Gaining Music Literacy

Gaining Music Literacy is designed for one-semester college courses introducing basic music theory, elementary sight singing, and beginning keyboard techniques. Its 175 pages cover everything a student needs to prepare them to become music majors once they have mastered the contents contained therein. The book was designed to be easy to carry, user-friendly, and inexpensive.

Goals for the theory and sight singing components:

1. Write and play all major and minor scales and key signatures.
2. Know and label the functional names of the scale steps.
3. Write and perform all of the intervals contained within those scales (one octave).
4. Write and perform all of the triads built on those scales.
5. Write and perform all rhythmic values from whole notes to dotted eighth/sixteenth note combinations. Rests, too.
6. Sight-sing simple melodies and duets in major in treble and bass clefs.

Goals for the keyboard component:

1. Accurately read treble and bass clefs together.
2. Know and perform rhythmic values up to dotted eighth/sixteenth combinations in 6/8 meter.
3. Know and perform 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, and 6/8 meters.
4. Play all major and minor scales up to 4 flats and 4 sharps: one octave, one hand.
5. Play chord progressions and pieces that use the three primary triads in root position and inversion in all major keys up to three flats or three sharps.
6. Play five-finger pieces with melody in one hand and primary triads in the other in different keys and meters.
7. Transpose a simple five-finger melody to another key.
8. Play pieces that begin to move out of the five-finger position employing simple shifts of hand position.