Reddit mentions: The best music reference books

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Remember that the Mixolydian scale had a structure of Root, major 2, major 3, perfect 4, perfect 5, major 6, and minor 7.

If our root is G that would be G, A, B, C, D, E, F, (G).

If we are to arrange this as a chord (by skipping notes) we get:
Root, major 3, perfect 5, minor 7, major 9, perfect 11, major 13.

(Remember that a 2nd becomes a 9th in the higher octave, so major 2nd = major 9th. A 4th becomes an 11th in the higher octave, so perfect 4th = perfect 11th. A 6th becomes a 13th in the second octave so major 6th = major 13th).

So now we can see how and why modes are used.

If you stack a Mixolydian scale as a chord, you can see how the first three notes spell out a major triad. Therefore, the Mixolydian scale can be used over a major triad. e.g. play a G major triad with the left hand, and improvise with the G Mixolydian scale in the right hand.

If you stack a Mixolydian scale as a chord, you can see how the first four notes spell out a major triad with a minor seventh: in other words, a dominant seventh chord. i.e. G Mixolydian works over a G7 chord, because the notes in the chord are contained within the scale.

If you stack a Mixolydian scale as a chord, the fifth note is a major 9th. A dominant seventh chord + a major ninth is a dominant ninth chord (usually just called a ninth chord). i.e. G mixolyidian works over G9.

We can keep going but you probably get the idea. A scale will work over any chord that contains the notes in the scale.

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If you stack a major scale as chord you get:
Root, major 3, perfect 5, major 7th, major 9, pefect 11, major 13.

Note that both the major scale and the mixolydian scale contain a major triad as the first three notes. Therefore, both scales will "work" over a major triad (i.e. both G major and G mixolydian will work over a G major triad).

However, look at the 4th note you get when the major scale is stacked as a chord. It is a major seventh. Major triad + major 7th = Major ninth chord. Here's where the major scale and the mixolydian mode differ. The G Mixolydian scale will not work over a G major 9th chord, and the G major scale will not work over a G dominant ninth chord.

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How to know when to use which scale?

Remember that the mixolydian mode was built off of the 5th note of the major scale. e.g. G mixolydian is the fifth mode of C major. So in the key of C the chord built off of the fifth note (the "V" chord) will naturally take the Mixolydian scale built off of that note.

However, for practical purposes, there's no need to think of modes when playing key-center based music: if you're in the key of C, playing the C major scale over the C major chord (the I chord) and then playing G mixolydian over the G major chord (the V chord) means that you're just playing the same scale over both chords--it will give you a different perspective, but the notes will be the same.

The real benefit of modes is that it gives you tools to play over songs that aren't necessarily major/minor key based; i.e. songs that use non-functional harmony. Imagine a song with a chord progression of G7 to Bb7 throughout the tune. These two chords don't belong to any one key: this is a situation where you'd want to think modally, i.e. play G mixolydian over the G7 and switch to Bb Mixolydian over Bb7.

(Note that chord-scale theory is not an improvisation method*. Many students are misguided when they are taught to play x scale over x chord. Chord-scale theory let's you understand harmony, which notes are strongest or most stable against a particular chord how to add extensions. Learning improvisation is more about learning how to target chord tones on the strong beats, and embellishing a melody using mostly chromatic devices.)
***
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So I used the major scale and the Mixolydian mode as examples in this essay. Since there are seven notes in the major scale, each one of those notes can be thought of as the root of a different mode; each one will be distinct, and the fully extended chord will be different for each mode.

The seven modes of the C major scale are:

C Major scale (a.k.a. C Ionian): C D E F G A B (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
D Dorian: D E F G A B C (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
E Phyrigian: E F G A B C D (Root, min2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
F Lydian: F G A B C D E (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
G Mixolydian: G A B C D E F (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
A Aeolian (a.k.a the Natural Minor Scale): A B C D E F G (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
B Locrian: B C D E F G A (Root, min2, min3, P4, diminished 5th, min6, min7)

We can say these seven modes are relative to each other, because they use the same set of notes. In other words, D dorian is relative to C major.

If we build each of those 7 scales on C, and look at their structure, we get:

C Lydian: C D E F# G A B (Root, Maj2, Maj3, Augmented 4th, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
C Major/Ionian: C D E F G A B (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, Maj7)
C Mixolydian: C D E F G A Bb (Root, Maj2, Maj3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
C Dorian: C D Eb F G A Bb (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, Maj6, min7)
C Aeolian/Natural Minor: C D Eb F G Ab Bb (Root, Maj2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
C Phrygian: C Db Eb F G Ab Bb (Root, min2, min3, P4, P5, min6, min7)
C Locrian: C Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb (Root, min2, min3, P4, diminished 5th, min6, min7)

We can say that these 7 modes are parallel to each other, because they are built on the same root*. In other words C Dorian is parallel to C major, while C Dorian is relative to Bb major. (Also, try to figure out why I listed them in that order!)

It's up to you to go through them. Just remember what the important information is:

• What is the interval structure of the mode, and how does it compare with the major scale built on the same root?
  
• What are the chords produced by the mode when you skip every other note? What is the triad, what is the seventh chord, and what are the extensions?
  
• Learn to sing each of the modes from memory; this is how you will learn the individual character of each.
  
  ***
  (11)**
  
  Beyond the modes of the major scale, (and aside from the chromatic scale) you also have the seven modes of:
  
  
• The Melodic Minor scale (a.k.a. the jazz minor scale)
  
• The Harmonic Minor scale
  
• The Harmonic Major scale
  
• The Double Harmonic scale
  
  And there are the three symmetrical scales:
  
  
• The symmetrical diminished (only two different modes)
  
• The symmetrical augmented scale (only two different modes)
  
• The whole tone scale (only one mode)
  
  These scales pretty much cover every possible scale/chord. Some people may include pentatonic scales, but those are really just derivatives, created by leaving out a couple notes from the other scales.
  
  (For a more in-depth resource on the theory/philosophy behind scales, see:
  TheTonalCentre.org, and
  Slonimsky's Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns)
  ***
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  The best general jazz chord-scale theory text I've seen (I've seen them all) is probably the Berklee book,
  Chord Scale Theory and Jazz Harmony;
  However, even better would be the Bert Ligon books, because they go into more detail about how to actually put it into practice:
  Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony
  Jazz Theory Resources Volume 1
  Jazz Theory Resources Volume 2
  Comprehensive Technique for Jazz Musicians
  

If I can be honest without hurting your feelings, the mistakes keep it from being enjoyable. The tempo is not anywhere near as important as the accuracy. However! You definitely demonstrate a skill and love for the instrument, and I am absolutely impressed with your stamina. Now that you've developed stamina and speed, you really need to focus on accuracy. By that I mean, play for 2 1/2 hours every day without making any mistakes, even if it means slowing yourself to half speed. If you do this, you will be back up to this speed, but without mistakes, before you know it.

Not to bang a dead steed, but playing that fast and making that many mistakes - ESPECIALLY if you do it every day - is just going to make you keep making those mistakes. You are spending two and a half hours a day making your hands stronger and enjoying yourself, but you would improve so much faster if you practiced efficiently, by lowering your speed and focusing on accuracy. Playing fast poorly will never lead to playing fast better. You have to play well, slowly, and then the speed comes. Every music teacher and instrumentalist I have ever met has drilled this point in to me.

I wasted years playing the bass and piano fast and sloppy thinking the accuracy would come if I just kept playing. It didn't come until I slowed down and developed it. I wasn't teaching myself to play well, I was teaching myself to do exactly what I was doing - play poorly and quickly.

You have the stamina, the passion, and the skills. Forget about speed, your tempo doesn't need practice. Accuracy takes practice. So if you aren't practicing your accuracy... you're just making yourself better at making mistakes.

I would highly recommend The Art of Practicing if you would like to learn how to get the most out of your practice time.

Uploading something like this takes a lot of courage, so I hope you take these words as the support they are meant to be. I promise if you slow down to whatever speed allows you to play 100% perfectly, you will see drastic improvement in a short amount of time and be back up to this speed, with full accuracy, before you know it. Like, literally just a few weeks. It was the greatest lesson I ever learned about practicing.

Practice doesn't make perfect... perfect practice makes perfect.

I do NOT want to discourage you - but I don't think there is a quick way to learn music thory. It takes time and practice and experience. But it is definitely possible! Just think of it as a language : the written dot on the staff corresponds to a pitch - just like an a corresponds to the sound a. It must become natural. So I guess my advice is to read a LOT of music. Every day, if possible, and of different styles (classical, modern etc.) If you want your pieces to really sound original, you have to know what others have written before you - and learn from their craft.
That being said, I think there is a good deal of great books about harmony that you can read to guide your development, I will list a few here :

• Arnold Schoenberg : Theory of Harmony (A bit tedious to read, but with great many examples)
  
• Arnold Schoenberg : Fundamentals of Musical Composition This one is great but a bit advanced; I suggest you read it when you master the harmony basics.
  
• Carl Schroeder & Keith Wyatt : Harmony and Theory: A Comprehensive Source for All Musicians This one is recommended, but I didn't read it myself.
  
• Barbara Wharram : Elementary Rudiments of Music. This one I grew up with. Very straightforward and clear.
  
  Might I suggest that you play all the examples and excercies at the piano so that you train your ear to hear what you see.
  
  Also, you might want to contact a piano teacher and take lessons for a year... or two. Technique is a great part of playing, and is very difficult to learn on his own.
  
  Sorry for the long post, but I love music and want to help a fellow player. Also, sorry for potentialy awkward sentences, english is not my first language.
  
  Hope this helps!

http://www.scottsbasslessons.com

This was one of my first books. It starts off fairly easy, but gets moving pretty quick.

This is the Tao Te Ching of bass.

This was one of the books that helped get my technique to where it is today. I'm not sure if the new version has all of the same exercises.

Always read notation. Tab becomes a crutch, and the quicker you learn notation, the more you'll use it, and the better you'll get at it. It's a skill, it's frustrating at first, but it's worth it.

This is my favourite Music Theory book.

Transcribe music. Not only learn how to play it by ear, but learn how to write it down as well. It's really hard at first, but it's probably the best thing you can do to learn to jam, interact with other players, and communicate your ideas to anyone at any level.

Want Chops?

Find a qualified bass teacher in your area. Don't go to that guy who plays guitar and teaches bass on the side and only uses tab because he's never had to read. It may not seem like it, but there are differences in technique that an experienced bass player/teacher would know that a guitar player may not. Find a teacher that pushes you every lesson and makes you want to sit in a chair for hours working on technique, transcribing, and listening.

On top of getting an instructor, scour the internet for every piece of information you can get. At first you'll get some bad advice, but you'll find that there is a lot of great information out there. Always test the boundaries of what you're being taught by anyone with the information you're absorbing for where ever you're getting it. One of the best teachers that I had said "If you're teacher tells you there's only one way to do something, it's time to find another teacher".

I'll give you more great advice from a different teacher. He was this old grizzled player that played Jazz before, and after, Jazz was cool. He said:

"There are only three things you need to do to be a successful musician. One: Show up. If you show up every time you're going to be ahead of 95% of the rest of the musicians out there. That means every lesson, every rehearsal, every gig, every time.

Two: Know your parts. If you show up every time, on time, and know what you're supposed to play, you're going to be ahead of 99% of the players out there.

Thirdly: Play your heart out. If you show up, on time, know what you're playing, and love what you're playing, no matter what it is you're playing, then you're going to be in that 1% of musicians that actually get steady gigs."

Have Fun.

> I'd much rather write and have a professional singer with professional studio equipment sing it.

A lot of guys do that. And I probably will too, least that's my goal when my skills are up to it. But I'm glad you told me that, if that's your goal then you should want to get better. A hobbyist isn't going to be willing to put in the work.

Anyway, after listening to em all I would give yourself more credit as a singer. A few vocal lessons with the right teacher could get you singing so good you'd surprise yourself.

Of the 3 originals you posted, all 3 have some pretty common issues that can be addressed. I'm not going to go line by line because really the lines can be arbitrary.

• Word rhythm - believe it not, the accentation(or lack thereof) in a syllable creates a rhythm that you can use to make more powerful lyrics. I just read about this a couple weeks ago in my rhyming dictionary but basic prosody rules apply. If you need a line to feel stable with the other lines, match the rhythm. If you need to create instability, change the rhythm (shorter or longer). Stability in word rhythm is how you get the sing-along effect.
  
  
• Rhyme - You can tell you wrote these as a teenager because you must have been coming up with the rhymes off the top of your head. A better approach I've found is to brainstorm some words that have to do with your hook. Then go to your rhyming dictionary (not a bullshit online one, no matter what anyone else says), and pick all the rhymes that seem to fit your theme. A good rhyming dictionary will also teach about the other types of rhyme other than perfect rhyme. You can also use this to create stability/instability, perfect rhymes are stable, the more dissonant sound the less stable the rhyme.
  
  
• Rhyme scheme - Setting up more a pattern to your rhyming will make it easier for the listener. See the above about rhymes but try out these rhyme schemes as there about the most popular in music today: ABAC, ABCA, ABCB
  
  
• Song structure - You did a better job than most posters here of having a chorus that sticks out. However, the songs on the radio these days almost always have a pre-chorus. Back in the day it was more optional but these days a pre-chorus build that has a hook in it is the way most hits seem to work
  
  
• Verse development - Here all the rules of story telling apply. You want each line to move your story along with a definite beginning, middle, and end (especially with country which it sounds like you're most close to). This is something else you can determine before you write the lyrics. I use a box method and a typical development could be I-You-We. Or even Aristotle's Pain-Fear-Catharsis. The way you were doing it, it didn't seem to be moving very far.
  
  
• Detail, detail, detail - Ralph Murphy says that our job as story tellers is to get the listener engaged in a story that never happened, with characters that don't exist, in a place that never was, and make em believe it because it relates to their own story. A lot of us make the mistake especially when we start out as using music as a diary, that's fine but that doesnt' make people want to listen to your song over and over. The trick is to use lots of details that can relatable to other people. So details are objects or typically nouns that help paint a picture in the eye of the listener. Use them liberally in your verses, sparingly in your choruses. The chorus is where you talk about how you (or the narrator) feel(s)
  
  I'll use one of the songs as an example of some of this stuff:
  
• hook/title: Just Another Broken Heart
  
• When I read that I see another non-unique way of singing a sad bastard song. One of the hardest things about our job is saying the same old thing in a fresh way
  
  
• rhyme schemes
  
• Your first verse sets a AABAA (counting assonance as rhyme), the next verse is ABBAA. And you go to ABAB in the chorus to mix it up, good job on mixing it up there but you want to keep the verse rhyme patterns the same. Also, try to stay away from couplets when you want to be taken seriously. AABB can sound corny.
  
  
• structure
  
• You have a Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Verse structure. Not one of the standard structure. Again, pre-choruses are the thing these days. And your first verse is the 3rd verse. I don't know if your first verse is strong enough for that. Additionally, is there a counterpoint idea that could balance the sadness of the rest of the song? Remember, contrast is the name of the game in songwriting.
  
  
• verse development
  
• the first verse deals with not wanting to wake up to the reality and face the pain. I like that. The 2nd verse deals with the fear of what you'll find. That's okay but you've already indicated that somewhat in your first verse. You're just restating it. And then the 3rd verse is a repeat of the first. And I don't know if your first verse is strong enough for that.
  
  ..k so I'm getting to have a wall of text here so I'll stop there. I think you get the point. The biggest hurdle an aspiring pro songwriter has to make is the realization that listener's don't give a shit about you. They care about how your song makes them feel. If you can elicit emotion in the right way you may been on to something.
  
  I would recommend, if this is something you're legitimately considering pursuing, that you consider joining Taxi.com. They're a company you can join (for a fee) that will pitch your songs to the majors. They can also give you advice on finding a studio to produce your songs. But more importantly, they'll give you reviews of your submissions for actual industry pros. At the very least you could learn a ton from their forums (http://forums.taxi.com) and watching some Taxi TV.
  
  Here are the books that I've probably learned the most from all most of my critique is based on:
  
  Writing Better Lyrics
  
  Murphy's Laws of Songwriting
  
  The Craft of Lyric Writing
  
  But that's just my 2 cents as a random guy on the internet.

Well, all of that stuff you've studied so far (modes, scales, note names) is NOT the bulk of what music theory is all about. Those are just definitions and the basic musical vocabulary. You have to understand English words, and what English letters look like before you try and write down an English sentence, right? The same goes for music theory. Trying to write down a chord progression is impossible without knowing this basic terminology, let alone understanding why you would use certain chords in certain places during that progression. The beginning sucks, but it gets so much better very quickly. I think the best thing you could do is expedite the process of learning these basic terms so you can fully engage with the “good stuff”.

You can do that here:

https://www.amazon.com/AB-Guide-Music-Theory-Part/dp/B004NWH0CW/ref=nodl_

Reading the book takes about a day, two days if you’re taking notes. Totally worth it.

It seems like you are looking for the “why (you would do BLANK)”, in music theory rather then a “what (this BLANK is)”. The good news is, the majority of all of music theory deals with the “why” rather then the “what”. None of these “why” concepts are hard “rules”, however, just what people have observed to typically happen over the past few hundred years in western music.

Harmony, Composition/form and Orchestration/arranging are the main fields of theoretical study, but were just going to focus you in on the first two. If you’re looking for rigorous study, look for the textbooks that major universities use, preferably textbooks that have an accompanying workbook with exercises in it. If you’re looking for something more casual, here are some of my suggestions:

Start here:

https://www.artofcomposing.com/how-to-compose-music-part-six-simple-functional-harmony

Then here:

http://openmusictheory.com/contents.html

Skip through the “strict 2 voice composition” and “strict 4-voice Composition” sections for now and go straight to the “Harmony” section. After that hit the “thematic structure in classical style” section and go nuts. Those two articles were pretty mind blowing for me. There’s a ton of more stuff there that’s really cool as well. If you don’t understand what’s going on, the “Fundamentals” section can bring you up to speed.

Here’s a solid beginners Harmony Book:

The Songwriter's Workshop: Harmony https://www.amazon.com/dp/0634026615/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pcYKAbPQK5Z9M

Here’s a solid beginners Composition Book:

Melody in Songwriting: Tools and Techniques for Writing Hit Songs (Berklee Guide) https://www.amazon.com/dp/063400638X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_MbYKAb6XE2FPG

Both are super useful and practical. You’ll start learning things you can apply right away.

After that you could do read this book here if you want a more in depth look into how motives can develop and the logic behind compositional “form”:

Fundamentals of Musical Composition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0571196586/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_neYKAbH8HCFKN

You can find this one for free on the internet somewhere.

For anything that involves advanced music theory, or more technical elements of music, your best bet (IMHO) is to stay clear from jazz/rock books or anything "popular" and read from traditional academic/classical composers. That is, if you're looking to understand music from a more historic point of view of how is was used, and how it worked for hundreds of years and how it still works today.

There are tons of good books out there, but off the top of my head I reccomend:

Regarding the art of counterpoint:


Preliminary exercises in Counterpoint - Schoenberg

Also, you could check out the traditional Fux's Study of Counterpoint, but I think Schoenberg's book is far more complete and incentive.

Regarding the art of Harmony:


For a long time I've always thought that books could educate you in any way, until I met my harmony teacher. After studying with her for a couple years I find it hard to believe how much information, technique, and art is missing from almost every book on the subject, some are exceptions, obviously, but my recommendation is that there is no better way of learning this but with personal intruction. Also, the teacher needs to be someone who has had a strong education in music from well-known masters of the past, as was my teacher.

Anyways, regarding harmony in the more poetical and theoretical sense I reccomend :

Rameau's Treatise on Harmony

and of course, Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony

For a more technical approach to harmony I haven't found any books I'm really fond of, but I do think that Paul Hindemith's book is a very good option.

For something in the middle I recommend this

Regarding form and structure in music:


Once again, I have never seen information and instruction similar to that which I received with my professors, however here are a few good picks...

Schoenberg's Fundamentals of musical composition

and 2 books that I found very useful were...
(these I didn't find on amazon.com)

from German composer Clemens Kuhn: "Formenlehre der Musik" (this is only in German)

and from Spanish composer Joaquin Zamacois: "Curso de Formas Musicales" (this is only in Spanish I believe)

Well, surely there are more books, but I think these are good options for you to start. However, always with a grain of salt

My pleasure! Ralph Murphy is a boss, met him for the first time my last trip down to Nashville. I would highly recommend a few cheap/free resources. Ralph Murphy's Laws Of Songwriting, Writing Better Lyrics - Pat Pattison (You can't really tell but both of these are hyperlinks, so go feel free to click on them), and www.coursera.com offers a free online lyric class. SAC memberships are like $35 for students, and then you can attend workshops free.

I think you can totally write downer characters, but again, give him a redeeming quality. Give us a reason to root for him.

As far as playing. You don't need to be a John Mayer or Elton John. A lot of the most successful writers I know are mediocre at best guitar players. If you can play acoustic guitar in time you have all you need as far as guitar skills. I mean the more you know the better, but you can get by with the basics. A bigger factor for the artist thing is having the "it" factor. It's impossible for me to tell from a recording if you have it or not. I know I don't have the frontman "it" factor. But when you see it you know. It's the confidence, the charisma, the ability to connect with an audience whether it be 3 drunk dudes in a bar or thousands at the ACC. I wouldn't concern yourself with the guitar stuff.

All the best!

A great theory book for guitarists (starting from the basics) is this. Definitely nothing in there about "polytonal rhythms" (whatever they might be, they certainly ain't "fundamental")!

You'll see it goes as far as "chord substution and reharmonization", but by that point I would be starting to take it a little less seriously, and maybe moving on to something more in depth. (Those "jazz theories" can get controversial.)

Of similar level - less guitar-based - is this. This is more like an exercise book, with the information in each chapter followed by test questions, with answers in the back. (Just one of the answers is wrong in my very old edition... hopefully fixed now.)

I really recommend at least two sources when reading music theory. Every author has their own angle, and their own readership in mind. It may be that one book (or website) clicks with you, but the others will always fill in gaps here and there, and what's not clear in one may be clear in another. When all sources agree, you can be sure you've got good info. When they don't ... more research needed!

Best general theory website is probably https://www.musictheory.net/lessons - very well organised, right from the basics. It will "walk you through" if you resist skipping pages and take it steadily, step by step, in order. You may need the first book above (or something similar) to help translate notation to the guitar.

Don't forget to always play the stuff on the guitar as you're reading. If you don't know how to play it, don't try learning it. musictheory.net provides sounds, so you can at least hear the stuff, but best if you can play it yourself.

I've been writing songs as a hobby for years now. Music comes pretty easy to me so I can just sort of hum or write melodies with ease, but I could never get lyrics + melodies to fit and create a great song. Then I read "Writing better lyrics" by Pat Pattison and have very little issues now. His methods are genius and honestly made lyric writing MUCH easier for me. I have read countless songwriting books and that is the single greatest one I've ever come across. If you want to write great lyrics, learn how to structure them melodically, and learn the intricacies of songwriting please read that book. He's also got a songwriting class on coursera.


http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779

Your Writing;

Some good writing in your details and solid word images. You have a good sense of humor, I would have enjoyed more of your dry timing. The story and characters, that was very difficult for me to follow. The paragraphs seemed to dance, move to one thing or another, almost like it didn't need to connect. They did connect but It felt to me I had to work hard to get it.

I stopped when Owen got to Lake Tahoe.

I found it hard to understand when it's the Mc thinking, or a dream, or something else. It didn't feel very real to me. I didn't get a any sense of a 'when', no sense of time passing, nor a viewpoint that let me understand what I was reading.

I thought Owen was a type of kid I wouldn't much like to hang out with. The red haired girl, not sure. Good world building, a firm start.

Other ways to get better feedback;

If you want to avoid bad habits before starting, be clear about how much help you can get here. Ask specific questions about areas you think don't work. Post a small intro, maybe just a scene or two from a chapter. Start a bit smaller. Build up from there.

The best help I see comes from very specific questions about your work.

More detailed critiques can be found at the link shown below. There they will read all of it and give very detailed responses, however there is a catch. You have to do a 1:1 ratio of other works in order to receive the same. So you'd have to complete a high level critique of a 2,500 plus story, then you would get the same.

If you don’t follow this rule, your post will be marked as a leech post. And if your leech post has been up for 24 hours without any new critiques from you, it will be removed.

[Destructive Readers](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/ "The goal: to improve writing and maintain the highest standard of critique excellence anywhere on Reddit. DestructiveReaders isn't about writers being nice to writers; it's about readers being honest with writers. We deconstruct writing to construct better writers." )

Sharing the writing process;

A lot of us here are working and struggling with becoming better writers. So you are not alone in this painful process.

I myself find the task of becoming a good writer very daunting. I only keep going because I create a belief in myself. After that I go through the slow hard swim in the deep dark oceans of the unknown. I have no directions, no compass, only fear which if allowed becomes an anchor.

It would be good to know something about your skill level, things you've already read to improve crafting stories, classes you've taken, daily exercises or how much you write each day.

Myself; I do a daily poem, then write from 5/6 am to 9 am, that will be either my current novel or on a short I plan to submit to a magazine. I listen to Podcasts and do exercises from Writing Excuses

Books I use as my reference on writing;

• Song Writing Without Boundaries by Pat Pattison
  
  
• Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
  
  
• On Writing by Steven King
  
  
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E.B. White
  
  end
  
  
  
  
  

These are a good start;

• The Computer Music Tutorial. This is essentially a bible of all things digital. Read it, cover to cover, even if you don't understand everything. Then read it again.
  
  
• The SuperCollider Book. SuperCollider specific but a great read and has some interesting techniques in it.
  
  
• The Music Machine. Not just this, but specifically anything from the Computer Music Journal. Your uni should have a subscription through JSTOR.
  
  
• Understanding Sound Organization. A bit arty but still interesting.
  
  
• The Art Of Noises. A great bit of old material, challenging traditional perceptions about noise.
  
  I'll look on my bookcase and post more good reads when I get the chance.

I recommend you start by picking up a good book on the analysis of musical form, something like Green's Form in Tonal Music (but from the library as it's obscenely expensive). I believe it's very important to comprehend the overall structure of a piece of music so that you can break it down into its logical constituents. Deep formal constructs often dictate the more surface level structures that we perceive as harmonic progressions and rhythmic motives. These kinds of choices do not happen in a vacuum; they are very much tied to the long range form of a piece of music, even when these structures are the germinating idea for the rest of the work (see the sketchbooks of Beethoven for examples).

To this purpose it's usually easier to start off with small pieces from the Baroque era as they're formally straightforward. For example, the structural simplicity of the binary form makes the harmonic and rhythmic choices of a composer much more clear. Once you have this as a foundation, the music of Haydn and Mozart will be much more readily digestable. I do not recommend starting with music written after about 1750 if you're new to analysis.

Once you feel comfortable with this, studying sonata form is perhaps one of the most enjoyable analytic endeavors one can undertake. The work of the Classical masters is overflowing with good examples of this, and the obvious oeuvre to start with is Haydn's piano sonatas. This alone could keep you busy for years to come, and the revelations you gain will be both numerous and surprising.

>There are cases where it is not practical to have an extra 3rd staff, or to put 3 parts in one staff, or to have so many ledger lines.

What on earth are you writing then? This would be a lot easier if you provided an example.

>VisuallyI think it looks better to have 8va over the whole staff, to retain the standard SATP two parts per staff look, with specific 'loco' or the at pitch lower part, compared to changing the system layout, or excessive ledger lines.

Cart before the horse much? Ledger lines are preferable to octave signs most of the time. And if you have more than an octave between two adjacent parts, you're not following SATB rules anyway.

>Doesn't 65wint have actual engraving experience?!:)

Seems like a moot point. I do too. ;) Where does that leave you?

No notation manual talks about this because it's bonkers. I'm looking at Gould (2011) (the current standard), Stone (1980) and Nicholl/Grudzinski (2007). The only reference to this practice I can find is in Clinton Roemer - The Art of Music Copying (1973), and only in relation to a conductor part, "a highly condenser and compressed version of the score... made for arrangements to be used in night clubs, concerts and book shows, for stage band publications, and so on." (195) It's important to note that nobody actually plays off this part; it's there so that the conductor doesn't have to turn as many pages as they would with a full score. Conductor parts usually don't have all the notes, might have unconventional shorthands (like this 8va/loco thing... maybe; read on), and are used mostly to highlight entrances. Roemer doesn't even use the notation like you're talking about. Here it is. In that image, he even says "instruments should be written where they sound." And these are some of the guidelines to those parts:

-

>>1. Conductor parts for simple instrumental arrangements can most often be written on a single line.

>>2. For more complex arrangements, it is better to use a braced part utilizing both treble and bass clefs. In this type of part, it becomes possible to write all Instruments where they sound.

>>3. Occasionally a vocal arrangement will require a three system part because of a duet that cannot be written on one vocal line, or because of a complicated orchestral part that requires two lines. Also, instrumental conductor parts for symphonic size orchestras often demand that a three, or even four system part be written. In all of these cases, 12-stave paper should be used.

-

>That's what I was looking for, that centuries-old experience of engraving notation.

It sounds to me like you would be better off looking for sensible solutions to your easily fixable notation problems. Having edited manuscripts and engraved scores dating back to the 1500s, I can tell you that there's a lot of shitty, nonstandardized notation out there. But you do you, boo. A good rule to go by (although not always the best rule) is that if you see it in an engraved score from the 19th century, you can do it too. Good luck on that one.

>I took a masterclass recently in medieval/Renaissance organ music, and she mentioned the transition from movable type, to copper engraving, in the 16th century scores:) Interesting topic....she showed a score (the new at the time copper engraving) where beaming occurred, which wasn't possible (shwith movable type music notation. The 8th notes had a combination of flags and beams. Really nice looking

Huh?

I found developing a stronger connection with what I was playing helped and using that connection to really put everything you have into what you are playing.

That way in those situations you can concentrate more on connecting with that music rather than having your attention diverted.

I think there are some mind games that can help as well.

The two books I would recommend reading are:

• The art of Practicing
  
• Inner game of music
  
  The art of practicing is more of an all round book about approach to practicing, approach to live, connecting with the instrument and some of the physiological things that go on.
  
  The inner game is based off of pioneering sprots psychology and takes those mental aspects alot further.
  
  One part simply put is this equation:
  
  Performance = Potential - Interference
  
  So here you have the potential side / your skill, when you play with other people your interferance in your mind is low, so you achieve good performance representative of how good your potential performance could be.
  
  However, when you play with people there, there your mental interference goes way up which subtracts greatly from your potential and leaves you with a poor performance.
  
  Most sports people and musicians / anybody doing something with skill has this issue. The usual thing when trying to learn something / get better is always to concentrate on learning how to play more / beter, i.e. learn this technique, this scale etc.
  
  Doing that is all about increasing potential, however, you can get equal benefit by reducing interference. I.e, you can perform better sorting your mind out. And its what alot of professional sports players (musicians etc) have done / concentrated on since the 70's
  
  So that inner game is all about trying to define + understand these things and then some exercises and things to try and help reduce interferance.
  
  Also, I'd always recommed Victor Wootens book The music lesson. Its all about connecting to music in general.

As the others have said, it's a very rare practice and actually Howard Shore was not hired for LOTR until production had already begun. In fact it was a trip to New Zealand to visit the set which convinced him to accept the offer, according to Doug Adams' The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films

Ennio Morricone did do it for Once Upon a Time in the West, that's a very famous example and Sergio Leone would play those pieces while filming. Not an example of composed scores, but Quentin Tarantino has played live music on set too when he knows for sure what the song will be.

Believe it or not, John Williams himself has only done this a very rare number of times and never on Star Wars. For the film JFK, I believe he did write that score entirely based on the script and a visit to Washington DC with Oliver Stone. That's the only one that comes to mind. Obviously for some things he's had to write songs, like "Double Trouble" for Prisoner of Azkaban which of course became a main theme of the score. Close Encounters, he and Spielberg certainly had to decide on what those five notes would be before filming. Hook was originally going to be a musical in its very early stages and he wrote songs for that (like "We Don't Wanna Grow Up" which was used for the kids' play at the beginning, and I think it's rumored though unconfirmed that some of the main themes were based on the songs.) But the actual full score writing all came later.

For the most part, it's really up to the composers to write such great music that it has that flow and create the illusion that the film conceivably could have been crafted around the music. Very hard to do, and depends a lot on the directors and editors as well. There's a pretty famous story about the finale of ET where it became so complicated that Spielberg just told Williams to conduct the music and he would fix it all in the editing later to fit the music. That's uncommon, mostly it's the music that gets cut up more and more with digital editing and you can hear it all the time in modern movies if you listen carefully, including all three prequels and Force Awakens.

I don't have DBX, but it's only $410 Amazon.

DBXI is only $441.


Archive.org is great, but in terms of statistics and interesting facts, it pales in comparison to Deadbase. You could geat a break down of each song, first time it was played, last time it was played, how often it appeared in the first set/second set, how many times it was played per year, etc. Iphone / Android would be the perfect platform for that kind of info.

This book was pretty helpful for me in creating more descriptive, tangible strings of words, along with a ton of other wildly helpful ways to create more meaningful lyrics:
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779


This one, which I've only read a few chapters of, has been pretty helpful in getting me out of my own way. If we just tell the truth about our experience as a person (the real truth, the one we usually just think), we'll be saying things that mean more, and are more universal than any surface level or constructed truth:
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Poetry-Save-Your-Life/dp/1550717472

Music theory:

Start from the basic videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTUtqcDkzw7bisadh6AOx5w

Rick Beato's channel is also decent.



Cheap and everything explained clearly.

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-3E-Idiots-Guides/dp/1465451676/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1465451676&pd_rd_r=GF5SHDNNXVSHYD85SBMA&pd_rd_w=N6uHQ&pd_rd_wg=baHRW&psc=1&refRID=GF5SHDNNXVSHYD85SBMA

Or print the lessons of this site:

http://openmusictheory.com/contents.html



Mixing: MixbusTV ; recordingrevolution

https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Secrets-Small-Studio-Presents/dp/0240815807/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0240815807&pd_rd_r=71AA09DB5BSM6697CVWQ&pd_rd_w=fruKp&pd_rd_wg=JTmnE&psc=1&refRID=71AA09DB5BSM6697CVWQ&dpID=51eoJadnMbL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=detail


Edm production tips: type "Lessons of KSHMR" - it's uploaded by a used named Splice (which is an audio samples related site)

Future music magazine: in the studio / Steinberg sessions


Tons of free vsts: https://bedroomproducersblog.com/free-vst-plugins/

http://vst4free.com/

Recommended DAW is Reaper (60 USD), because it's the most stable, the cheapest and has the most options and custom skins, so you can replicate any other DAW's key commands/mouse modifiers and skins, while having cheaper and more stable DAW - the only negative is that it doesn't include synths and samples, only fx plugins.

Reaper tutorials (around 340 videos )
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq297H7Ca98HlB5mVFHGSsQ

Free samples:

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/free-music-samples-download-loops-hits-and-multis-627820

Paid samples:

https://www.loopmasters.com/

https://splice.com/

Recommended payed synths:

Serum (CPU killer, so don't buy it, if you don't have a good computer) or Massive for dubstep. These 2 are easy to learn and there are tons of presets for them - free and paid.

For non-dubstep anything goes as long you know what you do. You may like Syntmaster - tons of presets, cheap (100 usd) and many synthesis modes (but is very ugly and cluttered GUI). But whatever, the sounds are great (there are also cutdown versions of it, so care). The synths with that many different synthesis modes are usually way more expensive (200-500 or more USD)- but like I said, Synthmaster has pretty bad UI; still, it's a steal for that price.

At some point you will probably want NI Kontakt, because of 3rd party soundbanks, but better buy it in a Komplete bundle - it's cheaper.

Nexus is OK, if you are after some of the latest soundbanks (and they are super expensive). Factory sounds are overused and somewhat dated, so it's not worth it, if you don't get any of the latest expansions.

Disclaimer: This post is in reference to thatCrazyGuitarGuy's post, but not a direct response


Metal is not solely about the music. Theres a part in A Headbanger's Journey where the guy interviews a adolescent bass player that explains his reasons for listening to metal (not-so-nice home life, sense of belonging, etc) and it was something that resonated with me to this day.

Yes, i love metal music, but i also love the metal community. Its a place where its alright to run around screaming at the top of your lungs and letting everyone know exactly* how much you feel. Where you can hop into a mosh pit, into the maw of hell (at the good shows at least), get thrown flat on your back, and be helped up immediately. Its a place where respect is paramount and necessary, but is defined by every negative emotion that the majority of society tells us to ignore.

Well, i dont want to fucking ignore it. I want to scream it to the world from an inch in front of your face. And its perfectly alright, even encouraged, in that kind of atmosphere. Its exhilarating and is, in my opinion, a major source of the psychological comfort that extreme music povides.

I whole-heartedly recommend Sam Dunn's documentary, but also if you haven't read it check out Your Brain On Music

First of all it's regimen, second of all what instrument do you play?

Also, that sounds like a good routine, to do something different I would suggest playing with a friend, trade fours, walk bass lines, pick each others' heads for licks and approaches to changes.

It sounds like you're pretty far advanced, have you ever checked out Nicolas Slonimsky's book? It's got a lot of great stuff in it. You didn't mention any books or classical pieces, etudes and such in your post, do you do any of that?

Making "beats" typically requires a knowledge of much more than mere musical/rhythmic knowledge. The skilled beat maker understands how to make incredible rhythms out of unconventional-sounding and completely non-percussive sounds, in addition to utilizing the typical drum samples & conventions.

That's why I tell people in your situation - since you're already an instrumentalist - that obtaining a strong knowledge of digital audio workstation software is the most important thing to start out with.

Learn how computer music works, what the technical implications behind it include, and how to effectively edit & produce. Good books to check out are The Computer Music Tutorial (http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Tutorial-Curtis-Roads/dp/0262680823) is brilliant, as is the book Critical Listening Skills (http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Listening-Skills-Audio-Professionals/dp/1598630237/ref=pd_sim_b_6).

At the very same time, experiment with software. You can basically go in three directions in the digital realm: sequencer software, DAW software, or programming languages. These suggestions are put in order of easiest to most difficult. They are also put in order of fewest possibilities to most possibilities.

Ableton Live, Pro Tools, and Max/MSP are examples of types of "instruments" every contemporary beat-maker should know how to use, though I'm sure all will differ in which they prefer for various purposes.

Best of luck man!

Hey there, masters student in music composition here. Many, many kudos to you for throwing your stuff out there for all to see; I wish I could say I did the same at your stage in the game.

My undergraduate teacher would always harp on being absolutely meticulous with notation in our lessons. It is the first thing a conductor sees before a note is even played, and may mean the difference between your piece and another's getting performed. Plus, your music is your art and your craft, it should look as great as it sounds.

I would highly recommend you get your hands on Elaine Gould's Behind Bars, or maybe Heussenstamm's less intimidating Norton Manual of Music Notation to start with. These are just a few of the resources I've used thus far for everything relating to notation in music.

A few things I noticed are below, and I apologize if any of this is beyond MuseScore's capabilities:

1. Always start with some kind of tempo indication and dynamic level; this instantly gives the casual peruser something to latch on to, and sets the mood for the piece.
   
2. Make sure the division and grouping of beats is always clear. This is probably the most complicated to describe, but examples include beat 4 of m.5, RH, or beats 2/3 of m.14, LH. These could easily be misread by performers. I reference you to the above manuals or another musician who can explain it in person.
   
   
3. Accidentals, both "actual" and cautionary, as well as notation of pitches using the same written pitch class. Check out m.27, LH. It might be clearer to notate as "G-Bb-Cb-Bb-Cb", to avoid the confusion of the repeated "B". Avoid weird intervals like augmented seconds, diminished fourths, etc. A same-but-different scenario occurs between m.25-26, LH, where a G# and a G are written close to each other, but over the bar. The bar line cancels all accidentals, but the performer may not always realize it until it's too late.
   
   
4. Above all else, consider performance practice. For those that don't play the instruments they're writing for, this can be difficult. I recently wrote for guitar for the first time, and I spent hours trying to figure out if sonorities I wanted were congenial or even possible. For example, m.37, RH is impossible for any piano player, but can easily be restructured to have the lowest C in the left hand. A good player will do this naturally, but it's best to write it as exact as possible.
   
   I apologize that this is long-winded, music notation is complicated. But hopefully these tips get you started! Always think what you would want to see if given a completely new score to read, and write that.

Without question, the best way to learn how to arrange is to put in the work transcribing some of your favorite arrangers and dissecting the way they approach things.

Study the chord progressions they use and analyze their voicing. Break down how they use counterpoint vs. countermelody. Pay attention to how they use every single voice, common articulations, and where in the range do they have each part "live" (1st vs. 2nd vs 3rd).

Write down what you observe about how they do things, try to put it into words. Compare/contrast between arrangers. This will help you better internalize what they are doing and help you to find your own style.

But...

Before doing any of this, however, I suggest to read, read, read. Here are a few books to get your started:

​

The Study of Counterpoint - Johann Joseph Fux

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772/

​

Contemporary Counterpoint: Theory & Application - Beth Denisch

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Counterpoint-Theory-Application-Music/dp/0876391838

​

Guide to the Practical Study of Harmony - Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky

https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Practical-Study-Harmony-Dover-ebook/dp/B00DGBMH06

​

Principles of Orchestration - Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Orchestration-Dover-Books-Music-ebook/dp/B00DGBMDNM

​

Essential Dictionary of Orchestration - Dave Black & Tom Gerou

https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Dictionary-Orchestration-Comprehensive-Orchestrators-ebook/dp/B00EUMY7LC

​

Treatise on Instrumentation - Hector Berlioz & Richard Strauss

https://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Instrumentation-Dover-Books-Music-ebook/dp/B00DGBMN8C

​

Arranging for Horns - Jerry Gates

https://www.amazon.com/Arranging-Horns-Jerry-Gates/dp/0876391455/

​

Another excellent resource is Bandestration - https://bandestration.com/

​

BONUS:

Another great read that is HIGHLY applicable to writing for marching music is:

​

Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics

https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Musical-Acoustics-Second-Revised/dp/048626484X

​

If you are interested to explore interplay between wind/percussion arranging and electronics:

​

Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer - Andrea Pejrolo

https://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-MIDI-Orchestration-Contemporary-Composer/dp/113880150X/

​

Octave equivalence is universal among humans, barring neural damage or problems. However, there are no universal preferences for any other intervals. For example, some scales in the folk music of places such as Java don't have a fifth in them... although they do have an interval that is (I believe) 17 cents sharper than a sharp. I'm not 100% sure if that's the exact value, but it's between a fifth and a quarter tone above a fifth.

The smallest interval that can be discriminated by the ear when the two pitches are not played at the same time is about 50 cents (a quarter tone). Because of this, the upward limit for number of scale tones per octave is 24.

If you want to read a good book that gives a lot more information than I can on the subject than I can, I highly recommend The Social Psychology of Music by Paul R. Farnsworth. Daniel Levitin's book This Is Your Brain on Music also discusses pitch, and I believe that's where I read that the limit is 24 tones.

And, more bonus information just because I feel like you might appreciate it. When we listen to two intervals at the same time, we can discern differences much smaller. Starting with two tones that are at the same pitch, if one of the tone rises, different things happen as the interval gets wider and wider.

While the tones are the same pitch, the sounds' amplitudes are added, which (in most situations) just makes it twice as loud. As the second tone rises to 15 Hz above the first tone, the average of the two tones is heard with a beating noise with a frequency of the difference in tone. Thus if one tone is at 440 and the other is at 450, the ear will hear 445 with a "beating" sound that happens 10 times per second. Above 15Hz, there is an unpleasant sound until the difference between the tones' pitches reaches a point called the Limit of Discrimination. This point is arbitrary and depends on things like the absolute values of the two pitches (for example, lower pitches are harder to discriminate between) and the listener theirself. Above the Limit of Discrimination, though, there is a sensation of hearing two pitches instead of just one. From there upwards, it reaches what's called the critical band, which is a continuum of decreasing dissonance. Above that point, most of the effects have more to do with culture than how the ear works.

Also, about scales. Traditionally, pentatonic scales come from Europe and West Asia, but heptatonic (7-note) scales were used primarily in the Middle East and India. You might also check out Temperament: How Music Became a Great Battlefield for the Great Minds of Western Civilization, because it points out how arbitrary our decisions of pitch in Western music are.

TL;DR: The octave is the only interval that's universal

Hey there - it depends on what sort of you music you want to write and how much you already know!

A good place to start is ... reading! :O

But seriously, books like Samuel Adler's ["Study of Orchestration"] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Study-Orchestration-Samuel-Adler/dp/0393283739/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=study+of+orchestration&qid=1557587743&s=gateway&sr=8-1) is perfect for learning about the common orchestral instruments, and other books like Elaine Gould's ["Behind Bars"] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Behind-Bars-Definitive-Guide-Notation/dp/0571514561/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=behind+bars&qid=1557587760&s=gateway&sr=8-2) is an excellent guide for creating professional scores.

Outside of reading, listening to orchestral music of the 20th century is also a great learning tool, particularly composers like Stravinsky, Holst, Britten, Tippett, etc.

And if you can read music, following the scores/sheet music as you listen is even more useful (you can find a lot of free scores on [IMSLP] (https://imslp.org/)). If you have time, follow one instrument at a time, see how the instrument is being used, what it typically plays ("idiomatic" writing), the general ranges and techniques, etc.

And then just have a go at it - it can't be learnt overnight (heck, I've been doing it for nearly 9 years now!), but if you keep chipping away at it every now and then, progress will start to show!

^^^/WallOfText

1. Highly recommend this book.
   
   
2. Go for specific imagery and storytelling. "Still looking at this gift you gave me" is better than "Girl I'm sad you left me".
   
   
3. Find a theme for the song that is not just the emotion you're trying to work with. For example, "sad because of a breakup" is a subject matter, not a theme. A theme would be "life is strange" or "you can never keep something for long". Then, don't necessarily make the theme a lyric in your song, but try to draw out images and ideas from the theme. If you do that and the song still really needs you to actually state the theme, you'll know. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a cliche.
   
   
4. Don't rhyme emotional words. Don't rhyme "mad" with "bad" or "sad" or "glad", for example.
   
   
5. One effective technique that's used a LOT is to make the verses specific and the choruses general, or vice versa.
   
   
6. Use the rhythm of the lyrics to emphasize emotional parts
   
   
7. Try to have some emotional development within the song. Not just a reflection of emotion, but some kind of journey or realization. I mean, a song about depression might work well as just a static droning sadness, but for most songs, this can be really powerful.
   
   Example, from an 80s hair metal ballad that was a big hit:
   
   
   VERSE
   
   We both lie silently still in the dead of the night (specific situation)
   
   Although we both lie close together
   
   We feel miles apart, inside (storytelling, relatable situation, specific scene)
   
   Was it somethin' I said or something I did
   
   Did my words not come out right (storytelling - you know exactly the emotion but all he's said so far is "feel miles apart inside")
   
   Tho' I tried not to hurt you
   
   Tho' I tried (storytelling)
   
   But I guess that's why they say (note how he interrupts the verse cadence leading into the chorus - adds emotional weight)
   
   CHORUS
   
   Every rose has its thorn (specific metaphorical imagery, asserts a theme (good things are always difficult))
   
   Just like every night has its dawn (familiar metaphor, also turns around the metaphor from the previous line)
   
   Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song (wtf? do they? I dunno. This line is just weird but for some reason it works for a hair metal ballad. but notice they don't go with "I feel like a sad cowboy" - they just show you the image)
   
   Every rose has its thorn
   
   Yea it does
   
   VERSE
   
   I listen to our favorite song playin' on the radio (storytelling, specificity)
   
   Hear the dj say love's a game of
   
   Easy come and easy go (listen to the song and notice how they use the rhythm to reinforce the emotional weight of this line, which also relates to the theme)
   
   But I wonder does he know (reinforces and relates to the story and a theme of distance - in the first verse, he's lying next to someone close to him and feeling far away - in this verse, he's listening to someone far away and wondering how they're feeling)
   
   Has he ever felt like this
   
   And I know that you'd be here right now
   
   If I could have let you know somehow I guess (notice how at the end of the first verse, they are wondering if they are at fault, and at the end of the second verse, they are admitting it)
   
   CHORUS
   
   etc
   
   In the rest of the song, they start leaning on more direct stuff "I feel so much pain" and "cuts life a knife...but the scar remains" and it gets kind of cliche. The last verse returns to the story, so the bridge being more direct kinda works in that way, but for me the success of this song is the first two verses and choruses. Seems like they got a little lazy about the middle of the song. Still a very successful song about a breakup, full of relatable storytelling, specific imagery, decent rhymes, good emotional use of lyrical rhythm, and a catchy chorus that sets off against the verses really well.
   
   EDIT: Also, check out the work that "Just like" is doing in the chorus. "Every rose has its thorn" is pretty much the opposite idea of "every night has its dawn" - but, by relating them with "just like", the song is creating this kind of philosophical malaise - all good things are kind of bad, all bad things are kind of good, the good is like the bad and the bad is like the good, and it's hard to even tell what's bad or good, just like people feel when they suffer a painful breakup. Checkout how much weaker it would be if it was: "Every rose has its thorn / But every night has its dawn". Totally different meaning, totally different song. That would be a song about how everything is going to be alright in the end. Relating contrasting ideas like that to get at an underlying feeling can work really well.
   
   
   

Two things I'm finding extremely useful:

LinkedIn Learning course with Julian Vengard: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/music-theory-for-songwriters-the-fundamentals


Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattinson: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1582975779


Some people will say "write from your heart" but I'm learning that great songs have SO much more technique and theoretical wizardry applied throughout the process.

These two resources are just excellent. I've been a musician for 20 years and I forced myself to watch all the videos on the LinkedIn course - I learned useful things I wish I'd known years ago.

Yeah! They came with this book: The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films: A Comprehensive Account of Howard Shore's Scores (Book and Rarities CD) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739071572/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_eXWPDb2SDB29K

This isn’t an affiliate link, but I HIGHLY recommend this book. IIRC the author interviewed Howard Shore during production (so it wasn’t done well after the fact) and the book gets pretty technical so it’s not a fluff piece. It’s not a biography of any kind, it’s about the music (and development of it) for LotR. The book came out... 3-4 years ago?

Anyway the book is fantastic and it includes a CD with MIDI mock-ups, including a few themes that ended up not making the final cut. There’s also like 20 minutes of interview audio with the author and Howard Shore.

The way I learned to write songs was literally "learn to play what you hear on the radio, then try and do it for yourself" and that's still largely what I'll do if I find there's something interesting about a track I've heard.

However, I did buy some books to give myself a bit more focus. Those books were:

"6 Steps to Songwriting Success"
"The Craft and Business of Songwriting"
"Writing Better Lyrics"

In the first two books I found some sections helpful, some sections blindingly obvious and some of no value. So, y'know, caveat emptor.
The last book is just excellent and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to be any kind of songwriter.

If you're after a quick leg-up, what I'd suggest is:

Pick one song.
Work out the chords.
Work out the structure (e.g. verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus), noting how many bars for each section.
Throw the chords away.
Write your own chord progressions for the sections you noted above.
Write melody.
Iterate over the last two steps until you have something you're happy with.

Last point. It's hard to write something original, but if you start by writing unoriginal trash then (a) you're not worried about being original so you can work faster and (b) you get to grips with "what does writing a song involve". The more practice you have of writing songs the easier it will get and the more you'll feel able to experiment with playing around with form/progressions/melodies and so on.

Yes, a random signal contains all possible frequencies (at all possible phases). When you use a noise generator, all it is is a random number algorithm scaled to the range of your audio output's bit depth. So at the simplest level in 16 bit audio you would have a random generator spitting out numbers between 0 and 65536 44,100 times a second. That's what white noise is, and it is easy to create this way.

You are trying to simulate noise using additive synthesis, which is helpful in that you might start to understand the transition from a discernible tone into noise. It is ultimately impossible to get real noise this way because you can't create an infinite number of oscillators.


>However the moment I tried it with aligned phases (as much as possible in max due to serial nature of messages) it wasnt noise anymore... because it started to "cycle". How come noise never starts to cycle? Adding a random phase disturbance completely changes the sound picture.


Noise doesn't cycle because it is completely random - all frequencies, all phases. What you're hearing in max is the artifacts of the process of max looking up the sine wave tables and sending all those signals to the DAC. This can only happen at a certain speed limited by your hardware. Like you said - the serial nature of messages. If we had a perfect machine that we could tell to generate oscillators for all audible frequencies at all phases, the sum of all of those signals would be a completely random signal. The limitations of your hardware are creating the artifacts in this case, not your brain.

>Adding 400 and 400.01 hertz yields a 0.01Hz beat tone, or, a slowly changing amplitude of the original wave. We perceive that as 400hz that shifts in volume, in reality is exchanging between 400 and 400.01 hertz frequency right?

When waves of any kind add together they create constructive or destructive interference. In that case we hear a pulsing sine wave. As the two get farther apart in frequency the pulsing will get faster and faster until you start to hear what's called a difference tone (which is a psychoacoustic phenomenon). Eventually, you'll start to hear them as an interval between two distinct tones. The pulsing, however, is not in your head - its those two waves interfering with eachother.

I can't really describe anything better than this, but there is a TON of work that's been done on these topics. Since I can't find my computer music bible, here's a bunch of wikipedia links:

White Noise
Difference Tone
Psychoacoustics
Masking

Computer Music Bible - This book is so worth the money. It was written for musicians by a musician and touches on every subject as well as pointing in the right direction for further reading on the subjects in it. Everything I learned came out of here. I wish I could teleport a copy to you because it is much better at explaining this than I am.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541606392&sr=8-1&keywords=write+better+lyrics


This is one of the best things I've done to enhance my lyric writing. If you follow the exercises in this book, you will surely see quick improvement. It will not be all you need, however. You still need to put in hard work before you will be able to write songs you really feel proud of. Good luck mate.

It seems like you want an intro that is intermediate in level rather than for absolute beginners, one that focuses on audio rather than general theory, and one that isn't primarily focused on projects.

I don't happen to know of a book that is an exact fit, but you might be interested in "The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook: 80 High-Performance Audio Electronics Projects"

http://www.amazon.com/Audiophiles-Project-Sourcebook-High-Performance-Electronics/dp/0071379290

But usually in order to really understand electronics, you have to deviate from your immediate goal, so a general electronics text might turn out to be the best of what's available out there.

One truly classic famous book is The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Tutorial-Curtis-Roads/dp/0262680823

I consider this a must-read despite the fact that it is aging, and regardless of the fact that it is not purely schematic diagrams. The conceptual understanding of the general topic is more important than the medium that implements something.

I've got this one- http://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Theory-Comprehensive-Musicians-Essential/dp/0793579910

and it's pretty good.

Also, check out http://www.musictheory.net and http://www.teoria.com , they're both fantastic resources.

Have fun and good luck!

You owe it to yourself to buy this book ASAP. It'll end up answering so many questions for you, and if you really enjoy writing by hand, you'll probably just love flipping through and reading the little entries and learning a ton about all of the little notation rules we all take for granted in our reading.

It's amazing when you actually put pen(cil) to paper how much you start to realize little things like... "Wait... when do I change stem directions? How long should stems be? How do I space this thing?" etc.

Also, I would highly recommend doing this with pencil (I vastly prefer a nice 0.5 mechanical for consistency and precision). And if you're going to copy someone else's work, try to find something from a decent publisher/editor rather than learn from some of the highly questionable stuff you might find on musescore where people make all sorts of egregious errors with beaming and just general beat obfuscating note grouping stuff.

Your notation is fine, no problem there at all. If you want, you could put a indication above the staff when it first appears showing the grouping, e.g. half, half, dotted half | dotted half, half, half (sort of like you would with a metric modulation), but it's certainly not essential, since your notation is clear.

Whole rests are the norm for empty bars in any meter, as are multi rests, so you're fine there too.

It's worth picking up the Elaine Gould book Behind Bars for issues like this and many more. It's an excellent resource that will serve you well in all compositional endeavours.

How large is your music library? (In songs and GBs)

What traits or habits of songs, that come up often, do you like the least that the less trained ear might not notice?

Have you ever read this book? (I personally really enjoyed it, it's a great introduction to the terms of music for the beginner, and very indepth and interesting observations of other aspects of how it reacts with your brain. Like if a piece of music is memorized bit by bit in your brain like a recording, or if it has ways that it fills in the gaps. Or how modern society doesn't associate singing and listening to music as akin as highly undeveloped ones do.)

Do you believe that over time the overall quality of music has increased/decreased/stayed roughly the same. (the size on which you are basing this is up to you, early chamber orchestral pieces of the middle ages, or within the last century/decade).

Here's a couple that I've found useful:

• Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Composition by Michael Miller - http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Music-Composition/dp/1592574033/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418209745&sr=1-3&keywords=music+composition+for+dummies&pebp=1418209748985 – this is the first book I read on composing and I found it was a great introductory text. Not too heavy, entertaining but still informative. Will provide you with a basic foundation to build upon.
  
  
• Fundamentals of Music Composition by Arnold Schoenberg - http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Musical-Composition-Arnold-Schoenberg/dp/0571196586 – this one is more theoretical but packed full of good information. A classic.
  
  
• Composing Music, A New Approach by William Russo - http://www.amazon.com/Composing-Music-A-New-Approach/dp/0226732169/ref=pd_sim_b_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=1ZNR3GJFDSRX6Z2PGS4R – this one's a bit more modern and full of practical exercises, will get you composing straight away.
  
  And the one I'm reading at the moment, Jazz Composition and Arranging in the Digital Age by Richard Sussman and Michael Abene - http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Composition-Arranging-Digital-Age/dp/0195381009/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418209939&sr=1-1&keywords=jazz+composition+and+arranging
  
  Hope that helps!

The Soundcloud Bible - This is written by Budi Voogt, he helped break San Holo. I haven't read it yet, but I have read a couple of the articles on his site (The same link, under articles) and those were great! So I would recommend checking out the book.

All You Need to Know about the Music Business by Donald S. Passman is probably the most famous. (I'm waiting for the 10th edition so I haven't read it yet.

Get More Fans - I have read this and I wasn't too impressed, but it is also a highly recommended book on music marketing so check it out. (I didn't like it, because I felt like I had already learnt a lot of what is mentioned and the layout of the book isn't that great in my opinion. The writers have their own blog as well and the book seems like a collage of blog posts. But that is just my opinion.)

The workbook I'm linking to - I can't say enough good things. I did roughly a page or two a day and got through it in about two months. I went slow though and tried to absorb the information as best as I could. The lessons build on each other, so it keeps previous lessons fresh, and if you run into any trouble you can Google those specific things. The book gave my self study structure, which was nice as I didn't haphazardly just research terms randomly without any basics.

I find workbooks very useful as having to write things down cements it better in my mind. You'll definitely want to continue your studies after this, but you can deep dive into anything you feel you need extra help on or just find interesting. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to get their feet wet in music theory.

Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory: A Complete Self-Study Course for All Musicians (Book & 2 CDs) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739036351/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OdoxDbHBQK7G5

Its pretty much one of the standard texts for students of orchestration. Adler is a very well respected composer and orchestrator. If you can find a second hand copy, even an earlier edition with the CD/DVD included its well worth it.

Rimsky Korsakov Principles of Orchestration is another good one.

this is really good man! if you would like this link is to a book that i used to help me write better. it really works
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331524881&sr=8-1

good luck!

Try it out. Dive in, see what works, what doesn't. Back it up with theory. I'm fond of these as resources:

• Principles of Orchestration: http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Orchestration-Dover-Books-Music/dp/0486212661
  
• The Study of Orchestration: http://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestration-Third-Samuel-Adler/dp/039397572X
  
• Essential Dictionary: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Dictionary-Orchestration/dp/0739000217
  
• MIDI Orchestration: http://www.amazon.com/Guide-MIDI-Orchestration-4e/dp/0240814134
  
  Find scores you enjoy, and study those. Harmonics, counter-point, instrumentation, melodic structure, and so on. I'm particularly fond of James Newton Howard scores, and Jeff Atmajian's orchestration work on his projects. Like Ravel? Start there and become really intimate with Ravel and his scores and techniques.
  
  That said, I'm also happy to orchestrate something for you. PM'd you.

Read this and this

Edit: Additionally, everyone has a natural frequency they resonate at. When you wake up in the morning, hum a note. What comes naturally is usually your natural resonance. Due to sympathetic vibrations in the harmonic series, certain harmonies and sympathetic tones can physically interact with your "personal frequency"

In other words, music fucking rules

Get this book: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779

Pat Pattinson is a professor of songwriting at Berklee College of Music. My friend studied with him and turned me on to the book. It includes a lot of exercises on how to get yourself thinking in terms of imagery/metaphors as you write, but it's specifically geared toward songwriting. The exercise my buddy often does as a warm up is a free-write. Pick an object like "Apple" and start writing a stream of consciousness about apples. Let your mind wander and just WRITE, it doesn't have to make sense. I'm typing this on a phone, but when I think of apples:

"old scraggly woman, arm outstretched offering tastes of her madness to beautiful girls; a snake winding up a tree, it's cold stomach scraping against bark as it sweetly whispers knowing hisses. Red but not round, paragon of fruits, mottled red and breaking like the earth cracks on a fault as the white teeth sink".

Lyrics and poetry are similar, but there are some nuances to lyrics. The number one I can think of is that people often write lyrics that are impractical to sing. The lines are too long (aside from meter, you'll run out of breath before you can finish the line), or include excessively complicated words (difficult to enunciate and control pitch at the same time). Think of a word like "splendiferous". Maybe you could write it in a poem, but you probably wouldn't want to sing it.

All good! As a composer myself, I ALWAYS send my works to performers and ask, could you understand how to play exactly this with simpler notation? The answer is usually yes!

This book is AMAZING. My friend got it, and we have been pouring over it ever since, absorbing as much as we can and rehashing our scores to make as much sense to performers as possible.

How did you get through that without saying "Chladni plates"? Such a great word, Chladni, and the patterns are cool to watch.

Also, Arthur Benade wrote a pretty good book about this stuff, and all the other instruments.


It hits the sweet spot between tech folk who want to learn about musical instruments, and tech-leaning music folk who want to know the whys and wherefores.

OP, I'd be curious to know if that book is still a go-to for your age group.

Not necessarily confined to the travel writing genre, but this book really helped me become a much better writer in general. It's basically an exercise book with writing prompts that force you to hone your use of metaphor and simile—brilliant stuff. Apart from doing the exercises and building that creative muscle though, the real benefit of this was writing lots of cool stuff that I could then incorporate into my actual writing. Cannot recommend it enough!

The best way to get good at writing is to write.

This book is filled with writing exercises for writers of song lyrics.

It is a great companion to Writing Better Lyrics. A book (and I also attended one of his workshops) that has helped me a lot.

For anybody generally interested in the LotR music, but not necessarily this idea of mine, there's a small underground scene across various LotR blogs, forums, etc. that specialize in following Shore's music (A Magpie's Nest is perhaps the most comprehensive of the fan sites), and there's even a book professionally analyzing the music for anybody truly nutty about the music. It's written in a way that's mostly accessible to non-musicians, although training/education helps.

These three books have been a huge help to me:

Elements of Computer Music by F. Richard Moore

Computer Music by Charles Dodge

The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads

They are geared toward music, but they explain in fair depth methods of DSP design and sound generation algorithms. A strong background in math is helpful, but not required.

Justin's Practical Music Theory PDF is an excellent resource.

If you'd like to take things further, and as Justin recommend on the site, I'd also highly recommend MI's Harmony and Theory:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0793579910/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486590104&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=harmony+and+theory&dpPl=1&dpID=617snwalTUL&ref=plSrch

I wish there was a book. An in-depth thematic analysis of the SW music like Doug Adam's book on LotR would be amazing.


This blog post looks like a good place to start.

It's not just where you live, but just because someone doesn't have much technical knowledge doesn't mean they're not good musicians.

Now, I'm not trying to be a douche, but just try to look beyond that, it might help you enjoy music a little bit more - I used to have a similar mentality but when I stopped that I enjoyed listening so much more.

But since you're a musician and into the technical side, check out This book =) Currently reading it, it's outstanding.

It's the same reason we have double sharps and flats in music, instead of just writing the next note. Music notation should be easy to understand and be able to preserve the structural integrity of the harmonies.

Trust me, I know it looks funny, but sometimes music must be notated in such a fashion. If you're interested in music notation, I recommend you take a look at this book. I have it open in front of me right now.

It was on thinkgeek but it looks like they aren't selling it anymore for some reason (I used an old link because they don't display it on the site anymore). BUT I just found it on amazon, and for $20 off! Happy Holidays!

Whenever I feel like I'm lacking in an area, I make a plan to learn it and get better. Music theory is actually a simple one to start with. Here's an excellent book that I used (it's geared for younger ages): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739036351/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Decide to do 1 lesson a day or 10 minutes a day, etc. In my case, I like spending 1hr on education 3 evenings a week (kind of like college class schedule). You will be able to work through many books this way and learn a lot.

Everyone has perfect pitch. Our brains have receptors that match the frequency of what we're hearing. If you hear an A at 440Hz, your brain fires a receptor at 440Hz. There's a great book called This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J Levitin that explains it much better than I could.
Still cool, though.

Do it!! And dude, high five for being a jazzer.

Composition resources... I have a few things that I enjoy using: The Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns (sidenote: the best shed dictionary ever), an orchestration book or wikipedia the instrument you're looking for a range on, IMSLP also known as "so that's how that works", and jazz theory/harmony... though I don't have a book to recommend on that one, as I learned it in a trial by fire sort of way. As far as notation software goes, I'm a big Finale junkie, though there's little advantage to Finale over Sibelius until you get to doing weird things with the software. I've heard some really good things about Reason, though haven't tried it personally because my computer doesn't spec for it. Since you're probably more theory minded, I'd suggest starting with jazz and reverse engineering yourself a tune/chart from a progression you like. It's sorta like writing a solo, but with an eraser. //rambling...


Theremin?! That's so awesome.


Yeah. I totally hear you on that one. I have like nothing to add to a discussion about some fancy new microphone or being in a cover band.

A great tip from the book Get More Fans is to set up Google Alerts with bands in your genre. That way you can see where they are being covered (and so should you!)

I'm not affiliated with that book, but it is full of awesome ideas like this. Highly suggested.

I love how you used the word, "brain hack". I think that sums it up perfectly. Your brain interprets different changes in pitch and rhythm as emotional cues, and music is an exploit of that.

There's a book called This is Your Brain on Music that delves into the neuroscience and psychological explanations for music. Very interesting stuff.

Copland's What to listen for in Music was really good, but more geared to the classical novice; still worth the read, nonetheless.

Toch's The Shaping Forces of Music was a serious eye opener for me as a composer. It really out everything I was learning in school into perspective and helped me make sense of the purpose of all that I was being taught.

Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration was a very good book that showed me all the idiosyncrasies of writing for symphony in a very clear manner.

Lyric writing, like any type of writing, has to go through rewrites and rewrites and rewrites... and even then it might not be good. But it's the practice that counts!

This is what song #2's lyrics look like for me: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2DzuQtCAAAiaV2.jpg

If you want to read about lyric writing, I actually took an online course for it... not that I ever finished it, but the book that the course recommended (and that was written by the teacher), is Writing Better Lyrics. And if you're a poor, underemployed sap like me, there are other ways of acquiring that book, hint hint. I thought it was a great breakdown of song structure, how to tell a story within the short span of a song, etc... Worth a look, if you continue to have trouble.

I'm guessing that copy is for your performances but not for others? If you give it to someone else, do it in pen. Check out some of Crumb's scores for some hand-drawn inspiration.

When you hand-draw scores you should use a ruler on all lines.

In the last measure of the excerpt you should use ledger lines instead of staff crossing in the LH, it makes it easier to read.

You should pick up Behind Bars to address several other issues with spacing, size of noteheads, etc.

From a composition standpoint, switch it up from using so many 3rds/6ths. Maybe check out some of Ligeti as well.

Keep it up!

+1 on the DNA through the eyes of a code article, that was the shit.

Semi related, I just bought a book for a class called This Is Your Brain on Music that (I think) is going to try to explain the neuroscience behind why people have loved music for as long as there have been people. Music theory grounded in biology—it looks fun.

Dan Levitin, a psych prof in my department, has a pretty good book on music and the brain, and he discusses this issue a little bit.

I'd recommend you check it out if you are generally interested in music - why it is important to us, how it is processed in the brain, etc.

This is yet another case of people who do not look at lowest price & sold/completed listings for the real value and instead base the "value" on the asking price for items that nobody is buying The baseball card industry collapsed 20 years ago for this very reason when asking prices were not being met, regardless of how saturated the market was. Another example is putting Item "X" online that nobody else is selling for $300 and assuming the true value for Item "X" really is $300.

One sold for $75, another for $130, and Amazon has used ones starting at $75.

Minus fees, shipping, the $4 you paid, the time and opportunity cost you spent: You would be fortunate to make $50 from it when all is said and done. If you can sell it. Adding insult to injury: There's about 6 different versions of this book online, including the current Deadbase 11. Please do not make claims that your item is worth what it is not before you do your research: An item is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. You paid $4 and thus, the book is worth $4 to you.

A while ago, I uploaded a link of what I thought to be the complete released music for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Released OSTs, Released Complete Score, Offical Concert album).

It has come to my attention that there is one more LOTR album out there. There is an official LOTR soundtrack book, which comes with a CD, an album called the LOTR Rarities Archive. It has early demos and themes on it. I would like to complete my collection, and the collection of others. While I have been able to hunt down elusive rare soundtrack albums, this one continues to evade me.

Here is the link to the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Music-Lord-Rings-Films-Comprehensive/dp/0739071572/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1506027062&sr=8-4&keywords=lord+of+the+rings++soundtrack+book

If anybody out there has it, I would appreciate it if it was shared. Thanks!

Haha I would, but it's on kindle. This is the one : https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008Y0XH1C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I was browsing some old posts from here and someone had posted about a coursera lyric writing course about a year ago - it's by the same guy, and the first lesson mentioned it pretty much follows this book. So I thought it'd be a good way to pass time on a long haul flight!

Posted already in this thread, but you seem like you would be more interested than the op, so I am reposting this link to make sure you see it: Read this book!

I found this book to be extremely useful when I first started. It walks you through the four bar phrase and up to writing themes. It also covers form as well. Its very tonally based, despite the author, and very easy to read. Well worth the twenty bucks.

https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Musical-Composition-Arnold-Schoenberg/dp/0571196586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518150927&sr=8-1&keywords=composing+schoenberg

That's fascinating; is your hearing impairment neurological in nature, or due to mechanical impairment of something in your ears?

I'm curious to know, because I read a really awesome book from which I learned that for most people, there is an area in the brain associated with sound processing where the neurons fire with literally the same exact frequency as the sound in the environment. E.g. a 440Hz perfect A note will produce a 440Hz firing of the neurons. Sound is thus a kind of direct perceptual access to the environment in a way that sight isn't, because sight involves a number of higher-order functions.

Learning shd be interactive, you read, you play, you write on staff paper... The FAQ listsings are excellent. here are some boosk i like, for people that like to yellow highlighter all over their books

http://www.amazon.com/Edlys-Music-Theory-Practical-People/dp/0966161661/



http://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Theory-Comprehensive-Musicians-Essential/dp/0793579910/

I have typically gone for #2 (at least those are the lyrics that have aged best for me).

I found the book "Writing Better Lyrics " by Pat Pattison to be immensly helpful when I set out to rethink my approach to lyrics.

I learned from Gardner Read. The Norton Manual of Music Notation is handy. It's old enough (30 years) that it has some material on manuscript preparation, but you can just skip that. What I currently have is Elaine Gould's Behind Bars, which I like but is probably overkill.

I'm not sure quite what you mean by "the emotional connotation side of music theory." If you're looking for e.g. what 17-18C musicians thought and wrote about the "doctrine of the affections", there are historical texts out there. But books that try to go deeper, i.e. to help you understand why a certain piece makes you feel a certain way, are doubtful, and I haven't found any of use in my own work.

Well many people bash others who tout their knowledge of theory. But that really is the next step. Either find a good book or better yet a good instructor.

[The Study of Orchestration by Sam Alder] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Study-Orchestration-Third-Edition/dp/039397572X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1396568479&sr=8-5&keywords=orchestration) is a good one, although a bit expensive.

Fundamentals of Composition by Arnold Schoenberg is one I really enjoyed, and goes from simpler forms and melodies to much more advanced areas.

If you're a musician or like music and science a lot, I'd recommend this book, which I read this summer. Levitin is a decent author and he's changed the way I understand music. I might not know what a perfect fifth is but I do know why I enjoy certain songs more than others now.

www.musictheory.net is an amazing and simple resource
and
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739036351/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
is one of the best books I've read about theory. It covers just about everything, comes with ear training CDs and an answer key for the chapter reviews

I had to look up the title again because I loaned the book to someone a while ago. It's called This Is Your Brain On Music and it's pretty easy to find actually. I felt like there was no real central point other than "Here are some interesting facts about music" but it was still an entertaining read.

I don't know what you mean by the "science" of it, but Gardner Read's Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice is a great reference (and covers microtones). Someone also recently recommended Elaine Gould's Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation to me, which is much more recent, but I don't know anything else about it.

If you want to learn more about this, I would recommend a book called This Is Your Brain On Music. It's an amazing breakdown of the brain's ability to process music by a neuro scientist who had been previously been employed as a sound engineer for many prominent bands during the 70's.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0525949690

I've found that The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory fitted my needs and intellectual prowess pretty well.
Later editions however, sadly alienated a huge demographic, i.e. "complete idiots" in favor of plain vanilla "idiots". Shame on them.
Good news though, later editions have fewer errors!

The best book I've read recently on understanding music is This Is Your Brain on Music, by Dan Levitin. It is a fairly comprehensive look at how we perceive music, both physically and psychologically, and how our tastes form. And it's got references to lots of great examples that let you hear what he's describing.

He gets a bit into Western vs. non-Western perceptions, but mostly he admits to writing from what he know, which is Western.

Thanks that was exactly what i was looking for and also explains the length of the exceptions! Perfect!

Gould, is that in reference of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Bars-Definitive-Guide-Notation/dp/0571514561

I read a book that had some science of music in it. "This is Your Brain on Music". I don't remember the specifics of it so I won't try to repeat it here because I'll probably say something inaccurate. That book isn't the only one of it's kind (good book by the way). If you are really interested in the subject I'm sure you can find some interesting information.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0525949690

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400033535/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0525949690&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=02HTPTSMBADCZZE5BDMV

I would start with Arnold Schoenberg's Fundamentals of Musical Composition and Theory of Harmony by the same author. The former is more of a slow-reading reference with examples for study and replication. The latter is a dense and thought-provoking page turner.

None of my works have been recorded. The best I could do is to post a PDF of some of them if you're interested in having a look at them.

If you're a super beginner, get your tremolo picking down. Learn theory early on too. This is a good way to understand the basics without just memorizing a bunch of scales which is what tons of guitar players do

You may be interested in the book This is your Brain on Music

It discusses in depth the implications of music on the brain and its link to language. I loved reading it.

Agree about the Pattison book. He has another book called Songwriting Without Boundaries which is great too. He provides so many tools and different strategies to approach your lyrics.

As Elaine Gould establishes in her book:

>Notes are easiest to read and to pitch when they are spelled according to the following conventions, whether or not the music has a tonal context:

>
>i. Use the most familiar intervals — perfect, minor and major — rather than augmented and diminished intervals
>
>ii. Chromatic-scale figures use sharps to ascend, flats to descend
>
>iii. Spell stepwise figures as a scale, i.e. as adjacent pitch letters: F# G Ab or D Eb Fb, not Gb G G# or Eb E Eb.

As a guitarist and parent of three musicians (piano, piano and guitar) I really feel for you!! I almost cried watching you sit there and take that crap from your mother. Hey mom! Did you know that studies have shown music improves mathematical abilities? It improves creativity and cognitive development across the board!

http://www.vh1savethemusic.com/benefits
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1869

Get this book!
http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0525949690

Dude check out the free courses on coursera:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting-lyrics
https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&query=music

The guy who teaches the songwriting course has a few books with lots of good exercises in. I'm currently reading https://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ and doing the daily "object writing" exercise. It's opening a lot of stuff up for me.

On songwriting specifically, Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison

On harmony and melody, Writing Hit Songs by Jai Josefs
You may need to know basic theory for that one though

The Art of Practicing is a favorite of mine. The Art of Tennis is good too.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Practicing-Guide-Making/dp/0609801775

Check out this book: http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

There are tons of writing exercises to get your sharpen your creative writing skills. I just started reading it and it's already helped a ton. There are a lot of exercises that need to be done in groups or with partners. If there's interest I could start a subreddit for these kinds of exercises.

Check out The Art of Practice by Madeleine Bruser https://www.amazon.com/Art-Practicing-Guide-Making-Music/dp/0609801775/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+art+of+practicing&qid=1570647913&sr=8-1 But yeah take care of yourself and just take it slow.

Firstly, this isn't the start, nor the end of this debate. Depending what you call a 'computer' and what point you draw the line towards something being a 'brain' will determine how you answer the question of whether a computer is a brain, or how similar they are. In general there is a spectrum of ways to look at it; of four positions I'm somewhat familiar with include Mindhacks, Andy Clark which would tend to come to conclusions close to the headline, and Levitin and Hofstadter might come to different ones. And their different conclusions, and the conclusions of the author really don't contradict eachother; they merely depend on the initial construction of the problem; what is a brain? What is a computer?

Secondly, computers do change what they are connected to quite often. Actually the computers themselves don't tend to make the change...but I have yet to see a reason to believe that neurons change themselves in this way, too. Since the 2000s it is quite normal for computers to be connected to various different networks(ie, other computers) within their lifetime. So in this sense a computer isn't the same thing as a brain...but might be closer in character to a collection of neurons. A small, somewhat discrete unit of mind could occur at both low, but not neuron levels of the brain and computers, properly programmed.

> To put this in perspective, the entire archived contents of the Internet fill just three petabytes.

Citation needed. Google alone must have more than that, and it's on the internet. Also, these numbers might seem impressive but keep in mind; back in the 80's, a 100mb hard drive was a Big Deal; a large, energy intensive, slow thing that cost a lot of money. Nowadays, a fairly highspeed 1gb device can fit into the size of a dime, for basically free, and we're starting to see >1TB drives; that's 4 orders of magnitude. If the rate of technological development continues at this pace, we will hit singularity level tech at some point.

> This projection overlooks the dark, hot underbelly of Moore’s law: power consumption per chip

If you actually read kurzweil, he doesn't overlook this. He provides plausible technological ways around it, and also predicts that when the heat/power becomes a problem we will start using some other way of getting the exponential increase, by dna computing or whatever---but some other paradigm will take over. I think we're starting to see this with parallel architectures, imho.

I'm reminded of something I read earlier (from the 70's? 60's?) who suggested that by now, computers would be so hot that they'd boil the oceans instantly, and there'd be only a few dozen of them. Technology has gotten more heat-efficient, computers have gotten smaller, and in general, we don't have that problem. Sure heat is a problem, but we're dealing with it, just as we're dealing with the problems inherent in any large, complex, parallel system.

> which often requires fast responses to complex situations.

Which if you're not adapted for, you aren't going to be able to act meaningful towards. That's the thing; biological systems fail ALL THE TIME. Only sometimes do they succeed---on evolutionary timescales, we have done miracles with computers. Given another billion years? We'll have fast responses to complex situations, too.

For improvisation, Dave Frank's Joy of Improv books are good for working through. Here's his full DVD going over the very basics.

For comping and jazz harmony in general, Matt Levine's Jazz Piano Book.

This idea is certainly not new. Though OP concentrates more on predictability and short-changes its tension with novelty.

Dan Levitin goes into considerable detail about it in his book from a decade ago, This Is Your Brain on Music, particularly interesting to me was the portion where he discusses why only some people like Jazz.

I read this book 'The Art of Practicing' and I'd guess it teaches a similar meditative and mental-state approach to practicing. It was very helpful.

Yes - this guy was there for that performance signing his book -- interesting read plus you listen to the tracks as you read about them.

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Lord-Rings-Films-Comprehensive/dp/0739071572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341848292&sr=8-1&keywords=doug+adams++lord+of+the+rings

Some suggestions:

• Spend some time working on instrumentals
  
• Try writing a piece where it's okay to have 2 lines
  
• Give Object Writing a try
  
• Check out Writing Better Lyrics
  
• Work through The Artist's Way
  
• Continually make shitty writing every day. Occasionally something amazing will happen.
  

In the book "Writing Better Lyrics" (link below) it addresses how fundamental it is for a pleasant scheme. Overtly over-using "hard rhymes" is annoying to our ears and akin to listening to Dr. Seuss.

Soft rhymes (mouse/ground, note/hose, life/dice etc.) are much less obtrusive to the flow.

That said, a hard rhyme is sometimes necessary.

All goes back to preferences. I knew a drummer who felt that the end of every line should rhyme. And I know a bassist who (for a period) felt that any rhyme of any shape or form was detrimental, and that other literary devices like alliteration would be preferable. Ultimately, neither of them sang their words. The bassist has since begun singing, and thus rewriting on the spot.

http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779

This one is great. Very deep.

Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics

This book also explains this phenomenon in great detail.

For music I like: http://www.amazon.com/Melody-Songwriting-Techniques-Writing-Berklee/dp/063400638X

For lyrics I like: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397613676&sr=1-1&keywords=writing+better+lyrics

http://www.amazon.com/Thesaurus-Scales-Melodic-Patterns-Text/dp/082561449X

wow wut a super simple song

I used an android app called note reacher and these books

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0882847309

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0800854535

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1554400112


I see no advantage at this point to reading music after working on it for 5 months and becoming fairly competent. I'm glad I learned but it has not added to my ability to make music. Maybe in the future it will pay off.

http://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Theory-Comprehensive-Musicians-Essential/dp/0793579910/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374293971&sr=8-1&keywords=musicians+institute+theory

this book is amazing.

I'm really enjoying This Is Your Brain On Music at the moment. Really easy to read for non-sciency and non-musiciany but goes in to a lot of depth too!

Buy the book Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison off Amazon. Do everything he says. I just finished it, and I found it thoroughly insightful.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-3E-Idiots-Guides/dp/1465451676/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

My suggestion is to try not to drown yourself in information. Pick out areas that you think you are weak and just start learning.

I like that you already know that you want to improve your chords and melody writing. Pick one of those things and just dig in.

One of my most cherished posessions is this book https://www.amazon.com/Music-Lord-Rings-Films-Comprehensive/dp/0739071572

There can be A LOT of thought behind the inner structures. Pat Pattison's book may give you a lot of insight:

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/

There's a free online course with him somewhere, too.

Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration is very good, although possibly not exactly what you're looking for.

If you want something really intense and comprehensive you must look at The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads.

I learned a lot from Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory. It's a lot of exercises and not guitar-focused at all but now I can read music, know time signatures, harmonizing scales, etc.

This is my favorite theory book: https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Theory-Comprehensive-Musicians-Essential/dp/0793579910

Some classic texts on orchestration that you might find useful:

• Samuel Adler - The Study of Orchestration
  
• Walter Piston - Orchestration
  
• Rimsky-Korsakov - Principles of Orchestration
  
• Berlioz (plus Strauss) - Treatise on Instrumentation
  

Writing better lyrics by Pat Pattison
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779

I'm a theory n00b of the highest order; this is way beyond anything i could handle, but anyway…

Schoenberg wrote books on composition and harmony.

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Musical-Composition-Arnold-Schoenberg/dp/0571196586

For anyone interested in this subject, I suggest reading This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin.

Off the top of my head...

Wikipedia may be helfpul

Virt explains the history of FM synthesis in games and a little bit on how FM synthesis works here.

The Computer Music tutorial by Curtis Roads has a pretty in-depth explanation of FM synthesis which I happen to like a lot. Tons of other stuff in it too so it's worth the purchase

Haven't read, but I trust Gordon Reid and his Synth Secrets

Many musicians and singers work with specialist lyricists. Try /r/BedroomBands/

I like this: https://www.amazon.com.au/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison-ebook/dp/B008Y0XH1C

Also these guys have some videos on writing lyrics to melodies https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDKiHSPstsj0silp519gt6w

I would second this, I also read the books the guy who teaches that course wrote, it's a worthwhile perspective on the topic, this book in particular http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Better-Lyrics-Pat-Pattison/dp/1582975779/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406294784&sr=8-1&keywords=writing+better+lyrics

It's pricey, and probably aimed at people with a certain level of understanding of music theory, but if you're interested in how Shore uses leitmotifs, there is no more in-depth analysis out there than this book.

I went to a book signing when it was released and met Mr Shore.

There is also this book available for purchase. I am very much interested in buying this and am also saving money to do so. My only doubt is if it is worth it. What do you guys think?

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Lord-Rings-Films-Comprehensive/dp/0739071572

No one has mentioned Slonimsky's thesaurus of scales and melodic patterns yet. Despite the title, Slonimsky includes "master chords" that harmonize the scale patterns. Just about any library with a music literature section will stock this book. Or you could pick it up here.

According to Curtis Roads' black bible of computer audio page 985:

> "The usual MIDI pich range begins in the infrasonic octave with key numbers 0 to 12. This octave spans MIDI C0 or 8.17 Hz up to MIDI C1 or 16.35 Hz. Key 60 represents MIDI C5 or 261.63 Hz (MIDI middle C). In many music theory texts, middle C (261.63 HZ) is usually considered to be C4; thus the MIDI name for octaves is nonstandard. In any case, not all manufacturers confirm to the pitch-naming scheme of MIDI. Some companies call key 60 C3, C4, or C5."

tl;dr - Note zero is C zero. Addition means note sixty is middle C.

The Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics by Arthur Benade

On The Sensations of Tone by Helmholtz

That is because you acquire your primary musical taste usually before you finish with puberty. This acquisition is apparently also dependent on social factors, such as peer group. There is a book that discusses this and similar things in a non-eggheaded way, namely this

This is your brain on music

or this

Musician here, I hear music all the time. Post your thoughts when you're done reading the book

This is Your Brain on Music has a chapter on this. Essentially, its learned.