Welcome ! Thanks for your interest in this new music education project. Launched spring semester 2022, this new e-book begins its journey to bring musicians, artists and teachers together throughout Alaska's communities and even global 'www' points beyond, through a mutual love of music, art and history.

By reaching out through the internet magics, this e-book curriculum is designed for learners to be mentored regionally by seasoned players and includes learning through both a formal music school program of academic studies and measures and learning 'by ear' through the now ancient 'oral' traditions.

Learning at home, to formal school and up through to the university level, where our new arts teachers are inspired and trained in teaching methods, this e-book and cyberschool encourages a creating and strengthening of friendships and community through a curriculum of the musical arts, helping younger learners to create a vision of their own careers in music and the world of the fine arts that are energized by the magics of music; in dance, stage and theatrical productions, and in the composing and writing of new works; knowing that ...

Mentor / teacher guided, self empowered learning with the 'global zooming' upgrade. Today, the complete UYM / EMG curriculum is available on the web for everyone to freely share at;

www.understandyourmusic.com

Written to be fully self empowering by one's own love of making music today and include in its development the vast archive of musical art history we inherit for our studies and considerations, and this study is designed to answer the questions that come along energized by our own intuitive curiosities as we hone our craft.

Use this e-book and find a mentor. To find a mentor for your studies just ask; your folks, teachers, at school, local music store or e-mail the author for further suggestions.

jacmuse@ak.net

Then share your questions and include links from your studies from the e-book to your mentor (s).

Mentors. To this self guided basis we can add our mentors ( and we can all be mentors ), both in our own communities and regional areas and beyond through the internet. For in curious learning, once a new question is imagined, then it can be written, and in our modern day e-book / on-line world of communicative magics, be passed along by e-mail to friends, mentors and the community of artists our learning energies create, for clues to find answers and build our way of knowing about music's notes and theories, those same notes and theories that are shared in common globally by all who love this art.

Accomplished musicians, involved in teaching can become a mentor of this curriculum for their students. Posted up on the web, simply locate the topics of interest for your students and send the page's link along. Correspond for questions by all of the modern ways.

Also, everyone interested in music can become a mentor to facilitate using this e-book. Sort of like anyone who knows a bit more about music than the person asking the questions, can help point to discussions of interest. Once there, the information is presented to include hyperlinks forward, usually a music vocabulary words, to additional topics that also include this same information and vocabulary, which then builds upon these ideas and structures, creating new levels of knowledge to explore.

A teacher's 'training' video for how this e-book works is under production, explaining both its curriculum structure and it's philosophy of music theory in relation to the full spectrum of our Americana styles and genres of music.

Teachers. And any teacher or mentor is welcome to directly contact me for help in any way to encourage the use and sharing of this e-book in music education. Based on one's existing knowledge, I can instruct you how to add this curriculum into your existing teaching methods. For as teachers we all share the same basic resource of pitches, and as artists it's how we combine 'which of the pitches' that generally creates our style and signature.

This e-book's educational philosophy and learning method has two central themes; vocabulary and what's termed throughout as 'by the numbers.' Musical terms help create an advancing dialogue of the theory and numbers help correlate and quantify our various resources for example; pitches, scales, chords, rhythms form and improvisation, across the spectrum of the Americana styles and genres.

The 'zooming' upgrade. Emerging now in 2022 with a more robust online learning ecosystem than we've ever had before, we add video zooming discussions to all of our studies, explorations and collaborations, working as mentors both near to us near and far beyond the horizons through the internet. With academic roots all the way back to our music origins and forward to the recent works of Americana's brightest stars, this e-book primer provides a wide range of music information; for learning the craft, for research and discovery, and a platform to build and collaborate our knowledge with all artists.

Need help ? And as this e-book gets populated through our public library system, and references links to our State University Arts programs, with a few clicks we can begin to enter formal training in music. Then its up to each of us to learn, to take responsibility for our own education, knowing 'sky's the limit' as we reach for the stars :) Ask your librarian for help in obtaining a copy for your library.

"As we grow this community." As this is a new approach and philosophy of how to learn and understand the now 'age old' basics of music theory, please contact me directly for help in implementing this program of study, wherever you are. For all of the above mentioned ways to connect your musical studies can reach me and my music associates for help along the way.

And please contact me personally if you are interested in obtaining a physical copy of UYM / EMG for your own personal library. For the book is cover to cover inclusive and needs no internet connectivity to perfectly function as designed, and it'll generally run faster and more efficiently off line. Purchase includes physical delivery costs and a introductory lesson with Jacmuse and staff.

Begin by e-mail to purchase an e-book for yourself or a musical artistic friend of yours, if you have any questions about this program and to arrange for a day and time appointment for a phone call or zoom lesson session. Thank you.

And all in "fair use." The contents of this e-book, UYM / EMG is copyrighted to its author Joe Craig, having # TXU-002186224/2020-02-18. It's content is provided today free online, and all its online contents to be freely shared through the educational aspects generally included in the legal copyright principles of a 'fair use' doctrine.

How this e-book works. Just ask yourself ...

'What is it about music I want to better understand ?'

Such as ...

'What is meant by 4/4 ...?

or ...

'Do the musical notes have different colors ... ?

or ...

'What's a 12 bar blues ?'

or ...

'In what ways are Americana jazz and Euro classical music similar in compositional components of 32 bar sonata allegro song form ?'

or ...

Is 'forward motion' about thinking ahead in time?

or ... ?

Empowered by curiosity. Once self curiosity empowered, this e-book uses the magical hyperlink of music vocabulary words to lead you on a pathway of discovering the histories and theory of your own musical interests. Along the way building music knowledge of the wide spectrum of styles and genres of our Americana musics.

Curriculums and mentors. This text contains four study pathways. These self guided curriculums can be augmented by an online community of musicians in Alaska, based through this e-book, or even world wide, both through the web.

Audio sounds / playback. And whatever we come across in theory that gets notated in music notation symbols, it has an .mp3 file for playback through your computer's speaker system. Mouse click this example to go into the e-book, then click it again to hear the playback file please.

There's 2,140 audio examples in the complete book. Luckily and thanks to me bro Colin, who wrote the java 'js' file, audio playback of the standard notation is 'click and play', adding in the 'learn to read music' feature built right into any old e-book.

How we learn. Combining our curiosities of today with what we already know, is a good way for our learning to go :) Termed in theory our 'existing information', once we a toehold, it's up to each of us. With mentoring, all can blossom into a lifetime of learning for something we are passionate about.

So if curiosity stokes your learning, and music is a passion for you, this book is perfect for you. For it's a puzzle of sorts, with a perfect closure of topics; of pitches and chords and numbers, forms and patterns and more, that will always loop back to their origin pitches through perfection from nature, to illuminate what brings Americana musical arts to life.

How we each learn plus 'to learn by rote.' Once we take responsibility for our own education, the rest comes along at the proper pace for each of us, as our natural artistic sense comes along through study.

While e-book curriculums can include distance learning peers and mentors to help when needed, the rote core of this curriculum creates individualized instruction, fortified by rote memorization through writing, verbal and measures of musical vocabulary.

Knowing by rote often translates into knowing forever, in learning basics of all topics, here our tasking is to weave 'some rote' into each learner's personal curriculum. Taking into account their own focus in style and rhythm.

That's why we do it. We 'rote up' because we know it works, and has worked for generations now. For the same seven letter names;

' A B C D E F G A ... '

... have been with all our music styles all along now.

These seven letters we can spell a ton of essential coolness of understanding that 'schooled' musicians can freely share in communicating ideas in language and vocabulary shared by millions of artists.

'Within a local universe.' Know this e-book was originally designed to be a stand alone curriculum. A purchased copy from the author requires no further internet access to fully function, written thus to insure the learner's own privacy on their computer platform.

Hosting this e-book with an 'on line' computer brings the learner into the Understand Your Music on-line community and through suggested links to 'wiki', which dramatically broaden it's learning and research horizons.

Topical references to wiki pages are included, but these links are not active. They're elective choices that each internet capable reader can choose. This is done by mouse clicks; highlight / search etc. This one magical capability moves our discussions far far far beyond the realm of this e-book, into the endlessly fascinating historical and reference library for the musical arts and beyond, for the curious reader. You choose :)

So ... pick and click and off ya go, no worries about getting lost or where you go. Learn by rote the basics here and you'll forever have and hold them near, to build songs and symphonies make jams and the blues, to share freely with all and make music again anew.