Can somebody recommend a great Theory Book for a long plane ride

[SantaCruzOMGuy]

I am taking a 22-hour flight next week and wanted to have a great music theory book that would apply well to guitar to read on the plane. I will not have a guitar in my hands to combine with the reading unfortunately but thought there could be something that would still teach me a lot without a guitar in hand. My general music theory understanding is the basics on chord Harmony diatonic stuff modes caged Etc . I would like to find something that steers me more towards being able to mix keys and voice leading and mixing modes Etc. Just doing a basic Google search in looking around let me to Guitar theory for dummies I don't know if this is any good

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[Hotspur]

Do you have a boatload of Beatles songs on your phone?

Then get Pedler's "Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles."

Reading music isn't necessary, but it'll help. It's full of practical examples, so you can listen to the various Beatles tracks to hear the ideas at work.

It's expensive, but contains much more material than your typical Hal-Leonard-Style book. Quite frankly, given how much information is in it, I think it's a bargain.

[JonPR]

I second the Pedler book - way more entertaining than your average theory book. Even if you're not much of a Beatles fan, it might change your mind. (It also has an extensive appendix on general music theory, it's not 100% Beatles.) Only downside - it's heavy! And if you don't have the songs on your phone, you'll wish you had (or had your guitar handy so you could play them).

As a second choice, I'd probably go for theory for dummies, again for the extra entertainment value (combined with good info of course).

[SantaCruzOMGuy]

Originally Posted by JonPR

I second the Pedler book - way more entertaining than your average theory book. Even if you're not much of a Beatles fan, it might change your mind. (It also has an extensive appendix on general music theory, it's not 100% Beatles.) Only downside - it's heavy! And if you don't have the songs on your phone, you'll wish you had (or had your guitar handy so you could play them).

As a second choice, I'd probably go for theory for dummies, again for the extra entertainment value (combined with good info of course).

For that second choice, would you go with guitar theory for dummies or just basic music theory for dummies? I am a bit of a Beatles ignorant person, found their Music for me was a bit too bubbly, always more of a zeppelin kind of guy but I'm sure I could learn a ton from it

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[jseth]

Mot a "music theory book", per se, but Kenny Werner's book, "Effortless Mastery", is an excellent source for tapping into whatever skill set you currently have, and for bringing that out in your playing and writing.

Has an accompanying CD with different "meditations" on it, and it is THE REAL DEAL, not some airy-fairy throwaway type of thing... I read it once, 15 years ago, and still employ techniques I gleaned from that book.

Another wonderful tome on music is Martin Williams' "The Jazz Tradition"... again, not 'theory" but more of a wider look at the genre...

[amyFB]

My favorite is Fretboard Logic III - here are the first three pages to tease your interest:



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[JonPR]

Originally Posted by SantaCruzOMGuy

For that second choice, would you go with guitar theory for dummies or just basic music theory for dummies?

Assuming you're a guitarist, I'd say guitar theory for dummies! I'm not familiar with the differences, but I'd guess the guitar one is not talking down to us primitive illiterates, or leaving too much stuff out.

Originally Posted by SantaCruzOMGuy

I am a bit of a Beatles ignorant person, found their Music for me was a bit too bubbly, always more of a zeppelin kind of guy but I'm sure I could learn a ton from it

Understood. As a teenager in the 1960s I wasn't a Beatles fan myself until their less "bubbly" phase (Strawberry Fields, Tomorrow Never Knows), and it was many years before I appreciated the earlier pop stuff.

The point about studying them for songwriting and theory is they basically created the entire genre of rock songwriting. They pulled together everything that had gone before them, and everyone that came after (including Led Zep) used what they developed. Their influence couldn't be escaped - and still can't. They were the watershed.
It's the breadth of influences and styles they absorbed that makes them the perfect object of theoretical study. They dabbled in everything, essentially, had a crack at everything from rock'n'roll to blues to soul to country to jazz to heavy rock (then just being invented to by others) to avant garde.

What Pedler does is take various standard theoretical concepts and then present Beatles songs that illustrate them. In fact, there is no theoretical concept I'm aware of that is not illustrated in some Beatles song or other - that's their value in this respect. (If there was anything they didn't do, such as certain rarefied classical concepts, then nobody after them - in pop or rock - did it either. There are some jazz theories you could say were barely present in the Beatles work - but then they're barely present in any rock after them either.)
You couldn't write a book like that on any other pop songwriters - except maybe Zappa, Paul Simon, Bacharach, Brian Wilson or Bowie. And even those would be rather thin in comparison. (Certainly not earlier writers like Irving Berlin or Cole Porter - highly erudite, but much more limited in scope or imagination.)
The amazing thing about Pedler's book for me is - in nearly 800pp - how many Beatles songs it doesn't even mention. (Mind you, he does go over the top on some details. Eg, a whole chapter on the Hard Days Night chord! One chord, 42 pages! Truly he is the King of the Nerds. )

But in your case - I guess it's not the book for your plane trip! (any time you do want to access Beatles theory - IF you ever do - then you can get it free here: http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/...alphabet.shtml - and, unlike Pedler, that's every song, and no unnecessary depth to any of them.