If you experience difficulties studying chapters from A History of Western Music you could use the following approach:

Did you buy the hard-cover edition? Then

  • Go to the site of the publisher www.wwnorton.com
  • Log in with your account
  • Search for the book A History of Western Music
  • Enter the Study Space
  • Choose the chapter you want to study

If not, use the material available on moodle.skole.nl (not the full package, but useful).

  1. Start with listening to the musical examples, pay attention to composer, composition genre, titles
  2. Use the flash cards, they provide key terms with definitions. Flash cards can be downloaded.
  3. Use the multiple choice questions:
    collect the correct answers,
    combine the questions with the correct answer: in that way you get a list of key sentences with a lot of information,
    print the list of key sentences
    another way is to make screenshots of each question with the correct answer displayed (cmd+shift+4 on Apple), the image is placed on your desktop
  4. print the chapter outline: 
    use markers with different colors to mark
    persons
    events
    geographical locations
    key terms and so on
  5. Read the chapter from the book and make a list of:
    red printed words in the margin
    bold printed words in the main text
    titles of sections and paragraphs
    print the list
  6. Try to make a graphical representation our your info in the form of a mind map or concept map 
    CMapTools is a perfect and free tool to do this.
  7. If your Concept Map is ready, print it and put it on the wall, preferably a place where you are passing by regularly (fridge :-), kitchen, couch)
  8. Try to explain the mind map to friends, fellow students to check if you understand what's in and on it. Or, even better: Let your friends or fellow students ask questions about the Concept Map you made!! :-)