Reddit mentions of Practical Theory: Complete, Spiral-Bound Book

Hi! I'm also 24, and I've been playing the piano since I was 8! I think I can help you out some. I taught my younger sister, who was 13 at the time, how to play the piano, and I started her out on a curriculum I put together myself. This consists of work in 5 main areas: Theory, Intuition, Method, Technique, and Musicianship. I'll explain this further.

Music theory is where you need to start. Without a good knowledge of theory, you're pretty much lost. It's analogous to being in the dark with no flashlight (theory), but turn the flashlight on, and you have a sense of where you're going and what to do. However, it's important that you don't become so reliant on theory that you can't play anything without reading the notes.

This is where intuition comes in. Intuition is built by listening to music. The more you listen to music and the patterns in different songs, the more you'll understand when to change chords, walk up or down bass lines, etc. This was my problem. I was never taught how to improve on my musical intuition. I had to learn this on my own, but I've got good enough now to where I can hear a song and pretty much know how to play it. This is what you're aiming for by building intuition.

Method is meant to take music theory and intuition and actually apply it. So the goal in learning method is to learn different approaches to different songs. For example, there's many ways that you can play a song like Amazing Grace. You can play it with three chords, you can include a minor to make a 4 chord progression, etc. All method does is teach you different ways of approaching songs using what you know about music theory and intuition.

Technique is also very important. Technique develops your motor skills and muscle memory. You might say technique is like exercising your fingers and your brain. It's probably the most boring part of a piano curriculum, because it seems like you're just repeating the same thing over and over and over again, and the exercises seem to hold no purpose. Still, the point here is develop your technique to where you can do things like trills, play very fast songs, and make your music sound beautiful. It takes a lot of time and practice to develop good technique, but it definitely pays off.

Finally, the last area is Musicianship. This is the final goal, and what the student has been working toward. Musicianship is combining all of the other areas and putting them into good practice to perform in front of an audience. A good musician will know their instrument and its proper usage and care, how to play it, it's role within the various genres of music, and be able to play it well. A good musician will also know proper stage etiquette and performance.

This is the philosophy I have developed over my years of playing. The whole point is to develop well rounded musicians. It seems very difficult and harsh, but it can be a whole lot of fun! My sister really enjoyed me teaching her to play, and within a few months she was doing far better than I ever was when I was that far in. My football coach always told us that we would get out of something what we put into it. If you put 30 minutes a week into it, you're not going to see good results. However, put in 30 minutes a day and you'll see results in no time.

So now for the big question... where do you start? I started my sister out in this book. That is the most comprehensive and well written book on music theory. It just goes over the bare minimum of what you need to be a good pianist, plus it's a great reference to look back on. More advanced study will come later on, but for now this is a great book to learn how to read music, how it works, and how to start writing your own pieces. I also got her this book, too, because it includes a lot of exercises in theory. As you do the exercises in this book, try playing them on your piano and getting used to associating each note on the paper with a key on the piano. While you're doing this, you might try to listen to which keys sound which way and begin associating each key and note with a particular sound. There are many different "courses" you can go through to learn the piano. I went through the Piano Adventures Series, which I thought was great. That is a link to the primer level books. There's, to my knowledge, 5 levels plus the primer. So, when you master/complete one level, you just move on to the next. I also liked the Exploring Piano Classics series. This is what I started my sister on, because it not only includes great pieces to begin playing, but it also goes through different eras in musical genres and introduces the piano from a historical standpoint. In my mind, this series is the perfect introduction to Musicianship. Here is a link to the preparatory book.

I hope this could be some help to you. The journey to becoming a great pianist and musician is a long one that needs time, hard work, and dedication to achieve, but many have made it before and so can you. I wish you well in learning to play the piano. Good luck!

One book that really helped me when I was learning the basics was "Practical Theory". Here's the amazon https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Theory-Complete-Spiral-Bound-Book/dp/0882842250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487043528&sr=8-1&keywords=practical+theory

Music theory is easily the greatest thing I have ever learned as a musician. More useful than any one instrument that I play. I started with Practical Theory by Sandy Feldstein (recommended by my band teacher as I began my music journey as a drummer, and wanted to learn piano)

Practical Theory: Complete, Spiral-Bound Book https://www.amazon.com/dp/0882842250/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_h30SDbVJZGNJP

It's a workbook format with one lesson per page. Do one page a day and diddle around with each concept on your guitar after you learn it. If you have difficulty with a concept don't move on until you understand it. But yeah, excellent book for learning music theory basics.

I think when learning music theory it is important to remember this: music theory is NOT a rulebook. It ONLY describes why already-written music sounds the way it does. It does not tell you what you CAN and CAN'T do. Music has no rules. People who dont know music theory like to spew BS like "it's too limiting" which just tells people who actually know music theory that that person knows literally nothing about what they're talking about. Music theory is an explanation of how music works. Check out this video:
https://youtu.be/49alQj7c5ps

Music Theory is a vast, unending rabbit hole, but the most useful basic stuff is fairly simple and everyone should be able to figure it out. So don't get discouraged when you hear about crazy stuff that is way over your head; the stuff you NEED to know about music theory is really all in that book I linked above.

Music theory also makes learning other instruments and communicating with other musicians much easier, which are both obviously super useful. If you learn a bit of music theory as a guitarist, you could probably learn how to play basic piano stuff in an evening. I went from piano to bass guitar extremely easily because it all carries over.

So I know this is sort of unorganized but definitely work through that book (it's not very long) and watch that video if you arent convinced.

Okay so for teaching yourself music theory I believe this was the book I used https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Theory-Complete-Spiral-Bound-Book/dp/0882842250 although I can't find my copy to be %100 sure. It was super cut and dry so maybe boring but I think of music theory as like a sudoku puzzle and find it fun. Basically this should teach you basic stuff like the major and minor keys and how chords are built. Learning the fundamentals is super important to really understanding theory in a meaningful way.

Once you get the fundamentals down learning roman numeral analysis will help you understand how songs are built and why chords work the way they do. For example in Casey Jones I know that the D major chord is V/V which is called a secondary dominant which means that it is acting like a dominant V chord pulling to G so I know when soloing on it that the F# in that D major chord is super important because it is the 7th or G major and especially since F# isn't in the key of C it is a note that causes a lot of tension and is just begging to be resolved up a half-step to G. Now none of that probably made sense but its just to show why learning the roman numeral analysis of Bach and Mozart can be helpful to understanding the Grateful Dead.

Learning Roman Numeral analysis on your own maybe tricky so like I said in my other comment if you can take a music theory class as an elective at your school that would be best. If you can't though, you could just buy the textbook yourself like Clendinning/Marvin's Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis or look through this thread for suggestions https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/pse4l/beginners_resources_for_the_sidebar/?st=jf744ciz&sh=fe9dd4bd .
There are a lot of videos out there such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDPWP6HUbk&list=PLw9t0oA3fHkxx1PgYpiXrMUPXaOiwh6KU but you have to poke around YouTube to find ones that work for you.

And than for applying this stuff to guitar you'll want to learn all the notes on the guitar. To do this sight reading whatever you can get your hands on (I go to my local music store and buy flute music), classical guitar music, jazz or folk tunes, or just googling sheet music for whatever songs you want to learn and playing this music in different areas of the guitar. Even sight reading a simple melody can be hard in the 9th position if you aren't used to it. If you are having trouble learning treble clef pick up one of the Mel Bay guitar books https://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bays-Modern-Guitar-Method/dp/0871663546 .
Another good way to learn the notes on the guitar is to play scales and arpeggios in all positions and than say each note out loud as you are playing it. Obviously you will first need to learn your scales and arpeggios but once you do play them on guitar or to make that work book I recommended less boring play your guitar as you go through it.

And lastly the most practical thing you are looking for is a Chord-Scale relationship book like this one https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Chord-Relationships-Knowing-Educational/dp/0634019945 I've never owned this book but it looks alright and any chord-scale theory book should help you.
Chord-Scale theory is basically like "on this chord you play this scale" and it's a terrible way to learn jazz and in general it over simplifies everything and I hate it lol buuutttt I do think it will help you with Grateful Dead stuff. It's just very surface level stuff so I'm putting it last to hopefully encourage you to still learn the more boring classical stuff, because it will pay off in the long run to learn how analyze a Mozart piece. However, if you just kinda wanna start getting into it I think a Chord-Scale Theory book will help you out the most quickly.

Also musictheory.net is a good website to check out to help with this stuff. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

I started playing guitar when I was fourteen an didn't learn theory in school cause they taught it in such a fucked up way. But if I would do it again I would learn theory like the back of my hand before really venturing into playing (I've got myself this and it has helped me quite a bit but I still can't get off tabs). Play with a metronome and with other people. I've only played with other people twice and it was a whole lot more motivating for me than reading a Portrait of Tracy tab.