At last, a scale theory book that was written with students, rather than teachers, in mind!
In Scales at a Glance, Setting Music Theory on Its Ear Clea Saal, a dyslexic who found the staff to be an incredibly frustrating device, replaces the traditionally tedious task of memorizing countless scales with an unbelievably simple visual approach, one that turns even the most complex scale structure into something that can be grasped by a student in his or her first music lesson.
Even though this book was written with beginners in mind, its approach will also bring an unexpected relief to the more advanced students out there, as it will allow them to instantly visualize all the modes of any scale, and it will also provide them with an effective tool to help them understand the structure of all those scales that are foreign to the Western tradition.
In a little more than a hundred pages this book covers a wide range of topics. It begins with the definition of what is a note, and goes all the way to the concept of microtonal systems... and it does this in a way that is accessible to those who are unfamiliar, or uncomfortable, with musical notation as such. In fact, with the exception of one chapter dealing with that particular subject, the staff is barely even mentioned in this book's pages!
Now in a fully revised new edition!
About the Author: Under duress Clea Saal has confessed to being born on this planet, though she insists she is not certain whether or not that would have been her first choice if anyone had bothered to ask for her opinion on the matter. She was born at an early age somewhere in the Southern hemisphere, though she was dragged to the other side of the Equator by her parents when she was only a few years old, and has been playing equatorial ping-pong ever since. She began writing when she was six and, to some people's annoyance, she hasn't stopped yet. She endured twelve years of basic education --make that thirteen, she did flunk once-- and then by reason of tradition, masochism or insanity, she went back for more and eventually earned a degree in English Literature. The day she finally graduated most professors in her department literally cried for joy.
She claims to have been surrounded by books ever since she can remember. She saw them, smelled them, chewed them, tore them to pieces, scribbled on them, heard her mother reading them to her, and, when she got a little older, she read them herself. She also had quite a few books thrown at her. Under the circumstances, becoming a writer seemed to her like a logical next step.
