Grade 5 Music Theory

You do not need five books. You need one.

The usual route to Grade 5 is to buy the Grade 1 book, then the Grade 2 book, then three, then four, then five — and to meet the same subject five separate times, a little more of it each year.

Everything in those five books is in this one. Not summarised. Rebuilt.

Rebuilt by topic, instead of by grade. So intervals are one chapter: all of them, from the first to the last, learned once and then finished. Not a slice of pitch this month and another slice of pitch two months later, by which time you have forgotten the first slice. That is not learning, it is re-learning — and it is why theory takes people years.

You will not be starting again at Grade 1. You will be learning each thing once, completely, and crossing it off.

That is the whole idea. It is also why four weeks is enough.

Everything is engraved, nothing is scanned

Every note on every page was set by hand to one house standard. Not photographed out of a textbook, not clip‑art. You can print it, write on it, and print it again.

And every one of the twenty-two knowledge points gets its own video, free, on YouTube. The book is what you work from; the videos are me explaining it.

Sixty pages. Written for the person who has put this off and now has a date.

What this replaces — and the one thing it does not

Not five separate grade books. One book, instead of five.

Not a separate set of videos, either. Every one of the twenty-two knowledge points has its own video, free, on YouTube — the book is what you work from, the videos are me explaining it.

One thing this does not replace: ABRSM’s own past papers. When you have the knowledge and you want to sit a full paper under the clock, buy those from ABRSM — they are the real thing, and nothing I could make would be a better rehearsal. Theory books and exam papers have always been bought separately; this replaces the books, not the papers.