looking for a good Composition book which would you recocmmend?

[bert786]

hey guys i could use a good Composition book to help me
with my producing and making my tracks . I know music theory but a good lesson in Composition would help me a lot producing trance.

i found this book online would you recommend this book
Composition for Computer Musicians by Michael Hewitt (Paperback

if you have read this book let me know if it is worth buying.

or would any basic Composition book from the library suit me just fine?

[Ogg Vorbis]

hey guys i could use a good Composition book to help me
with my producing and making my tracks . I know music theory but a good lesson in Composition would help me a lot producing trance.

i found this book online would you recommend this book
Composition for Computer Musicians by Michael Hewitt (Paperback

if you have read this book let me know if it is worth buying.

or would any basic Composition book from the library suit me just fine?

I would recommend a bunch of basic composition books from the library. I looked at the computer musician book at Amazon.com and it looks fine from what you can see about it.

But I think it's a mistake to put the tools (DAW, computer, piano roll, plug-ins, loop libraries, etc.) into the approach to composition in a book so early because:

1) It makes you a slave to the technology instead of making the tools serve your compositional vision that you must develop

2) It segments your view of composing in terms of a particular approach or style. What if someone offers you a lot of money to compose for acoustic instruments or to arrange a choir? What if your computer dies?

3) When you look at all of music holistically and THEN the means of producing music, you are an unlimited individual who can have a conversation with any musician on the planet, can write for any situation, can listen to any music and hear the similarities rather than the differences (and thus be inspired to bring those influences into your realm)

4) It confuses the means and the results. When I look at a title like composition for computer musicians, it makes me think of a book called "Linguistics for Cell Phone Users." It's like, WTF???

5) Here's my own personal bias... I'm just going to put it out there and let people flame me, but "COMPUTER MUSICIANS" ARE NOTORIOUSLY LAZY! There is something about the technology that causes people to look for solutions to artistic situations INSIDE the technology. Copy and paste, looping, cool plug-ins, effects, and even automatic harmony generators teach you to use facile means to do the hard work of logically linking phrases.

If I see one more thread on "which plug-in will make me write great music?" I am going to chuck my macbook through the nearest window. Even if someone is a hobbyist there is the desire to create good results otherwise why bother? In music you can't get around the hard work and achieve those good results.

For me, I want the computer to be a tool rather than a permanent creative prosthesis.

I suppose I just singled myself out in this post as being a old stodgy purist, but maybe that's a nice counterpoint in this thread because undoubtably others will say that my type of thinking is elitist, passe' and outmoded. Hope this idea at least serves to add something thoughtful to the thread though...

[jancivil]

I think a book for music composition is the wrong approach.

You can get information from a book. Composition requires knowledge, which is got by experience. You can't get it from a book.

You can get ideas for expanding what you understand as far as techniques, and vocabulary to enrich your content; and it can be good to get analyses of form from experienced analysts, which preferably will be composers.

But a 'composition teacher' and a 'book' should not be confused. Even a teacher should tell you 'I can't teach you this' but show you some things which can help YOU to compose.


While I do agree with using harmony generators etc as a crutch is VERY bad for you, copy and paste *is* composition. But, if you haven't thought outside the computer - as a musician - the whole thing can just be kind of suspect, it's going to sound like you did it on a computer; a mechanical and not so musical result. Tools are tools, you have to be their master. People who reach instantly for the arpeggiator who've never executed an arpeggio themselves, are not going to be master of that tool.

[Gamma-UT]

As trance is pretty heavily chord-oriented, I'd go for Rikky Rooksby's 'How to Write Songs on Keyboards' as that is pretty much centred on the use of chord progressions - it's got something of a cookbook approach but contains many of the pop techniques that have been recycled into the more euphoric end of the trance spectrum. I'm assuming you're not trying to do psytrance, as there isn't much in a traditional songwriting or composition book that's really going to help all that much.

The Composer's Handbook by Bruce Cole and Composing Music: A New Approach by William Russo are worth a look. Cole may not suit if you've already done theory as he uses composition as a way to teach a lot of theory. Russo does take quite a fresh approach to teaching composition - and uses artificial restrictions very creatively, and is good for generating ideas for genres that apply a lot of restrictions such as techno and trance.

I tend to find the "...for Computer Musicians" type books to be a bit problematic because they spend so much time explaining "this is a sequencer", so they wind up being books teaching computer concepts to non-computer musicians. Having said that, Eric Turkel's Arranging for Synthesists is worth a look (although realistically, it's content is not radically different to any other pop/big band arranging book).

[KVRdataminer]

Those parts of music that largely algorithmic, let the machine do or assist like chord progressions, etc. For melody, its still intuition/inspiration > algorithm.

[jancivil]

chord progressions are algorithmic.

who knew

[stretcherbearer]

I really like "The Musicians guide to Reading and writing Music" by Dave Stewart, Keyboard and synth player from "National Health". Bill Bruford writes an intro for it, Allan Holdsworth contributed. It's basic to complex has a great sense of humour and even though it's from 1992, covers just about everything, and is rediculously simple. I keep it on my desk in my studio for the mass amount of charts and writing tips for non rock insturments.

[Doug1978-OLD]

Hi Bert
Not withstanding some of the other fellows' fair points above (and also following on from stretcherbearer's other Dave Stewart book recommendation), I would suggest:
Inside the Music: The Musician's Guide to Composition, Improvisation and the Mechanics of Music by Dave Stewart.

I found it to be written in a helpful but uncomplicated way, and it improved my knowledge of chords/scales etc a lot.
There is also a pretty good set of reviews and some extracts from it at Amazon.co.uk as well, which may help.
Thanks
Doug

[stretcherbearer]

Is this a newer Book? I've not heared about it. Thanks for the title post. I have to agree with some of the other guys: I took Music theory in my very brief carrer in colege. I met a brilliant man by the name of Dr. Bill Frkovich. this was about 1993, and I was the only person in class to say that I was interested in composing "Avant-Garde" Music. This was at a small Community College in Arizona, a very small town, He taught us the basics. but he took me aside and suggested to get a hold of scores and albums of Frank Zappa, John Cage, Stravinsky, Satie. I did and learend a lot from listeneing and trying to follow along with the scores. I never finished a degree and I have to agree that experience and study are part of the complete package. get some Score paper, go to the library, check out the most obscure books and copy down the modes etc. I still have my notes from class, and my Hebrew prayer modalities, Greek Modalities scribbled that I copied. I later went home and plunked them out on my old keyboard. I still do this to this day, I have a great book by George Pearke about atonality and 12 tome music that i keep on my desk as well. I immersed myself in music, and am still learning, and can't sight read, but I do write out melodies and use a sort of shorthand of myown devising to arrange my songs on paper before recording, always with a Ad Libertum note

[stretcherbearer]

The book is by George Pearle"Serial composition and Atonality" tons of examples. there's also a brilliant book by Rimsky-Korsikov about sound coloration, and insturments. any of these can be transferred into the synthesized medium, since we have access to the sounds.

[soulata]

Not really what you need first but - there's free jazz arranging course on garritan's site and a free classical orchestration course on some forum (the name escapes me, but it's one of the well-known ones).

k

[zappadave]

Try this, it's a good guide to songwriting, and the ideas can be used in any style.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Songwrit ... 063400638X

[KLS]

+100 for Ogg's comments!

[bert786]

i just wanted to say thanks for all the replies, i never said i wanted the book for computer musicians (this book just came up in searches thats why i wanted to know if anyone read it ,as i am not the one for the quick and easy way out )

I always knew there were much better titles with more in depth material that i could find in a basic composition book at the library to learn as a reference for expanding what i already know and understand. I just did not know the names of these books now i do thanks.


i will check out some of these and reply back when ive read a few indeed.

[KVRdataminer]

chord progressions are algorithmic.

who knew

If you follow the "rules".
That how harmonizers get program. Like those predictive text algorithms. One could don't follow the rules but more often than not, its gonna sound like shit.
And you can go buzz about the "rules" as you may wish after this.