I play the piano as one of my hobbies and to get further with my playing my teacher told me I needed to learn music theory. She was going to put me in for an exam later that year and decided I needed something to help me learn and revise on my music theory. She recommended and sold to me this book, which cost me just £2.95, which is nothing compared to how much some piano books can go for these days.

The book has 32 pages full of music theory activities, 49 exercises in total. They are all designed for grade 1. I was around ten when I first starting using this book and found it extremely helpful and not too difficult to understand back then. Now I am almost seventeen and I still find this book really helpful to look back to and still think it is a great book that I use still to look at and help me understand clearer my music theory which can sometimes be quite difficult to remember in detail.

I believe that it is this book which really helped me pass my theory exam. It contains pages on:
* Elementary time values
* Bar Lines and time signatures
* Notes on the stave
* The treble (g) clef
* The bass (f) clef
* More on time values
* Rests
* Ties
* Dots
* Accidentals
* Semitones and Tones
* The scales and key signatures of C, G, D and F Major
* Cancelling an accidental
* Degrees of the scale and intervals
* The tonic triad
* Composing an answering rhythm
* Performance directions
* General exercises

I find the section 'perfomance directions' the most useful of them all. It provides a glossary of all the Italian words that are difficult to understand if you are just starting piano, for example, forte which means loud. I always look back to this glossary to help me remember what all the many different and often confusing terms mean.

If you are teaching yourself the music theory then I would advise you to not just buy this book but to buy something else as well, probably a teacher would be best, because it contains many useful activities but doesn't always tell you how to solve the activities if you get me. My teacher always would explain to me what to do first and then she would mark it afterwards and tell me how to correct any mistakes. It cannot just be used on its own to help you learn music theory.

I used this for piano but it says on the front ' Royal Schools of Music ' so I think it can be used for all musical instruments.
It is currently only 97p on amazon which is a really good bargain. Definitely recommend this.