Harmonization-Transposition at the Keyboard [Paperback] Review

I waited quite a while for Amazon to procure this book for me, and it was with high hopes and expectations that I examined it, yesterday, when it finally arrived.The cover looked promising, as did the upbeat introduction.I began leafing through the book, and for the first 23 pages I was pleased.Then, alas, came abottomless pit of worthless, un-explained, un-documented examples beginning on page 24 and continuing up to and including the last page of the book.From page 24 to the end of the book is utterly, totally useless. It consists of melodies, all lifted from the public domain and nearly all attibuted to composers such as Mozart.There are very few chord symbols notated on these melodies, and all of them are treble cleff only.Page 23 says to apply the lessons taught in the first sections of the book, to the practice material that ensues.This book is so useless, and unuseable, that it is actually hard to get mad at the authors.I can only assume that they are so totatlly, utterly out of touch with the real world that they truly don't understand that a huge amount of borrowed melodieswith no explanation or examples of the correct way to harmonize them, is simply unacceptable to the vast majority of readers. There is nothing whatever in this book on the subject of transposition.I cannot imagine why the word "transposition" was part of the title.I say this somewhat authoritatively, as I have personally spent that last 6 months teaching himself how to transpose at the piano in all 12 keys.There are so many excellent books on keyboard harmony and voicing available through Amazon, that is is expecially ironic that this worthless book has a mis-leading title that will probably fool a lot of people into buying it the way I was.I cannot think of anything positive to say about this book. It should never have been published.The authors have not written enough of a book to even consider them real authors.It doesn't get any worse than this book.Any book, even a telephone book, is better than this book.

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Product Description:
While this book was designed for college classes in functional piano, it can easily be used by any high school student who is able to sight-read simple melodies. Part 1 presents clear explanations of the functions of primary and secondary triads, dominant sevenths and secondary dominants, and modulation. Suggestions for developing facility in harmonizing in various free styles rather than the more formal chorale style are also included. Part 2 contains 797 melodies carefully selected and classified to include a variety of keys, chords, rhythms, and accompaniment styles.

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