Customer Reviews

Modulation (Dover Books on Music)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A good book for understanding a backbone for modulation from any key to any other key, for example, A minor to E# major (11 accidentals away), or Db minor to F# major (14 accidentals) [number 91 in the book].

Built largely around the reinterpretation of bII (Neapolitan sixth), you'll find just about every Strauss modulation that uses this progression. Lots of fun, but not for the neophyte.

It's a simple theory book that shows you the simplest ways to modulate from one key to the other. A great book for those wanting to understand modulation. I recommend anyone wants to understand theory or just want to know how to compose better to get this book. It's great!

Although Max Reger's 100+ examples all end with some flavor of either a V-I or vii-I chord progression, I would classify more than half of them as transitions from one key to another rather than a transition from one key to another with an exclamatory cadential ending. The book is a usable reference, but not for the beginning student of harmony or music theory. Line and smooth harmonic transition in his examples are frequently sacrificed apparently in the interest of brevity.

Despite the negativity of the paragraph above, this little book proved to be a very valuable addition to my reference library, but not in the way I expected it would. I bought the book to use as a quick reference for a modulation while I was composing music, but found that it was far from the cookbook tool I expected. Some of Reger's examples proved to have either a harsh, incomplete, or unconvincing cadential sound, and that spurred me to work to make them less harsh and more complete sounding to the ear with a strong cadential ending.

In those efforts I found the real value in Max Reger's work. I reworked 63 of the 100+ examples to make each smoother, more complete, and/or more convincing, and that's where the real learning took place. I now have a "library" of modulations which I can draw upon whenever I need to. I strongly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in music composition or analysis as a study guide to really teaching yourself all about transitions and modulations. However, I make this recommendation with a strong warning that it is not a cookbook for writing music with smooth, flowing transitions.

Spend the $7 for the book and then use it to teach yourself modulations and transitions by creating your own set of reference modulations based upon Reger's. Be economical and try to improve on an example with as few additional beats as possible. Unless you are a budding Mozart, that process may take a considerable amount of time, but it will be time well spent.

Max Reger's book on modulation is a wonderful piece of work. For any student of music theory that's had problems getting their heads around modulation, from major to minor and so on, it's an absolute must-have.

In simple terms, it's very much like a "cookbook" of formulas for modulating between keys. The formulae are represented by traditional Roman Numeral Notation making it very digestible for intermediate musicians (who should have a good foundation in Roman Numeral /harmonic analysis). Reger's book, unlike many modern texts on the same subject, cuts through the waffle and gets to the meat of a topic that is both useful and rewarding.

I would highly recommend this book to intermediate music students, as well as serious songwriters seeking to incorporate higher levels of musical sophistication into their compositions. A great book, in the canon of music theory, by a great theorist.

I don't really know how to use this book ... it's just a sequence of examples ... I'm still learning harmony and maybe is too early for me but I don't know, I never seen anything like this before.
Just to prevent other people to make the same mistake.