Books and articles
Five books. Two are published by Kendall Hunt and used as course texts at university level. Three are mine, written over fifteen years of teaching composition.
Textbooks
The Musical Core 101: Essential Theory and Aural Training for Musicians. Kevin Ure and Erin Wente. Kendall Hunt Higher Education, first edition, 2018. ISBN 9781524949181. An interactive theory and aural training text that starts at fundamentals and assumes no prior knowledge. It runs from the staff system and music reading through scales, key signatures and intervals, and finishes on triads and seventh chords. Drills, quizzes and video playlists are built into the text rather than bolted on. In adoption at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Scottsdale Community College.
The Musical Core 102: Essential Theory and Aural Training for Musicians. Kevin Ure and Erin Wente. Kendall Hunt Higher Education, first edition, 2018. ISBN 9781524954901. The second semester of the sequence, continuing the same method.
The Composing Music Series
The Elements of Music Composition, Volume I. Third edition 2021, fourth edition 2024. The conceptual volume. Coherence, organicism, motive and line, and the argument that composing is craft plus art rather than inspiration. It's the book I'd hand someone who wants to know why music holds together, not just how to write it down.
Music Composition Technique Builder, Volume II. Third edition, 2020. Inner ear development for composers, built as a daily routine rather than a set of chapters. Mirror exercises, the composing hour, and the argument that notation software and the piano are crutches that delay the ear. A companion workbook carries the daily schedule.
Notation
The Staff Speaks: Reading and Hearing Music's Legacy, Book One, 2024. Note reading from the ground up, across treble, bass, alto and tenor clefs, with the first audiation work built in from the start. Written for the musician who plays but has never learned to read, and for the reader who has never learned to hear what they read.
Articles and episodes
The Moonlight Blog, running since 2023. Thirty-one essays on ear training, audiation, composition, theory and counterpoint.
UreMusic Education, running since 2016. The older blog, and the only place I write on orchestration.
The Musical Mind: Join the Hike. Forty-five podcast episodes, with written notes and citations.