Since we have a music theory forum now, those who want to give themselves a painless introduction to notes, intervals, scales, chords, progressions and so on could do much worse than check out the Guide Formerly Known As The Ravenspiral Guide.

Very little prior knowledge of music is required; all you need to work through it is some way of playing notes. You don't even have to be able to read music to understand what's going on.

Available in PDF format and experimentally in EPUB. Also available for inline viewing on Scribd. (Last updated: 26 August 2012.)
Last edited by k-bird on Sun Aug 26, 2012 6:34 am; edited 3 times in total

very friggin' cool...thanks!!

That's great !

I had looked at other online theory resources, and it's the first that doesn't make me ask 'but what is all this stuff usefull for ?" past a certain point.

It is very complete, going from theory to songwriting and arrangement.

This is well written and open to many musical genres.

The best resource I've found so far !

Recommended for everyone and especially beginners as it's a very pleasant read, contrary to other books.

That's funny. I went to save the PDF where I would naturally save it and found I had a version of this already saved back in Dec 2004. It has been modified since that time.

Maybe this time I'll actually read it.

Regards
Caleb

Resurrecting an old thread... but I've been reading this guide and I was wondering--if the author is still around--if it was possible to get an EPUB version. You know, for e-readers..

I tried converting it from PDF to EPUB and it didn't go that well--the formatting of the notes written in tables/columns got messed up.

Perhaps converting it from ODT (or whatever is the original file) to EPUB would yield better results.
(Calibre is usually the recommended tool for the job.)


In any case, thanks to the author for this nice guide!

I'm looking into an EPUB version; just converting the ODT files completely breaks the images though, so getting an EPUB version will mean re-importing the vector graphics as a different file format and working with the resulting formatting glitches.. of which there appear to be many. Not a small job, unfortunately.

Talk about synchronicity though - i just started working on it again last night after not touching it for over a year.

Righto. Here's a provisional EPUB version: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1650913/rsg-0.8.epub - there are lots of glitches in there but i spotted a proper table of contents in Calibre so it's swings and roundabouts at the moment. I'll do more formatting compatibility fixes as part of the rewrite i'm doing at the moment, and a new version should make its way up onto Scribd before too long as well i imagine.

Some stuff has already changed: the subsection on atonality for instance has been put into its own full section, the intro is shorter, sections have been renamed, etc.

Nice.
I tried it briefly on a Nook Simple Touch. One thing I'd suggest is making the images a little bit bigger and saving them as PNG if possible (since they're just 2-3 colors).
But it's looking decent already..

So can we expect an update of the pdf too?

And where will it be for download? The link in the last version connects with a site for sale...

Thanks. Still wrestling a bit with images in ebook formats unfortunately, very new to it all, but i'll get there eventually.



An updated PDF version is here.

Fantastic!! Thank you!!

EDIT: On page 15 you mention a link to harmony-central, but that link doesn't work anymore.

Fiendish! Thanks for reporting it.

It's fixed in the manuscript but i'll wait until i've amassed a few more fixes and changes before i publish a new version.

thanks for the update.

Can we help you out with some typo's?

On page 5, 9th line from the bottom up, you have 2 'to's in a row. 1 should get deleted.

On page 19, the last interval in the picture = (#13) flat thirteenth

That should be sharp thirtheenth

Best,
manducator