This site consolidates my work in Music Theory. Each set of pages grew out of a need in my own teaching. When I first started at the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Perfoming Arts (CAPA), I could not find a workbook appropriate for my high school students. My idea, which developed into a series of workbooks which I call, “Pathways to Harmony”, was to write a transition, in small step by step increments, from music funda-mentals to first year, Schenkerian influenced, college theory.
Then, when I started teaching my AP course, I had a hard time with two areas: I had never taught and could not find materials to teach harmonic dictation or contextual listen-ing. Although there were a few computer programs to help with harmonic dictation, I could not find anything which reflected my
idea of systematically expanding phrases from 3 to 10 chords. Worse, I could find nothing at all on contextual listening, which is a significant portion of the AP test. This aural analysis of “real music,” as I called it, inspired me to find and organize short excerpts from commercial recordings of live music which isolate various theoretical concepts.
A copyright attorney has advised me that these excerpts are legal to post. First, they are so short that they are hardly a satisfying musical experience in themselves, and since my students often ask what the piece was that they had just heard and since they then go to the trouble of writing down the name, I have come to the conclusion that these excerpts actually encourage the purchase of com-
mercial recordings. Second, these excerpts
are clearly for educational purposes only. And
only. And finally I have decided to restrict my excerpts to well known compositions in the public domain. Teachers should feel free to download this music.
Sheet music pages were added later, almost as an afterthought. I had always enjoyed writing short arrangements of familiar songs for my piano students, and I thought that as long as I had already gone through the trouble of writing them out, and as long as I already had a web site, why not share my music with other teachers and their students. To my great surprise, the sheet music pages became very popular and I was encouraged to add to them frequently. For over a year now, I have been adding one or two original arrangements every month.