didi13

Hi,

I'm really interesting in song writing and as a music beginner could you recommend a good book or website for composing and arranging songs ?
I'm looking for tutorials about music writing more than lyrics.

thanks !

 

Stringbender

The Craft and Business of Songwriting. By John braheny - this is a great book that takes it from the simple-through to selling your songs professionally.

I'm pretty certain there is a Songwriting for Dummies book out there and probably hundreds of others that do just the same thing... honestly, I look at the "How to write" part only a little bit now and then to get fresh perspectives and ideas of arranging that I may not have tried. Most of the time I go back to "what is it about the classic songs that I like?" and I write the songs parts down: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, solo, chorus/end
or something similar. A lot of times I go with this same format.

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Intricate Insomnia

Do you mean how to put it all together, or how to write out the notes on the paper? Like, this? If the first, the previous post is pretty much all the help I could have given. If the later, learn to read music first.

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TheLostSocietyMusic

Yeah, same as the thread above, the odd bit of "borrowing" helps keep the creative juices flowing and more often than not leads to fresh ideas. Clearly if it there is obvious plagiarism it can't be used, but tried and tested musical formulas work for a reason

Stringbender

I recall that when I was first starting to venture into songwriting (jamming when in my young-teens -I was in 8th grade and the following summer) it was taking Kiss, Bowie, Aerosmith and Zeppelin tunes (what we liked at the time) and we'd turn on the tape recorder and I'd make up lyrics while we played whomever's song. Obviously it was plagiarism,but we were kids- we weren't playing gigs or getting paid..hell we were still using trash cans for drums at that time. This process turned into meshing the first stanza music from THIS song with the chorus part from THAT song and "ok..let's change the drums"..and then making up your own lyrics to it.. it was crap..definitely..but it all evolves with time.
After a while of doing this something inside you will just click and you'll either understand it better or you won't.. I really can't put it any other way except that it takes experimentation, replication sometimes and time to flesh out, breathe and grow into the art form that it is. But I also recommend a few books for beginners to give you some ideas..some of these books can kind show you everything NOT to do (because they take the art and fun out of creating music) but the only way to know is to do.. and don't forget that you have plenty of cool folks here at that you can ask questions..if somebody says something in a book you are unsure of- feel free to ask..

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