometimes bad grammar.) No, the "revelations" in the book are not so revolutionary or controversial that the book deserves its title. And yes, he sometimes mixes up musical terms, and even gets a few facts wrong. (You're waiting for the "But", right? Be patient, it's coming!)I am a music theory professor, and have talked at length with many music theorists about theory pedagogy, and even have presented a paper on theory pedagogy at a conference. In my experience, in most music theory classrooms and private studios, too little emphasis is put on the way of teaching that Eskelin tries to model in his book. Eskelin, having not thoroughly studied the history of music theory or current music theory research, theory pedagogy research, and music perception and cognition research, ultimately is not as successful as some more experienced writers/teachers might be. And yet some of the alternatives to traditional ways of presenting musical fundamentals that Eskelin discusses in the book are still quite worthwhile. (Note: Most of the material taught in the book is simply musical rudiments, building blocks, notation, and practical information. These are not really music theory, which studies the structure, form, design, aesthetics, meaning, and interpretation of real music, and also speculates more abstractly about musical structure and aesthetics.) Eskelin perhaps conflates the concepts of musical meter and time signature. But his general approach is a good one, even if oversimplified. Basically, all meters can be categorized based on the relationships among three related pulse streams (felt or implied beats, not necessarily heard beats): the measure (or bar), the main beat, and the beat's first level of subdivision. The reason why it is called a time signature and not just a meter signature is that it tells a musician more than just the meter (information that is encapsulated entirely into the top number of the time signature). A time signature tells how the meter will be written in note values (what note value gets the main beat, information that is encapsulated into the bottom number of the time signature), and even sometimes a general tempo range for the piece. Although 2/2, 4/4, and 2/4 are all simple duple meters, pieces written in cut time (2/2) are typically felt differently from pieces written in common time (4/4) or 2/4, or else we wouldn't have music written in each of these time signatures. One particularly important point that Eskelin makes is that some less sophisticated musicians think that scales are merely technical exercises, when in fact they are tonal resources--systems of potential harmonic relationships within a key. While Eskelin blindly perpetuates Hindemith's conflation of the terms root and tonic, his espousal of emphasizing this perspective when teaching about scales is still good advice. To accomplish this a teacher can tell students to write their scales in thirds, or descending, or in a random order, always without using the key signature (using accidentals instead) or using a different key signature entirely, or to name the nth scale degree of any key using the proper accidental. Teachers can also have their students memorize all of the diatonic intervals using singing exercises that are structured like games. (I know that these are not revolutionary ideas, but I wish that my theory teachers had done this with me!) There is one important error in Eskelin's book that I must point out in this forum. Eskelin provides the just ratios for all of the diatonic scale degrees and intervals, including the just major third 5/4 (the interval from a major triad's root to its third). (And yes, there are just ratios for dissonant intervals too, because dissonant intervals are formed as a result of the combination of consonant intervals. This is why it is a system of just intonation, and not just a scale of just intervals.) Eskelin then tells anecdotes of how he trains singers who are used to hearing equal temperament how to lock in their harmonies as justly tuned chords. When Eskelin tells us that singers have to place the third of a major chord higher than in equal temperament it becomes apparent that he has not done his math homework. The just major third 5/4 is less than the equal-tempered major third 2^(4/12) =~ 1.2599, meaning that it is lower, not higher. (I also have trouble with the notion that we all somehow hear everything in equal temperament all the time in our imaginations, but--since I can't tell you the alternative tuning in which people imagine music--that's an argument for another day.) If you are the type of person who believes everything that is presented in black and white print, then this book is not for you. If you are the type of person who reads skeptically, critically, and analytically, then this book may or may not interest you. (You will probably find Eskelin's ideas somewhat less exciting than promised.) If you have had a relatively poor musical education, then this book might be enlightening. If you want to improve your way of teaching music, then this book may have a few hints that could help you. I still find myself recommending this book despite its obvious flaws, simply because it brings together a lot of information from many different sources (mostly uncredited) into a quick and easy read.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Try again.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Lies My Music Teacher Told Me (Paperback)
I've docked this a star for its smarmy, unctious, obnoxious manner of presentation. It violates two of E.B. White's cardinal rules (as set forth in "The Elements of Style"): 1. Do not affect a breezy manner. 2. Do not talk down to your readers. ("Lies" calls itself an exposition for grownups--or adults, as we grownups usually prefer to refer to ourselves-- but it treats its readers like particularly backward children.) (It also consistently violates another of E.B White's rules: it forgets that "hopefully" is an adverb and uses it instead as a synonym for "I hope" or "let's hope".)Prospective purchasers should be cautioned that "Lies" is written from the standpoint of a singer and implicitly assumes its readers are primarily interested in singing. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but readers who have experience with singers and vocal teachers (and who are not themselves singers) should know why I point this out. The "lies" referred to in the title are essentially simplifications, and this book essentially replaces them with other simplifications. Certain remarks it makes concerning rhythm are apposite, but it says nothing about rhythm that isn't better said in Paul Creston's much earlier "Principles of Rhythm". Although "Principles of Rhythm" is not cited, this section seems to me something of a watering-down, mangling, and misunderstanding of it. Tuning is much more problematic than "Lies" suggests. "Lies" confounds Pythagorean and just tuning. It doesn't notice that a diatonic just tuning, within a SINGLE "key", contains analomous intervals: a wolf fifth and a Pythagorean minor third, or that there exist paradigmatic ratios for only perfect intervals and major and minor thirds and sixths, not for augmented and diminished intervals, not for seconds and sevenths. These other ratios are always derived as RESULTANTS from the very tempered, Pythagorean, and just SCALES "Lies" eschews. For a charming, lucid, and accurate introduction to tuning and musical acoustics, read instead "Science and Music" by Sir James Jeans. To sum up: I recommend for interested laymen "The ABC of Music" by Imogen Holst and "Science and Music" by Sir James Jeans. I recommend for musicians and music students "Principles of Rhythm " by Paul Creston. I recommend for writers, editors, and publishers "The Elements of Style" by E.B. White and William Strunk.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book will surprize you!,
By Paul La Rocca (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lies My Music Teacher Told Me (Paperback)
This book will surprize you! My initial impression, based on the title alone, was "Oh no, not another one of those books". But as I thumbed through it, I was pulled in by some real "truths" that I was aware of (such as well-tempered vs. "natural" tuning). I think that the explanations are quite clear and presented in a straight-forward and interesting way. There is some real theory in there such as the Hindemith concept of intervals and the tritone theory for key identification (for the technically inclined)I can see from comments by other reviewers that there were some objections that really amount to differences in style and delivery ("eccentric"?) rather than content. I personally found the author's sometime glib comments and interesting sidetracks rather refreshing. Let's be honest, this topic can be dead-dull if not mixed in with some lightness and humour- which probably explains why the thornier matter of musical theory is usually relegated to graduate seminars and dusty textbooks! As both a scientist and musician, I think this book achieves it's goal in an interesting and informative way by trying to make critical concepts of music theory accessible and relevant to music as we hear it. It does this by challenging the crutches of the well-tempered piano and the limits of musical notation. Like anything in life, you can get out of this book what you want. You can read it as a expose of "lies", or as an attempt to make music relevant to how we really hear it- which is what I think the author tries to communicate. It's up to you!
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