Affordable Books

Can anyone suggest affordable texts on harmony(tonal and beyond)? Nothing too expansive, but well written and resourceful for the composer.

As I said in the shoutbox I highly recommend Harmonic Practice in tonal music by Robert Gauldin. He sums it up pretty well and objectively AND covers basic Schenker.

I have both the book, the workbook and the CD-ROM. If you can play piano and don't have a teacher you could easily do with the textbook alone and it also ends each chapter with brief self-quizes. The CD-ROM was glued to the book I got, but I've never used it. I do the workbook with a fellow student so we can cross check each other. If I hadn't had anyone, I probably wouldn't do the exercises.

Remember this is about Tonal music.

For atonal my main book is 20th century harmony by Vincent Persichetti. Also very objective it just portrays the harmonic practice from 1900-1950. Invaluable.

For supplement I would recommend Henry Brant's Textures and Timbres (or the other way around). Maybe a bit expensive but a thorough book on orchestration of the 20th century.

Thanks, for the suggestion. I would look into them...

See, the dilemma that i face is that i still have the college text with me, Element of Music by Ralph Turk, and I don't know what to do with them...