Music Theory Fundamentals Workbook for Clarinet

It is an all too common occurrence that a clarinet instructor must not only teach their students the clarinet, but also address their students' lack of basic understanding of music theory fundamentals. Author Raquel Iacob aims to fill this gap with her Music Theory Fundamentals Workbook for Clarinet, which is designed to be incorporated into a teacher's own clarinet pedagogical approaches in order to to enhance their students' understanding of music.  

The substantial publication (157 pages) is organized into three major sections: melodic elements, scales, and rhythmic elements.  

The "Melodic Elements" section deals with how to determine pitch, covering concepts of the musical alphabet, the staff and treble clef, notation of note heads/stems, flats/sharps (and double sharps/flats), enharmonic pitches, intervals, and transposition.

The "Scales" section includes construction of all major and minor scales, chromatic scale, circle of fifths, names of scale degrees, key signatures identification, order of sharps/flats, quality of intervals, types of minor keys, whole-tone/octatonic/pentatonic scales, augmented/fully-diminished-seventh arpeggios, and modes. This section includes key signature flashcards which can be cut out (and stored in an accompanying pocket on the back cover when not in use).

The "Rhythmic Elements" section covers note and rest relationships, dotted notes, measures and bar lines, time signatures, asymmetric meters, takadimi rhythm syllables, and tuplets.

Also included is a "Appendices" section with a fingering chart, explanation of finger slides/flips, brief clarinet history, suggested warm-up routine, and extra blank staff paper/fingering diagrams.

All concepts are clearly illustrated with accompanying music notation and diagrams.  The book is designed to be written in frequently by the student to gain familiarity with each new concept.  Brief musical examples are sprinkled throughout which borrow from the clarinet repertoire, including standard composers such as Bassi, Beethoven, Brahms, Gade, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Nielsen, Schumann, Rose, Weber, and more.