Comprehensive List of Books Relating to Music Production and Creative Growth

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On Composition:

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Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies - Dennis DeSantis
Amazon Link
This is a fantastic book. Each page has a general idea on boosting creativity, workflow, and designing sounds and tracks.


Music Theory for Computer Musicians - Michael Hewitt
Amazon Link
Really easy to digest book on music theory, as it applies to your DAW. Each DAW is used in the examples, so it is not limited to a specific program. Highly recommend this for someone starting out with theory to improve their productions.


Secrets of Dance Music Production - David Felton
Amazon Link
This book I recently picked up and so far it's been quite good. It goes over all the different elements of what make's dance music, and get's quite detailed. More geared towards the beginner, but it was engaging nonetheless. It is the best 'EDM specific' production book I have read.


Ocean of Sound - David Troop
Amazon Link

Very well written and interesting book on ambient music. Not only does David go over the technical side and history of ambiance and musical atmospheres, he speaks very poetically about creating these soundscapes and how they relate to our interpersonal emotions.


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On Audio Engineering:

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Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio - Mike Senior
Amazon Link
In my opinion, this is the best mixing reference book for both beginners and intermediate producers. Very in-depth book that covers everything from how to set-up for accurate listening to the purpose of each mixing and mastering plug-in. Highly recommended.


Zen and the Art of Mixing - Mixerman
Amazon Link
Very interesting read in that it deals with the why's more than the how's. Mixerman, a professional audio engineer, goes in detail to talk about the mix engineer's mindset, how to approach projects, and how to make critical mixing decisions. Really fun read.


The Mixing Engineer's Handbook - Bobby Owinski
Amazon Link
This is a fantastic companion book to keep around. Not only does Owinski go into great technical detail, he includes interviews from various audio engineers that I personally found very helpful and inspiring.


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On the Industry:

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All You Need to Know About the Music Business - Donald S. Passman
Amazon Link
This book is simply a must read for anyone hoping to make a professional career out of music, anyone wanting to start their own record label, or anyone interested in how the industry works. It's a very informative book for any level of producer, and is kept up-to-date with the frequent revisions. Buy it.


Rick Rubin: In the Studio - Jake Brown
Amazon Link
Very interesting read that is a semi-biographical book on Rick Rubin. It is not so personal as it is talking about his life, experiences, and processes. It does get quite technical when referring to the recording process, but there are better books for technical info. This is a fun read on one of the most successful producers in history.


Behind the Glass - Howard Massey
Amazon Link
A collection of interviews from a diverse range of musicians who speak about creativity, workflows, and experiences in the music industry. Really light, easy to digest book.


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On Creativity:

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The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Amazon Link
This is a must-read, in my opinion, for any creative individual. It is a very philosophical book on dealing with our own mental battles as an artist, and how to overcome them. Definitely pick this one up, all of you.


This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel S. Levitin
Amazon Link
A book written by a neurologist on the psychology of music and what makes us attached to it. It's a fairly scientific book but it is a very rewarding read with some great ideas.


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On Personal Growth and Development:

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How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Amazon Link
Although this seems like an odd book for a music producer, personally I think this is one of the most influential books I've ever read. Knowing how to be personable, effectively network, and form relationships is extremely important in our industry. Whether it be meeting and talking to labels, meeting other artists, or getting through to A&R, this book helps with all these areas and I suggest this book to all of you.


7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
Amazon Link
Similar to the recommendation above, although not directly linked to music, I assure you reading this book will change your views on life. It is a very engaging and practical book, and gets you in the right mindset to be successful in your life and music career. Trust me on this one and give it a read.


Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Amazon Link
You know the feeling when you're really in the groove of jamming out and all worries tend to slip away for those moments? That is the 'Optimal Experience' according to the author. This book will teach you about that experience, and how to encourage and find it in your work. This is a very challenging, immersive, and enlightening read, which deals with the bigger picture and finding happiness in your work and life. Very inspiring book that puts you in a good mindset when you're doing creative work.


The Art of Work - Jeff Goins
Amazon Link
A very fascinating book that looks at taking your passion (music in our case) and making the most of it. It guides you on how to be successful and turn your passion into your career. Some very interesting sections touching on dealing with failure, disappointment, and criticism, yet listening to your intuition and following your passion. Inspiring and uplifting book to say the least.


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Happy reading!

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Hey! I can relate exactly to where your'e coming from. I, some years ago, decided I wanted to get into building synths. I ended up getting a job at a pedal company and have spent more time learning to build and repair pedals than synths. I don't work there anymore, but it gave me a lot of perspective into the field as we also made euro-rack modules.

First up: I don't want to scare you off from this, but just want to give you a realistic perspective so that you go into this knowing what you are getting into. Making synths is hard and it's expensive. As far as electronic projects go, making a synthesizer is up there on the list. I've repaired powerplant turbine controller circuitboards that were simpler than some of the synths I've owned. This isn't to say, "don't do it!" but, expect to learn a lot of fundamental and intermediate stuff before you ever have something like a fully-featured synth that you built in your hands.

It's also expensive. A cheap synth prototype is going to cost a couple hundred bucks, easy, while a more fully-featured prototype could cost into the thousands to produce, and that's just to build one working prototype. If you want to make a run of products you're going to need money up front, and not a small amount. So, just be prepared for that inevitability.

One final note is that my perspective is broad (digital and analog) but is rooted in analog electronics because that's where I started. This isn't the only path you can take to get to where you want to go but honestly in my opinion, even if you're going to go mostly digital later, you need to understand analog.

If you have never messed with electronics much before I highly recommend the Make: Electronics book. I'm a hands-on person and this was the most effective book I found that let me study electronics fundamentals the way I wanted to; by making stuff! No matter which direction you go on (digital, analog, hybrid, DSP, SID, etc) you're going to want to know how to pick the right resistor, or how to pop an LED into a circuit, and this book will teach you that.

Solid follow-up books from there are Make: More Electronics, Practical Electronics for Inventors, How To Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic, and The Art of Electronics. All of these books are good books that touch on different concepts you will find useful, so I encourage you to look through them and decide for yourself which of these interests you.

Around this same time, I'd encourage you to start getting into kits. Honestly, before you build anything synth, I'm going to recommend you build some pedals. Effects pedals are fun and rewarding to build without being too hard. Start with a distortion circuit and work your way up from there. Once you can build a delay pedal without freaking out, move on to euro-rack kits, or other synth kits. While you're building these kits, don't just build them, play with the circuits! Try swapping components where you think you can, or adding features. One of my first kits was a distortion pedal with a single knob, but by the time I was done tweaking on it it had five knobs and two toggle switches!

Once you're feeling somewhat comfortable with electronics, then you can dive into the holy grail of analog synth design: Make: Analog Synthesizers this amazing book was written by the brilliant Ray Wilson who recently passed away. His life's goal was to bring the art of building analog synths into the hands of anyone who wanted to learn, and there is no better place to receive his great wisdom than this book. You should also check out his website Music From Outer Space along the way, but the book covers so much more than his website.

If you make through most or all of those resources you are going to be well-equipped to take on a career in synth-building! I'm personally still on that last step (trying to find the time to tackle Make: Analog Synthesizers) but hope within the next year or two to get that under my belt and start diving in deep myself. It's been a fun journey of learning and discovery and I wouldn't trade the skills I've gained in electronics for much.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Normally, I would try to (somewhat) annotate stuff I link/mention but I'm tired on all levels of my being so forgive me for making this reply less detailed than I'd like it to be. Keep in mind that I don't know sht and half the time, I'm talking out my ss.

Mostly I hope this, at least, helps you guide your search. Or the things I write here are so horribad that it prompts someone to viciously correct me, thus giving you the real info you need! :p

I might circle back after some time to add notes here and there. Maybe. Also, this first reply will be focused on quartal harmony but I should be able to muster up the spoons to write up a search guide for minimalism later.

First, there are some really neat proto examples of quartal/quintal harmony in Medieval music. The starting search term for this would be organum. There were/are more than a few kinds^A of organum but examples of parallel organum should be most interesting to you.

David Fenwick Wilson has a book on Early music called Music in the Middle Ages: Style and Structure. It's admittedly an older book but I mention it specifically because there's a lovely youtube video^B with examples from the related anthology. As always, I'm a sl*t for Norton's music history books^C so check those out as well, imo.

Outside of the realm of "classical" music, most of the quartal harmony you'll encounter will be in the form of quartal voicings^D for otherwise tertian chords. It's a favorite trick for more than a few jazz giants so naturally, there's an absolute glut^E of resources for this.

When we get to classical music though, we start to get some actual spicy stuff, like fully formed quartal harmonic systems and languages. Paul Hindemith was a BIG fan of quartal stuff. You can check out his own writings^F about his musical system in his book on composition. Arnold Schoenberg also devotes a section in his book on harmony^G to the newer quartal sounds cropping up (well "new" when he wrote it at any rate).

From there it's really a matter of doing the grunt work of either analyzing composers you find writing quartal harmony OR researching analyses of said composers. Sure, quartal harmony (and the related term "interval cycle") gets mentioned in more than a few books on 20th century harmony like Vincent Persichetti's^H or Richard Strauss's^I books; both might be good jumping off points on your journey.

Seemingly, every composer and their mother (Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Copland, Cowell, Ives) experimented with quartal writing in the 20th century. So while definitive guides might be hard to track down, specific examples aren't. I'll include an analysis or two that you might find helpful in the list below. Be on the look out for any edits I might sneak in!

Beyond that, perhaps the most concrete way we could help you would be to analyze specific pieces/instances of quartal language you find and walk you through any questions you had about the piece. When I'm not tired, I'm usually down to dig into some cool music. Drop a score, ask something, and let's analyze something together! Still, I hope this helps. Have fun on your compositional journey and take care!

A.) https://sophia.smith.edu/~rsherr/earlypol.htm

B.) https://youtu.be/SgHzH5iDcGQ

C.) https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393929157

D.) https://leadingtone.tumblr.com/post/8203279125/quartal-voicings-in-jazz-here-refers-to-an

E1.) https://www.jazzguitar.be/blog/quartal-chords-harmony-voicings-for-guitar/

E2.) https://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-chord-voicings/quartal-voicings/

E3.) http://greglui.com/blog/quartal-voicings/

F.) https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Musical-Composition-Theoretical-Part/dp/0901938300

G.) https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Harmony-ANNIVERSARY-Arnold-Schoenberg/dp/0520266080

H.) https://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398

I.) https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Post-Tonal-Theory-Fourth-Joseph/dp/0393938832

J.) Berg's Lyric Suite has plenty of quintal yumminess. Check out Perle's analysis of its interval cycles: https://www.jstor.org/stable/741747?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Because you have an issue of constantly writing in the same key, I feel like your issue won’t be solved by just learning about modal interchange. I believe that thinking about harmony and phrase structure Functionally would be of more use to your process.


Every chord in a harmonic progression serves a function that can be broken down into 3 basic categories:

1. Tonic Function (Major: I, vi, iii) (Minor: i, bIII, bVI)
   
   
   
2. Subdominant Function (Major: ii, IV) (Minor: ii^o , iv)
   
   
   
3. Dominant Function (Major: V, vii^o ) (Minor: V, #vii^o )
   
   
   Each chord flows to the next, so a progression from:
   
   
   Tonic -> Subdominant -> Dominant -> Tonic
   
   
   Is atypical. It’s important to note that Tonics can come after a subdominant (T - SD - T), and the subdominant can be skipped and a tonic can lead directly to a dominant (T - D - T). Tonic chords can also lead to other Tonic chords (T - T), the same goes for subdominants and Dominants (S - S; D - D) so our new chart would look like this:
   
   
   Tonic -><- Subdominant -> Dominant -><- Tonic
   
   
   
   Harmonic progressions serve functions as well, and you can reduce almost every harmonic progression can into 3 basic categories (some would say there are only 2, but I prefer to think about it in terms of 3):
   
   
   
   

1. Prolongation (when you prolong any harmony by skipping or omitting a harmonic Function between 2 chords, or simply repeating the same harmonic function back to back) to for example:
   
   I - V - I
   
   
   I - IV - I
   
   
   i - ii^o - i
   
   
   V - I - V
   
   
   iv - i - iv
   
   
   I - vi
   
   
   IV - ii
   
   
   ii - ii^6
   
   
   I - vii^6/5ø - I^6
   
   Etc etc
   
   
   
2. Cadential function (when the sequence of chords flows from T - SD - D - T) ex:
   
   
   vi - ii - V - I, iv - V - VI, ii - vii^o - V - I, ii - I6/4 - V^7 - I
   
   
   Etc etc
   
   
   
3. Sequential function: when harmonic root movement moves in a fixed pattern. this can, and often, defies normal “chord logic” of a T - SD - D progression. You escape sequential movement by using a Cadential Function set of harmonies. Sequences are really good ways to migrate from one key center to another, or to just provide a continuation before a cadence in the home key. Diatonically, there are 6 kinds of sequences: ascending and descending 2nds, 3rds, and 4ths
   
   Ex
   
   (by ascending 4th) vii - iii - vi - (ii - V - I)
   
   
   (By descending 2nd) V - IV - iii - iii - (ii - V - I)
   
   
   (Descending 4th) I - V - ii - vi - (V/V - V - I)
   
   
   Etc etc etc etc
   
   
   You can interject prolongation and cadential functions in between each sequential chord: I (V - I) - ii - (vi - ii) - iii - (vii - ii) etc. you can also tonicize each chord in the sequence: I - vii^o / ii - ii - vii^o /iii - iii etc etc etc
   
   
   Phrase functions are also a thing, and these are strongly linked to Harmonic Progression Functions this is where both the theory behind natural chord progressions and sets of harmonic progressions come together. Understanding and being comfortable with phrase functions is extremely important.
   
   
   
   

1. Presentation (Prolongation; a small basic idea (b.i.) That repeats twice)
   
   
   
2. Continuation Function (Sequential, Cadential; a fragmented (smaller, incomplete) interpretation of the previous material that repeats, can lead into a cadential progression)
   
   
   
3. Cadential Function (Cadential)
   
   
   
4. Antecedent Function (Prolongation -> Cadential) (basic idea, b.i., followed by a contrasting idea, c.i. that leads to a half cadence)
   
   
   
5. Consequent Function (the same basic idea followed by a varied version of the contrasting idea into a Perfect Authentic Cadence)
   
   
   In a typical musical sentence, you would have phrase structure that looks like this:
   
   
   Presentation -> continuation -> cadential
   
   
   A typical musical period looks like this:
   
   
   Antecedent -> Consequent
   
   
   You can mix and match functions to your pleasure, (one b.i. followed by a continuation function; antecedent -> continuation; antecedent -> continuation -> consequent; presentation -> cadential; etc)
   
   
   Because you write rock music, adhering to Classical Formal structures is not gonna happen. However, each function and it’s interior components (b.i. , c.i., continuation, fragmentation, etc) are used in an altered way very very frequently.
   
   
   I did not cover modulation is this post, but I will link an article below.
   
   
   I hope this helps, bellow I will link some sites and books that could help with understanding these concepts beyond this post:
   
   
   Links:
   http://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/HarmonicFunction.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/sentence.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/period.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/hybridThemes.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/themeFunctions.html
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/popRockForm-functions
   
   
   http://openmusictheory.com/Modulation.html
   
   
   Books:
   
   
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Analyzing-Classical-Form-Approach-Classroom/dp/0199987297
   
   
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Songwriting-Berklee-Guide-Perricone/dp/063400638X
   
   
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Twentieth-Century-Harmony-Creative-Aspects-Practice/dp/0393095398

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!

Since some time has now passed and there haven't been too many answers, I want to add something that I think is the most important answer: you can make up your own chorale preludes by getting better at improvising.

An easy way to start improvising is by playing just the harmonization in your hymn book, but rather than playing the top three voices at the same time, you can play them in an arpeggiated way. Some notes will have to be added or taken away in some situations, such as when two voices merge onto the same note. Here is a very quick recording that I made to demonstrate this principle.

Over time, you'll want to add basic harmonic ideas to your musical vocabulary. A few things I'd note:

• It's OK to change the notes of the hymn tune slightly to accommodate the harmonies you want. But it's important to keep the rhythm of important motives the same, especially if you're changing the notes
  
• It's useful to learn the hymn you're improvising on in multiple keys so that you can switch keys in your improvisation
  
• Steal textures from written-out preludes/meditations/etc. on hymns. One texture you can use is the triplet texture I mentioned above.
  
  If you keep working on this, you'll get better and better. My favourite improviser who lives in my area sounds like this (the recording is terrible, but good enough that you can get the idea). A feature of his improvisations that I really like is modulations to far-away keys; when I hear him play, it feels like I'm being thrown into something vast and mysterious.
  
  A resource I recommend for liturgical musicians' improvisation is this book by Gerre Hancock. It's intended for organists, but is still extremely useful for pianists. I also find Improv Planet on Patreon very useful. It's run by a piano professor who specializes in improvisation in the style of Bach and Handel.
  
  If you haven't already studied harmony, I also highly, highly recommend it (I'd call study of harmony a prerequisite for Improv Planet). Good resources for self-study of harmony include the textbooks by Laitz and by Clendinning & Marvin.

If I may, I'll throw in my somewhat-learned 2 cents. I have read a fair number of books on the subject and am currently studying music at the undergrad level--I'm by no means an expert.

If you're interested in the neurological understanding of music, I would recommend the book Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy. Pretty good read that goes into some detail without requiring an MD to understand. Basically, we respond to tension and resolution because of tendencies in our brain to seek out new and variant stimuli.

You mentioned major sounding happy and minor sounding sad. It would be interesting for you to know that this was not always the case. If you're playing in an orchestra or wind ensemble, chances are most of the music you're being exposed to in that setting is from the Classical and Romantic periods of the so-called Western Music Tradition: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Haydn. Maybe some more modern music as well, but probably nothing too "out there". Also bear in mind, most of the music you hear on the radio, pretty much since the 1970s is very closely related harmonically to classical music from the Classical and Romantic periods.

All this is to say that if you look at Baroque music and earlier, or more modern Western music, as well as music from any other cultural tradition, you'll find very different understandings of harmony, melody, and rhythm. There are few universally enjoyable traits in music across various cultures and types of listener. /u/Bears_in_Blue_Houses has some good points: repetition is usually favored, and people usually like music they can understand and relate to. Beyond that, it really depends on 1. why you're listening to music and 2. what music you're used to. Some people desire intellectual stimulation, and find more complex harmonies, rhythms, structures, and sounds to be enjoyable; others look for simple beats to dance or relax to. Most people look for different things at different times.

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

Yes, counterpoint assumes that you have a foundation in 18th century harmonic practice, also known as "common period" practices, e.g. voice leading as practiced by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, etc.

Harmony by Walter Piston is very thorough, but it's a serious treatment and perhaps not for the faint of heart. Also, you may want to get an edition before the fifth as it's substantially different from a pedagogical standpoint than the earlier editions. I can also recommend Kostka's Tonal Harmony very highly, but also a serious treatment. In fact, it may be best just to start with the Kostka and pick up the Piston later if the fancy strikes you.

These two books teach harmony in very structured way, and in many ways that's the best for learning counterpoint. Eventually, depending on how serious you want to get about composition, you may want to read Schoenberg's book Theory of Harmony. It covers the same material as most harmony books, but it does so from the perspective of the composer. It's even a little philosophical (and dense). It's not unusual for graduate students to re-learn harmony using the Schoenberg text as it forces you to think like a composer. Of course it's a more difficult read, but only if you're unprepared.

If you'd like something a little more easy, there's no shame in getting the Dummies series book on harmony. It does the job with a minimum of depth. Frankly, though, it's in your best interest to start with a solid, university level textbook like the first two I mentioned if you want to tackle counterpoint. Eventually, it's a good idea to read more than one book on tonal theory anyway, so it can't hurt to start with the Kostka and just put it down and use the "Dummies" book. You can always just come back to it later.

My advice would be to focus on learning music theory, and applying said theory to your play. Everyone here loves to recommend justinguitar.com, and I'd agree. I'd also check out Steve Stine on YouTube (index of playlists). Best theory teacher I've seen in a long while. I'd also absolutely recommend musictheory.net.

Lastly, the Berklee guitar method books will simultaneously teach you to read music and to play your instrument. These books are the single best thing I did to progress my guitar skills.

Reading music helps greatly with understanding theory. Despite what you may hear from old-timers, reading music is extremely useful.

Another very useful skill to practice is ear training, which when combined with your theory knowledge, allows you to play music by ear. I'd suggest playing back some slower jazz guitar tunes on YouTube and figuring them out measure-by-measure. There's also Matt Warnock's Play Jazz Guitar group on Facebook which combines all of the above. Matt has a doctorate in Jazz Guitar Performance. He picks a tune each month, and everyone in the group works on it throughout the month, starting with the melody, to comping chords, to improv soloing. There are players of all skill levels, and I mean all. He provides excellent, free critique to everyone. I'm going to throw him a bone and buy a few of his books shortly since his excellent group has helped me so much.

Edit: I'd like to add as well that I don't really consider myself a jazz player; it's just that jazz skills are very useful and may be applied to virtually any genre.

if you can read sheet music decently I'd recommend William Leavitt's Modern Guitar Method - It's fairly tough for new guitar students because most of them don't know how to sight read, but if you can do that then this is a really great resource and will teach you scales and chords in different areas all over the guitar. This book doesn't hold your hand, so go in expecting that it's dense and might take time a long time to get through.

Outside of working through books, it sounds like you want to know the fretboard notes more than anything, so I'd recommend learning in this order:

• Memorize the notes on the low E string and the A string. (playing e minor and a minor scales vertically [up one string] are useful for this so you don't have to worry about accidentals much yet)
  
  playing vertically is important to know but isn't very efficient
  
  
• Memorize the notes on the 5th fret (ADGCEA) and come up with an acronym to speed things up and to be able to find notes between 5th and 12th frets much faster - A Dog Got Caught Eating Apples for example
  
  
• Check out an app (also an online version) called [Tenuto] (https://www.musictheory.net/exercises) and practice Fretboard note identification, and eventually interval training (learning chords tricks you into doing this too). I especially like this on mobile because you can learn the fretboard pretty well when you're on the bus or taking a dump or whatever. Use the test mode and you'll see yourself getting way faster over time and eventually you'll start to see frets as letters instead of numbers.
  
  
• My biggest advice to most guitarists who want to be well rounded is to learn chords. Chord knowledge is super useful on guitar - you can start to see intervals/arpeggios/scales really well by knowing chords on guitar - they're like the skeletons that outline scales and arpeggios.
  
  my advice for this is to learn E shape, A shape, and D shape barre chords, assuming you already know CAGED+F open chords. That paired with a good knowledge of the E and A string and you are off to a great start. Guitar takes a lot more work than piano in order to see chords and be able to move around efficiently.
  
  Tl;dr get the app Tenuto, also available on pc here and work through William Leavitt's Modern Guitar Method (i'm in no way affiliated with either - I'm a professional musician and teacher and they're both tools that I use daily)

I assume you mean the Berklee Press "A Modern Method for Guitar" (though I think the same book by William Leavitt is published also by Hal Leonard).

I was just recommending the Hal Leonard Complete Method because it's so much less daunting, but if you've got the chops for the Berklee book, go for it. It definitely jumps in hard with both feet and leans way more on harmony really early on. If you find yourself hitting the wall with it, you can always take a break and try the other one and jump back and forth as you progress.

I'll also recommend this playlist on Youtube that has several of the duets played with both parts. That way you can really enjoy playing the duets and learn both parts and then play them back with the other parts played on Youtube.

If you don't already have a looper, it's also likely a worthwhile investment not just for guitar, but also if you're using a keyboard. It's great to be able to play duets with yourself when there isn't a recording like above. Also, listening back to yourself lets you really pay attention to details and lets you notice how bad your time is so you can fix it.

It can also be great for jamming between the two instruments or used to help with practice of improv and other things.

An entry level, no-frills looper that seems really popular is the Ditto.

> alternate chords

You mean altered chords?

> It also taught me the modes of a harmonic minor scale, but it never taught why I would need to know them, and when I'm going to have to use them

You don't, essentially. Unless maybe you're playing flamenco or similar folk music. In western music (classical and jazz anyway), harmonic minor is not really a scale, it's the practice of raising the 7th scale degree to give a major V chord in a minor key. It implies a scale, but really that scale only applies to the V chord (which you could say was the 5th mode of the scale, but it's really just the scale of the key with a raised 7th).

You do need to know harmonic minor (as you do major and melodic minor), but its modes are not much use. Modes of major and melodic minor are more useful but, again, their usage is rarely well explained. Jazz improvisation is really not about scales - any more than speech is about the alphabet. ;-)

> Are there books that do teach those kinds of stuff for composing jazz?

There are books on jazz composition, yes. I haven't read them myself, though, so can only google them like you can. Such as [this] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Composition-Practice-Ted-Pease/dp/0876390017/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543314154&sr=8-1), or [this] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Composing-Music-New-Approach-Russo/dp/0226732169/ref=pd_sim_14_8?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0226732169&pd_rd_r=5e885315-f22e-11e8-a01b-4d1de731c45e&pd_rd_w=HMCnI&pd_rd_wg=fE146&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_p=1e3b4162-429b-4ea8-80b8-75d978d3d89e&pf_rd_r=F33VW4NRKC43YC7EBNWZ&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=F33VW4NRKC43YC7EBNWZ).
I do have [this one] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Composing-Jazz-Orchestra-William-Russo/dp/0226732096/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543314404&sr=1-1) by Russo, but it isn't about composing at all: it's just a neat little book on arranging. Has some very useful tips on chord types, cadences, jazz harmony and voicing - and recommended for that reason - but nothing on producing original material. The assumed genre is the kind of key-based (functional) harmony you hear in big band jazz.

Likewise there are a few books on jazz theory - some controversial, all interesting, but maybe not that useful for composing.

Otherwise, I'd echo what 65TwinReverbRI says: study the kind of jazz you want to write. Listen and copy. If that's too hard (and it may well be!) get sheet music, Real Books, etc. Copy the sounds you like, put them together your way. In a nutshell, that's how all composers in any genre work.

>I'm trying to put together a plan of materials to go through with the intention of becoming an "expert" (very adept, lets say graduate level) in theory over the next several years.

So, at minimum, you'll need to know tonal (Schenkerian) analysis and post-tonal analysis. The fourth edition of Joseph Straus' Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory is good for post-tonal. My Schenkerian class didn't use a text, but Cadwallader and Gagne seems to be a thing now.

At the graduate level, studies are motivated by the student's research interests. It sounds like you are interested in what Dmitri Tymoczko calls "the extended common practice."

For breadth, read journals and publications. MTO is free, Spectrum is a big one, and so it JMT. Here are the last five recipients of the Wallace Berry Award (and you can read more here):

Steven Vande Mooretele - The Romantic Overture and Musical Form from Rossini to Wagner

Daniel Harrison - Pieces of Tradition: An Analysis of Contemporary Tonal Music

Ruth DeFord - Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music

Jack Boss - Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Music: Symmetry and the Musical Idea

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis - On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind

Given your interests, I'd definitely read the Daniel Harrison book.

/u/Jay13232 mentioned Persichetti. If you're going to read it, do so after you get a handle on set theory (from Straus). It's a good book, but our modern methodology is better for describing that repertoire in my opinion. Persichetti and Hindemith are like whacking nails into a board with a wrench (using ideas appropriated from tonality to describe music that doesn't follow those principles). Allen Forte, John Rahn, Robert Morris, and Howard Hanson gave us a proper set of hammers.

One thing I tried doing was learning every chord in every position and every inversion. I'm not done writing them up, but I have charts for dominant, major, minor, and half-diminished chords I could scan for you. I also have the arpeggios to be played over the chords.

Another thing is to learn are your scale modes. I'll pick either 4 modes in 1 position or 1 mode in 4 positions and practice each scale for 5 minutes.

You could improve your sight reading with this. It's not meant to be studied, but to be opened up to a random page and played.

I'm also a fan of speed and dexterity exercises. You don't have to shred, but sometimes you need to get from point A to point B in a hurry. After playing these for a while, you'll also feel less fatigue. My favorite books for this are John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom and Frank Gambale's Technique Books

Also, if you really get into jazz, I highly recommend The Jazz Theory Book. It will help with your improvisation and teach you how songs are structured, which will help you with other genres. A more classic theory book that's good is The Complete Musician.

After you get technique stuff down, it all comes down to where you want to be as a player. What do you want to play? Do you want to write? Do you want to do covers? Maybe you want to teach.

Sorry this was so long. I love teaching music myself, so if you want to learn anything specific, PM me and I should be able to help you out and send you some materials.

> Rhythm comes built into your body. You have a heart beat and if you close your eyes in a quiet room you can feel and hear the blood pumping in your ears. Your body is designed to be rhythmic.

Complementary reading:

(WARNING: I'm not an expert on anything, this is me trying to push an idea that I like upon which I've done no serious research at all, approach with skepticism and caution!)

I remember reading in The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger (which I don't have anymore and can't go back to) how the synchronicity of our neurons firing played a major role into creating this layer of self-vs-the-world feeling essential in creating a sense of consciousness in the human brain, to the point that a slight delay could have been at the source of some sorts of schizophrenia like feeling totally disconnected with the world or at the opposite of the spectrum a feeling of being only one with our external stimulus. (I found this, but haven't read it yet to ensure of it's content: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4423156/ )

So it's not just the rhythm of our hearts, it's actually the brain connecting everything at the same time (the lights from that apple hitting your eye, the breeze of the wind, you arm moving, your sense of balance - bref, bringing all your senses into one self contained experience) and keeping this sensation as a regular and predictive "tempo" is also essential.

Music plays with and satisfy that sensation. "My arm will take that glass - yep, it did, I have control over it" and "The snare is gonna hit really soon - yep it did, I'm still in contr-- wait what's that sound? This is interesting I didn't predict that! I bet it will be there again... yep there it is!"

Please! Feel free to correct me or add to it, I find this is a fascinating subject.

COMPLEMENTARY READING: "This Is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin, https://www.amazon.ca/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0452288525

You're looking for a book on the basics of composition.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226732169/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The title says "A New Approach", but since the book was penned in 1988, you can hardly call it new anymore. Anyways, it's a pretty standard book on guiding you through the composition process. I used it back in the day, and I have all of my comp students use it.

Step one is to work through this book - it's got a lot of great practical exercises and tasks. Step two is to deconstruct some of the compositions that you enjoy (it's more fun that way), and try and notice the tools that they use to get the effects that you like. For example, if you like the way a particular bridge leads to the finale, find out why you like it! It is the instrumentation, the harmony, key change, etc? Figure it out, and then add it to your composition tool box. The last step is to deconstruct music that you know is profound/revolutionary, but that you don't necessarily enjoy. You'll still find some useful composition and arrangement techniques.

All while you are doing the above, constantly compose your own stuff. It doesn't have to be good, but it has to be something.

Find a decent teacher. A good teacher will identify your strengths and weaknesses, then gently push you out of your comfortable rut. You might need to ask around locally and try a few different teachers before you find a good fit.

The intermediate to advanced lessons on JustinGuitar.com are worth a look. The jazz and songwriting modules might be of particular interest to you.

Truefire have some fantastic courses on jazz and rock improvisation, all the way up to professional standard. It's not cheap, but the all-access pass is excellent value if you're serious.

If you're serious about mastering the guitar, take a look at Leavitt's "A Modern Method for Guitar". The book goes back to basics with classical notation, scales and harmony. There are no shortcuts and it can feel like a hard slog, but you'll reap the rewards for your work.

The Sodajerker Podcast is full of invaluable ideas on the process of songwriting. They talk to some of the best songwriters in the world about their creative methods.

If you're interested in jazz guitar, check out Jens Larsen, Morten Faerstrand and Jazz Guitar Lessons on Youtube and the lessons and forums at JazzGuitar.be.

I am currently using this. It has been very good for me so far, but I don't know if you will learn "tough" sheet music in a month. I have played the piano for nearly 20 years, so I definitely understand standard music notation. This book doesn't go on and on about notation, it just gives a brief explanation and makes you go at it. Since Christmas, I feel pretty comfortable sight reading individual note lines, somewhat comfortable with intervals, and pretty good with the chords that they use most in the first 50 or so pages.

So yeah, my overall opinion is that it's effective. It's not the most exciting music to play and you might have to spend quite a lot of time on it if you hope to read notes from the whole fretboard (after almost 50 pages, I'm still only in the first 5 frets).

Gonna be honest, 20 minutes is fine for grade-schoolers, but if you're looking to get good fast, at your age, I'd suggest closer to an hour of practice and study a day. Soon enough, when you're looking at more serious rep, that should jump up to something more like at least 2-3 hours a day. Warm up with scale exercises (do some Googling for that) and arpeggios, then I'd recommend something like an etude book to start finding new fancy tools for your fingers to use (the one by [Cramer](http://imslp.org/wiki/Studio_per_il_pianoforte,_Op.50_(Cramer,_Johann_Baptist) is excellent).
Remember, Liszt once practiced 14 hours a day. There's no real limit there once you cross the professional threshold.
As far as theory is involved, I really don't know how to help there. My college classes were invaluable in that regard. If you're really interested, we used this textbook (which also has a separate workbook). However, I'm sure you could glean plenty of useful theory basics just talking to lots of theory nerds (ha, like me). Perhaps your teacher would be willing to devote a little time here and there.

Edit: looks like there's a 4th edition now for that textbook, but hey, older means cheaper ;]

>G above the first measure shows that the song is in the key of G.

I don't mean to make things more confusing or distract from the original question, but that's not quite right; the F# just before the 4/4 time signature is what shows that the song is in the key of G. (The 4/4 time signature tells you that there a 4 quarter notes to each bar, giving you that common 1-2-3-4 count.)

As others have said, the 'G' indicates the chord that accompanies that measure - it's informational, not something you're supposed to somehow simultaneously play along with the melody. Think of it this way: Say you get together with a guitar player who knows how to play chords, but doesn't know the melody for "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." They can still play along with you by counting along and following those chord changes indicated above the music. Likewise, if you get together with other musicians and they have something like the Fiddler's Fakebook, you can play along with them even if you don't know the song; you'd just follow the chord changes and play banjo chords to back up the melody.

Regarding key signatures/music theory in general check out Edly's Music Theory for Practical People, which is a good introductory guide. Some people will tell you that you don't need to bother with music theory for banjo/folk music, but it really helps in terms of understanding why you play certain chords to accompany certain keys, etc; it can make the difference between learning by rote memorization, and learning by developing an intuitive understanding for how notes, scales, and chords fit together.

Established chord progressions can help, otherwise use chords + ears.

Theory is just theory, its more of a tool, however, it can help you understand other songs which may help you understand what you have in your head.

I would recommend reading about songs from a songwriter perspective. Not a technical guide. Well, they can help get quick patterns together, but more of the art.

For example Inside the art of songwriting is on my reading list. (although the cover is ridiculous). Songcrafters Colouring Book is an excellent book about taking your creative ideas / raw output and crafting in it into a better song.

As long as it sounds and feels good then it is good. Lyric writing has is nicely explained in songcrafting colouring book. Technical books I have read on lyric writing have been dire.

Try to establish a groove early on and work to that, that can help tie everything together.

Good luck.

This is such an important (and IMO urgent) question for so many.

Sadly, the vast majority of guitar instructional material is either a) written for the unserious learner or b) written to not scare away the up-until-now-unserious learner.

That's why you see so many books and blogs on understanding theory (or playing jazz) that are full of TABs––in order to get the now-serious student to buy the book (or sign up for the course, etc) you first have to reassure them that everything is tabbed out and they won't have to read music, as if TAB and theory weren't at odds with each other.

Kudos to /u/igotthejack for this:

> While doing this focus on the note names while you play so by the time you're done you've also memorised all the notes on the fretboard.

And Ben Levin's youtube series is one of the few instructional pieces that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the face with one of the many pointy ends on a shredder's guitar.

Other quality standouts include:

First, Learn To Practice by Tom Heany

Music Reading For Guitar By David Oakes

Modern Method For Guitar Vols 1, 2, & 3 by William Leavitt

The Real Easy Ear Training Book by Roberta Radley


But there's good news in this too:

Because the vast majority of talented guitarists are so busy chasing their tails trying to figure out how to sweep pick faster or two-handed tap in the LandoCalrissian mode, even reasonably talented players with mediocre reading skills and a halfway decent knowledge of practical music theory get hired to play really great gigs.

That's my experience anyway. And getting hired for those gigs put me in contact with so many world-class players, which a) did as much as anything else to make me a "real" player, and b) helped me realize how so many of the things in the guitar-teacher-circle-jerk-echo-chamber are unimportant.

I think if you can get your practicing organized, fall in love with the metronome, record yourself (and listen back) often, and train your ear, you will be one badass player in a reasonably short time.

And if you learn the instrument in a way that lets you communicate with other non-guitarist musicians, you set yourself up to get actual paying work (and music theory gets waaaaaay easier).

My suggested order is:

1. Names of notes (to the point you prefer them to TAB coordinates: that's not the 8th fret of the 3rd string, it's Eb)
   
2. What notes go together in keys (ie know the Circle of Fifths so well you're never in doubt as to whether it should be called D# or Eb)
   
3. Understand how chords are built (so you're unfazed by something like | Fm7b5 Bb7b9 | Ebm9 | even if you've never played it before).
   
4. Understand how chords get built into progressions. (so when you glance that last example, you immediately think "oh, ii-V-i. Eb harmonic minor.)
   
5. Rhythmic notation (I'd say at least 80% of the guitar charts put in front of me on a paying gig are chords with rhythmic hits and no further melodic notation to read.)
   
6. Chart reading (knowing what "DS al Coda" and "second system" and "tag" and "ritard" mean, and what musician slang like "football" and "trashcan" and "railroad tracks" and "split the difference" mean.)
   
   Shameless plug, but I built a system that teaches these in a tiny daily lesson delivered by email. 1-4 are done, 5 & 6 are on their way soon. Free for now, just sign up for the first one (Note Names) and it'll walk you through all 6 in order (I'll be done with 5 & 6 by the time you finish 4).
   
   After that, read through the David Oakes & William Leavitt books mentioned above and you'll be 80% of the way to professional musicianship. A dedicated student (who already has a fair amount of technical proficiency) could pull that off in 6 months.
   
   TL:DR - The fact that you are even asking a question like this leads me to believe that you'll do just fine. Good luck!
   

Not that bad for a beginner. Some of your instruments/sounds are a bit cheesy and it adds a hollow/amateur feel to your music. What you're missing is a bit of depth. This is normal!

Your bass is way too high in the frequency spectrum - you need to add some sub bass. Your lead sounds/pianos are too crisp/clear which ads to the tinny/cheap sound.

I recommend a few things:

0. Read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Music-Strategies-Electronic-Producers-ebook/dp/B00WHXYZG8

2. Take one of your favorite songs and try to reproduce it, one part at a time.

3. Learn how to use filters. This was huge for me - once I started understanding how the filter shaped the sound, I felt like a 10x improvement in my sound.

4. Use a limiter on your master and read up a bit on mixing/mastering

5. Add a bit of grit to your sound (if you'd like) or a low volume, subtle pad sound throughout your tracks - this was a secret I recently learned and it helped a lot, it should be barely noticeable but makes your track feel much richer.

6. Use subtle distortion on your kicks

7. Try out the transient shaper if you have it on your drums.

8. More reverb and delays, give you sounds some space

9. Layer your sounds - double up your kicks and leads.

10. Keep trying! You just started out, you WON'T make memorable and amazing music early on. Be okay with that. If everyone could make hit music, it wouldn't be special. It takes years to get decent, even more years to get good, and can take a lifetime to be great.

11. Make sure you are enjoying yourself. Have fun, get lost in sound and the experience.

12. Don't give up.

>Isn't there a whole course somewhere?

This is a fundamental theory crash course for total beginners who are interested in learning at a college level yet have no prior experience in theory. It was created by Steven Laitz, who also authored one of the best American undergrad theory text books. I haven't tried it, and I know it costs some moneys... but this guy has an awesome reputation and it looks super legit.

eTheory: Music Theory Fundamentals in 4 weeks

Trailer.

>what the chord progression is. I've come up with, what I believe, to be some pretty good "root notes" for the progression (is that a term??).

Your notes could be "roots" but I would call them "bass notes" or together a "bassline" and in this case that just means they are the lowest sounding notes of whatever chord they will end up being a part of, but not necessarily the root of the note. This might seem confusing but bear with me… if you have a chord with 3 notes, like C major for example. The notes: C, E, G make it up. C is your root note… hence the name of the chord (C Major). If that C note is notated below the other two notes then it is your bass. This is called C major in root position. Bass is just the note on the bottom of the chord. The lowest one. If you decide to put E in the bass and make the chord E, C, G, then now E is your bass notes but C is still your root. This is called C major first inversion. You can do the same and put G in the bass, and have G, C, E, This is called C major second in version, G is your bass but C is still your root. Sorry if this is confusing to you I might have skipped a little ahead in the theory, but it's a pretty basic topic.

>The notes are B-C#-D#-F#

As for your sample, and those 4 notes, I'd say you could be in F Major or B Major, depending on how you decide to harmonize the notes, you could even modulate between the two fairly easily, but that's a little more of an advanced topic.

>How do I determine the chord progression?

There are many ways to harmonize your bass line but if you need some direction, try using the notes in one of the aforementioned keys.

Not sure if I'm helping or just throwing you off even more so I'll stop here.

Edit: formatting and grammar.

I'm not aware of any specific study that directly addresses your question, but based on existing, similar research, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a correlation.

The Mozart Effect has long held that listening to classical music potentially increases spatial-temporal reasoning, a skill highly core to success in mathematics. As classical music is obviously purely instrumental, perhaps there is an inverse link in which mathematically-minded people tend to be more attentive or appreciative of patterns rather than lyrics.

If you're interested in a more in-depth read about how our brains interpret music, and what makes us like the music we like, I'd highly recommend reading This Is Your Brain On Music. Again, I don't recall the book addressing any studies that directly answer your question, but there's a lot of intriguing information to gain if it's a topic of interest to you.

And since everyone else is, I may as well add in that I too am mathematically-minded and tend to focus on pattern more than lyrics.

Glad to hear it, thank you! And yeah I can think of a few books that really helped me.

For analog, the best book I've read is "A Practical Introduction to Electronic Circuits" (https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Introduction-Electronic-Circuits-ebook/dp/B01MSEO5HX). It's actually a terrible introduction, so the title is dumb, but if you already have a basic knowledge this book will take you to the next level. Also one of the best resources for analog is Dave Jones' YouTube channel EEVBlog (https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog). He's an excellent presenter and a real analog pro.

For digital, after you have a good grasp of C, I'd recommend Musimathics Vol. 2 (https://www.amazon.com/Musimathics-Mathematical-Foundations-Music-Press/dp/026251656X/ref=asc_df_026251656X/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312152840806&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13200640003814220797&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9021581&hvtargid=pla-645450504952&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61316181319&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312152840806&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13200640003814220797&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9021581&hvtargid=pla-645450504952). The first volume can be skipped cause it's mostly acoustics and music theory related, but it's a good book too. The second volume is by far the best explaination of DSP and digital audio synthesis I've come across. If you want something a bit lighter, this is a great book as well (https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-MIT-Press/dp/0262014467/ref=asc_df_0262014467/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312140868236&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9994434488221753680&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9021581&hvtargid=pla-330509287619&psc=1).

Do you have any background knowledge in electronics? Because I would seriously start there.

I realize you are an adult, but Make: Electronics (Learning by Discovery) was a really great book for me (an adult). It gives you a good foundations in electronics and has fun projects as well.

Make: Analog Synthesizers was particularly fun for me.

Any interest in either of those books? They're both great starting points.

A counter-melody is a 'less important' melody played against the primary melody. Historically there was a period when playing multiple melodies against each other was the absolute essence of music, and folks like Bach dominated (called 'counterpoint' music). A very famous example, that is 'simple' so easy to follow is Bach's Invention #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzU7xQmmXGE

His 'inventions' were for two melodies. He also wrote 'sinfonias' which were for three voices, and are a bit more complex, for example his Sinfonia No.2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoZwnXDjbV0

Listening to this with headphones while trying to consciously follow all melodies is quite a peculiar experience. :)

And if you want to feel depressed and talentless, check from 10:54: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XCUcZ5KK7Q. Here he starts with the primary melody and then has the second melody join. This is exhausting to *really* listen to and my peanut brain is too small to ever hope to play something like this. Shredding? Sure, I can start slow, practice a ton and end up fast. But having both hands play *this* independently? Awe-inspiring. Sitting down and composing this on a piece of paper almost 400 years ago? Madness. :D

In baroque counterpoint the goal is to make every melody interesting in and of themselves, and make it sound 'effortless harmoniously together'. It should sound like these melodies were born together. In practice this aint easy at all and you'll be tempted to see one as the 'primary melody' and the others as 'subservient' where you can take shortcuts to make them fit the main melody. At that point it is no longer true counterpoint but you can still call it a counter-melody. Taken further you'll have things like arpeggios; parts that obviously fit the primary melody but are themselves so bland they are clearly accompaniment instead of a melody in their own right.

If you're interested, a very well-regarded (though rather pedantic) book that starts at the basic and offers exercises is the many century old https://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772. If you want to go *really* old-school you can go as close to the original here: http://hz.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/3/31/IMSLP370587-PMLP187246-practicalrulesfo00fuxj.pdf

I think it'll help most songwriters/composers to know the basics, even if you dont care about classical counterpoint at all. :)

Hello

When you have things going on in your life it's hard to pursue your creativeness and craft your ideas. This book here has a lot of ideas that help you look at things another way and it's an easy read, look through the chapters there is a few things that can help you. It's called 74 creative music strategies for Electronic Music Producers. You don't need to produce electronic music to read it. It covers stuff that is just about music too. I read a couple chapters over the week on my phone on the way to university or if I'm on the train.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Music-Strategies-Electronic-Producers-ebook/dp/B00WHXYZG8

(you can get it on kindle and there is an app for PC and Mac that you can get off Amazon)

Edit: There is a lot of information posted below which is helpful I forgot to mention that sometimes change is good I like to break the loop. The best way for me to produce is spend a session just making ideas; maybe just create a loop in the DAW sequencer or use Live View (if you use ableton) and build up ideas upon each other maybe another session you can focus on editing and resist the urge to create and see what you can salvage from your creative session. Set limits for yourself a long the way as well, maybe have a time limit or only use one synth or restrict yourself to 2 or 3 samples. That book covers a lot of this stuff I've mentioned; I've only read a few pages and it's already helped me.


Hope everything is well!

The Lynda training helped me a lot as it was short and thought a lot of keyboard shortcuts early on. But I'm sure the free YouTube training playlists would also work. The good thing about Lynda was it was really concise and more professional in not wasting any time, which can be crucial to help keep focus in initial learning.
The manual is good, but I don't find it to be the most straightforward manual. It's still a tremendous reference.

I would suggest to just follow a basic training and start producing whatever you want, watching YouTube tutorials on whatever gets you stuck and keeping this sub close-by to randomly check and say "WTF are these people talking about?" until it becomes more and more familiar or to ask any questions (people are usually very noob-friendly here).

For tips on production and getting stuck, Dennis DeSantis has this amazing book. Really helps open up your mind.

Good luck and don't forget to continuously show up, discipline is the single most valuable skill in my opinion :)

PS: You need to listen to this quote as well.

Edit: About gear, I agree with others. Don't buy anything more than a measly small midi keyboard until you learn the DAW better. Then you'll know if you need anything or what you need.

Writing short little concentrated pieces is a very good idea. Try creating as much material out of the smallest idea you can. I like to pick a small little theme/motif and just run with it.

The piano music I've been listening to includes; Scriabin (I have a book of his Piano Sonatas on my desk right now), Bartok, Prokofiev, Roslavets, Mosolov, Bach, and Beethoven. If you like Scriabin then I suggest going on youtube and listening to Roslavets and Mosolov, they write in a very Scriabin-esque fashion.

Books, I personally love reading about music. I do a lot of reading about composers and about harmonies and stuff. Wikipedia is a good place to start, but it's certainly not a definitive source. Persichetti's book on harmony is a good book for harmony, it certainly helped me think about harmony in different ways. And Modernism in Russian Piano Music is very good if you're looking to mimic Scriabin/Prokofiev and other composers of that musical language.

It's tough and I'm still there often.

One thing that has helped is looking at the arrangement of a reference track. Import a good reference track in the style you want to produce in your DAW as audio. Then go through every ~16 bar section or so and write down notes on what is happening. Not specifics but more like: "White noise intro" or "start of kicks" or "bridge", "chorus", "drop", etc.

If your DAW supports it try to write the notes directly on the timeline, many DAWs now a days support that by tagging tracks or sections and applying a label.

Then remove the reference track. You now have a 'template' with notes. Try to fill it in as best as possible from those notes.

I also recommend this book, it's pretty good: https://smile.amazon.com/Making-Music-Strategies-Electronic-Producers-ebook/dp/B00WHXYZG8/

Cool... alongside the technical stuff (which you'll obviously need) I would definitely spend some time learning some theory to help with the composing.

If you want to do that the "slow and hard way" (but actually quicker and easier than messing around on the internet) I suggest getting a basic harmony textbook and working your way through it. Do all the exercises in a MIDI sequencer so you can hear the results. The book I used back in the day was Piston, but almost any harmony book will probably do. Then get a counterpoint book and do the same thing. Those are strong foundations, and it's stuff you can do away from the guitar. If you get the book and find you're not ready for it, work through the beginner resources in the sidebar of /r/musictheory and then try again.

Aside from that:

• Learn songs and try to figure out how they're put together.
  
  
• Compose your own stuff, even if you don't show it to anyone.
  
  
• Work on ear training. Learn your intervals and chord qualities and sing everything, even if it sounds bad.
  
  
• Learn your scales (or here if you want more theory).
  
  
• You'll need to develop a high level of technique. See here for some pointers. One thing that's worked well for me in the past is to pick one exercise and spend a month on it, recording my top metronome mark each day. Be careful not to hurt yourself.
  
  
• Always make time to work on your rhythm. There comes a point for a lot of players where this is the most important thing holding them back.
  
  A month is a good unit of time to learn something. If you sit down and make a month-by-month plan for the next two years mixing up these elements you should make very solid progress.
  
  I'm sure others will have more genre-specific advice, though!

This is a great book which goes in depth with the tools and approach needed, along with the main circuits in every modular setup/ synth. It comes from this site which has tons and tons of circuits. They are not really beginner stuff but filled with inspiration and is great to go back to once you have some experience and components to use.

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Analog-Synthesizers-Ray-Wilson/dp/1449345220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367955744&sr=8-1&keywords=make+analog+synthesizers

Site: http://musicfromouterspace.com/

​

Here is a good blog to read through and watch the videos for some basic circuitry. Some really interesting stuff here! There are 12 posts on different things. He is quite knowledgeable indeed...

https://hackaday.com/2015/02/04/logic-noise-sweet-sweet-oscillator-sounds/

​

And if you really want to learn about electronics in depth (or any other field) check out https://www.khanacademy.org/ which offers lessons for free.

I've been a drummer since I was 8. Quite rusty right now as a lot of things have kept me from practicing (moving to apartments for years, etc.). Honestly, it's never too late to start. Are you going to be playing Carnegie Hall in a year? Wildly unlikely. But as long as your expectations are grounded in reality, that learning anything takes time and practice, you should be good.

As for practice and sense of tempo/timing: it is imperative that you buy a good metronome and practice with it regularly. You don't necessarily need a Dr. Beat, though I have one, and it is useful at times. But you do need some kind of click to play off of.

Can you read music? If so, there are some really good technique books out there that I'd recommend that are classics. Most people hate grinding technique, but I find it oddly relaxing. Here's some good books:

• Stick Control
  
• Syncopation
  
• Master Studies - (Do wait on this one a bit and start slow. It is possible to injure yourself if you get too carried away. Stone Killer exercises are no joke)
  
• New Breed - This one's actually a full drum set book. Quite challenging. May want to wait on this one a bit or try to just play one or two of the lines together (eg. right and and right foot).
  
  The first two books are probably where you should start. With all of these, start the metronome at molasses level slow - like 60 bpm or maybe even slower if you're not accurate at that speed. Get comfortable with that speed - maybe 15-30 mins at that speed without any mistakes. Then bump the timing up slightly 2-4 bpm and repeat. At no point should you be tensing up. If you are, you need to stop immediately, shake out your arms, and back down the tempo a bit.
  
  Make sure that you're making more use of your fingers than your wrists. Wrists can be good to start the stroke, but your fingers should be doing a lot of the work.
  
  There's a lot of other technique stuff that you can do, but the above alone could take you 5-10 years of solid daily practice if you're being thorough.
  
  Good luck!

Here's some other stuff for people interested:

Joe Straus' Introduction to Post Tonal Theory

• For solid post tonal and heavily set theory based stuff
  
  Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music by Barry Schrader
  
  
• this book is old but has some cool stuff in it about earlier electronic music and it's cheap
  
  Samuel Solomon's How to Write for Percussion
  
  
• The best percussion book
  
  Rothenberg and Ulvaeus' Book of Music and Nature
  
  
• If you're in to, well music and nature this is a great anthology of writings by people like Cage, Takemitsu, Oliveros, etc. on the subject.
  
  Cope's Techniques of the Contemporary Composer is okay.
  
  
• for composery stuff
  
  My favorite orchestration book is actually the Blatter
  
  Composing Electronic Music by Curtis Roads is a very good new electronic book
  
  The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
  
  
• Practically a must read
  
  On Sonic Art by Trevor Wishart
  
  
• is a must read also

Music Theory Remixed by Kevin Holm-Hudson, is a great book that covers all the typical concepts of a four semester university theory course (Theory I through IV) but supplements all the concert music examples with music from pop music. It's pretty fantastic. Sort of like a more relevant Tonal Harmony... I think it's fun to hear modern examples of cadences, modulation techniques, etc. along side examples from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.


Tonal Harmony, by Kostka and Payne, is in my experience the most commonly assigned text for Theory I - IV courses. It's very good.


Straus' Introduction to Post-Tonal Harmony, is incredible. This book helped me fall in love with post-tonal music. If you need to study post tonal music, this is the book to get.

I honestly think that learning some music theory will help. It gives you a deeper understanding of why things sound good when they do, and what things are likely to sound good together. To me, learning theory isn't really learning "someone else's music." Think of music like a language. Learning grammar and syntax won't stop you from making unique and beautiful sentences.
Also, I recommend reading This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levintin. Good luck! :)

You mentioned you like jazz, feel free to hang out with us /r/Jazz

Internet is great, and there is a lot for good free ressources. You'll have to go through a bunch of crap though, it can be confusing for a beginner and takes valuable time away to an already time consuming hobby.

So here are a few books I personally recommand.

Jazzology, an encyclopedia of theory centered around jazz that you can use with any genre. It's really good.

The real book, a good way to learn jazz standards with sheets that aren't so painful, using solfège for melody and letters for chords. This is the format I use with students.

The Jazz Theory book, or anything from mark levine.

The Complete Musician is good if you can find it for cheap, which is no easy task.

The definition of perfect pitch includes knowing the names of the notes. Without this knowledge, it's just "having a good ear". A good way to practice it is picking random notes and visualizing what the chord will sound like before playing it. That vizualisation aspect is the amazing thing about absolute pitch and helps with composing. The tuning or knowing what key you're in things are cute but fairly irrelevant.

Anyway, have fun.

This is your brain on music. The idea that when something musical surprises us, you know you might let out a little snicker and think "wow that's really good" or "interesting I wouldn't have done that but I like it" is like an inside joke we can appreciate. I can't help but think of that all the time now. Also the fact that we are programmed from a very early age to interpret and appreciate music. Just a great book in my opinion.

Coordination of both hands at the piano is definitely a tricky thing, and takes a looong time to get together... can help to find a teacher. I've actually just started teaching an adult student, and we just got to the "two hands" thing for the first time in her lesson last week. It's a bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time... but I promise it gets easier with time and practice!

There are some great adult piano lesson books that can help, either to self-teach or to work with a teacher (it's always better to work with a teacher if you can, but not an option for everyone...). She's using a book by Bastien, but this one by Faber has come highly recommended by some of my colleagues...

B&H has the px160 with stand, pedals, and bench for $450 new.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1376638-REG/casio_px_160_88_key_digital_piano.html

Guitar center has a lot of used digital pianos. They price them to be competitive with used listings on ebay. Looking through listings on guitarcenter and sold listings on ebay might be as close as you'll get to a blue book value.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Keyboards-MIDI.gc#narrowSideBar

PX150 and PX160 have the same action, either would be fine to start on. Getting a yamaha p115, kawai es110, or roland fp30 might be a better fit for some, but the level of improvement is not huge. Unless you really dislike the casio tone, either keeping the px150, or selling it to get the px160 bundle I linked above, would leave you with a perfectly fine instrument to start out on.

A teacher is recommended, but if you go with method books, faber adult all in one or alfred adult all in one are fine to start with.

https://www.amazon.com/Adult-Piano-Adventures-All-Course/dp/1616773022

https://www.amazon.com/Adult-All-One-Course-Lesson-Theory-Technic/dp/0882848186

If you get to the end of the third alfred book and can play through the pieces in the 'ambitious sections' at the end of the book, you might want to consider an upgrade. Until then, don't worry about it. A PX150 is just fine.

https://www.amazon.com/Adult-All-One-Course-Alfreds/dp/0739000683/

I see a lot of answers regarding marketing classical as relaxing- and thus the promotion those pieces that fit that description (think lullabies, fugues, and love themes).

I've not seen the more scientific answer about pattern recognition and the mathematical structure of the music itself. The traditional symphony, for example, has a very specific harmonic and melodic structure that is made to repeat throughout at different musical intervals in various patterns. Your brain doesn't get bored since there isn't a ton of wrote repetition, you get the serotonin boost from recognizing those patterns, and (unless you're going for Wagner or some aggressive Operatic pieces) the physics of the reverberations of the instruments themselves match well to the physiognomy of our inner and outer ear. Basically, the vibrations of the strings can make you physically comfortable or uncomfortable depending on the tuning and note played.

If anyone is interested I cannot recommend enough, "Music, the Brain and the Ecstacy" by Robert Jourdain. https://www.amazon.com/Music-Brain-Ecstasy-Captures-Imagination/dp/038078209X

I made it to Harmony III in college before moving my major from Music to Philosophy, but welcome any questions you might have. I plan on doing a PhD and my dream research would be on how the quantum structure of our brain's SSRI re-uptake inhibitors as they are influenced by the psychedelic drug class compared to other non-chemical methods of neuromechanical stimulation (like music, meditation and prayer/fellowship). My long term dream is to help ween Americans off the psychotropics like Prozac, Zoloft, etc. that must be taken daily, don't last in the system for long and come with a battery of side effects for more substantial cultural changes that actually solve, instead of masking, the mental dissonance our lifestyles only seem to aggravate.

> Did you build many easier circuits before you built this?

I modded my volca beats, and built a guitar pedal from a kit, but otherwise I prepped for this project by reading Ray's awesome book on the subject, which I feel was paramount to my success (so far), having only had a few small issues that required troubleshooting.

> How do you like the 2 pole LPF on the Ultimate?

I LOVE the sound of this filter. My only slight beef is the fact that the expander design also has a 12db/octave circuit, and I'm debating on doing the legwork and research to modify the circuit on that state variable filter to run at 24db/octave, to provide a bit more filter diversity over the whole unit. I'm still unsure on how involved that effort would be.

Just want to echo that 30 minutes a day is more than enough. Of that time, I would spend 10 minutes on rudiments and the rest on whatever you want.

>What all will I need to get started? Practice pad, sticks, kit, metronome?

If you buy an electronic kit, I wouldn't worry about practice pads. I'd recommend picking up Stick Control, learning the rudiments, and an introductory book such as Fast Track or Tommy Igoe's beginner DVD. Once you feel more comfortable, I'd recommend picking up Groove Essentials and New Breed.

For stick, I generally recommend starting with Vic Firth 5B hickory sticks. Of all the sticks I've tried, those are the most absolutely average. Weight, balance, size, etc. From there you can move into thinner (5A, 7A) or thicker (2B) as you want, but 5B is a good starting place, hickory is the best wood to learn with (and play with forever, imo, but that's debatable), and Vic Firth is fairly consistent.

Vic Firth's stick size comparisons. The standard sizes used by the majority of drummers, from smallest to largest, are 7A, 5A, 5B, 2B. Everything else is just incredibly minor tweaking that some people like.

If you'd like to take this all to the next level, I'd suggest reading Music Habits - The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production. It provides essential tips on how to keep pushing through in the creative process and ensure that you're enjoying what you're doing. Also provides tons of recommendations on how to keep building up templates so you avoid a blank slate in your DAW - the most dreadful moment in production! Also, while on topic if you're ever searching for inspiration and trying to find your own creative voice, I'd highly recommend Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner. Although it's jazz piano focused, it applies to any type of creative. No more pressure! Have fun and keep the shavings coming :)

Here are two awesome books:

• Composing Music, by Tony Russo
  
• The Composer's Handbook by Bruce Cole
  
  They are both chock-full of awesome, fun exercises. (I love exercises because it's a great way to learn about composition and practice composition without launching the inner dialogue of "omg i am writing a composition is this any good?" Exercises let you practice writing without the inner critic, just like you practice pieces outside of a performance context, etc.)
  
  Can you give more information about your field of study? What skills do you think you'll need?

Fundamental components of music like working memory and pattern recognition are directly link with neurological development.
Here some literature better explaining it:

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Brain-Ecstasy-Captures-Imagination/dp/038078209X

https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1196/annals.1360.015

From my experience, playing an instrument was always a net positive; it allowed me to deal with stress; socialize with other friends by means of playing together or talking about music; I learned how to read and compose; and self-improvement.

I'm not a professional, no one pays me money. I love music, I love playing it alone or in a group. It's therapeutic - it allows me to enjoy life even more.

Great job! Everything I wrote when I was 17 was shit, so congrats on being awesome!

Nice resolutions and voice leading! Try to avoid the parallel resolutions between the vln2 and cello that pop up from time to time. A good mental discipline is that every time a voice resolved to a root or a fifth of a harmony, make sure it’s contrary.

I’m not sure if you’ve been exposed to Fux Modal Counterpoint, but you should learn it and live by it if you want to compose in the Baroque, classical, or romantic idioms.

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

Best of luck!

Great that you know what you want to do with the webapp. As said, break into small chunks and conquer. Even to the point of 'sit at desk', 'open computer'... so small that it's impossible not to do them. On the days where that's too much, just imagine yourself doing it. This will create cognitive dissonance and make you want to do it. This video shows you how.

Yeah work your way up to jamming. Play along CD's like Aebersold are great to start with.

First step is to learn the Cmaj scale fingering. Once you have that, move up a string and you have the Fmaj fingering. As said, practice around the circle of 5ths.

I'm living abroad too ha ha. I know exactly how you feel. I recommend reading this book.

This is due to the [overtone series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music). Basically there are resonant frequencies when you play a pitch. You'll notice in the examples on the Wikipedia page that the first couple overtones are the octave, the fifth, and the fourth. So those intervals tend to share overtones, making them sound better together to our ears.

For example, the first couple of overtones where C4 is our fundamental are C5, G5, and then C6. For G4, the overtones would be G5, D5, and G6. That's an interval of a fifth.

A lot of this is related to the Western tuning system. Most Western music is equally tempered. Basically, when a piano is tuned, you're making a bunch of compromises so that everything sounds good together, even if it's not perfectly in tune. You could tune certain intervals perfectly, but then others would sound really bad, so we compromise.

Another thing about Western music is that we're all about building tension and then relieving it ^justlikesex and you can see this in a lot of common chord progressions. Take your standard cadence, G7 to C, for example. G7 is a fairly unstable chord and it's built so that the third and seventh, B and F, collapse really naturally into C and E, giving us a nice, stable C triad.

Music also operates similarly to comedy in that it's all about delaying and overturning expectations. Like three men walk into a bar. You've heard that before and have some idea of what will follow. But then someone says "the third one ducks" and that's a new one and that's funny, so you laugh. Music works the same one. Let's say we set up the classic I-V-vi-IV chord progression but instead of IV we do something else. That's new, that's interesting, and we like it.

Disclaimer: I'm really sorry if I screwed up some of the overtone series stuff, I have only a vague idea of how it works.

You can read an entire book on why we like the music we do -- check out This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin -- it's a great read!

Sounds like you're at a good place to learn a little music theory to help with composition.

I've been doing roughly the same thing having had (and still having) the same experience as you. I can play technically difficult music, but cannot create something more than a short passage, or add a chorus/bridge/verse to whatever I've created.

I picked up the Modern Method for Guitar by Leavitt:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374083268&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+method+for+guitar+william+levitt

And this started pushing me to the limits of my playing. I realized I couldn't sight-read, couldn't read music, and it was keeping me from improving in a totally different direction that I was used to. So I started learning how to read, and started picking up on some music theory.

So I'm still working on music theory, and sight reading, and technical challenges, and in the meantime I've noticed my ability to create has improved. It's not a huge improvement, but very noticeable to me.

I've been stuck in a rut for over 10 years because I've never sought to expand my horizons musically and try new things. I wasn't going to learn a chord if it wouldn't be useful in some riff I was trying to learn, and I certainly wasn't going to learn to sight read when I could teach myself with tab.

Anyway, my suggestion is to push yourself and learn new things. Learn some weird chords, learn how to put them together with some theory, record yourself playing some chords and then play the notes in those chords over top of them as a lead. The more knowledge you have of music and the guitar, the larger a pool you have to pull from.

I don't know what you're into, and you might consider his material kind of hokey, but you might want to give Jimmy Webb's book "Tunesmith" a try. It's been years since I've read it cover-to-cover, but I liked it. But then again, I like Jimmy Webb. It covers more than just chords, and I will admit that the lyrics to the "sample" song running through the book are definitely hokey.

Also, someone else mentioned Lou Reed in this thread. While the Velvet Underground had a lot of simple chord progressions, check out the song Candy Says -- it has more than four chords in the verse and does some interesting changes, e.g. from Fm# to F to B, which serve the melody well but might not seem intuitive if you're just trying to come up with chord progressions. It eventually lands in a simpler progression (two chords repeating at the end of the song), but the variety in the verses helps give the song personality.

One book that I've had on my "to read" list is is called this is your brain on music. I do recommend that, but don't take my word, not sure if it is good, but from what I've read is sounds interesting. If you don't think you'll like that one there are others on Amazon that seem to deal with the same subject.

Music, in simplified terms, is just organized sounds. Usually it follows some short of mathematical pattern, for example an octave is x Hz times 2. So 440 Hz, which is the note A above middle C times 2 is 880 Hz which is the octave of 440 Hz note A.

I think a fair comparison is to think of music as a language (which you could say it is) and music theory as its grammar/way of usage. We all know that there are hundreds of languages, each with its own grammar. And the poetry of that specific language is much different to the poetry of another language. And so there are hundreds of ways to do music, each with it's own theory (grammar).

That's one of the ways you could look at music, western music theory is a language that is much different from eastern music theory, which itself is another language. But, to sort of complicate this a bit, we know that there are some things in all languages that are universal, so then the same way in music. For example scales seems to be an universal in almost all music theories, as well as the octave. There is a lot of scientific research in this area. check out this link.

I can't really recommend any books, since I've never really studied non-western theory in depth. But just searching on google about any non-western cultures' forms of music theory would be a good start. I do recommend India since from what I've heard they incorporate the quarter tone (half as wide as a semitone), you can impress any music theory nerd with knowledge of Indian musical theory.

EDIT: I sort of misunderstood your first paragraph. it seems you already know what is culture and what is not. This is a topic That I've loved ever since I starting studying theory. I've read some of the book along with this set of power point slides here. look at the bibliography.

I really enjoy the book "Edly's Music Theory For Practical People"

it's nice and straight forward, goes deep but not too deep that it's over your head, and has ..um.. fun little drawings throughout.

edit: sorry it's not "online," but it's a really good book and I bet you could find a .pdf online.

Scott's bass lessons on youtube are great, too, and eventually lead me to join his online bass community.

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/

​

As others have pointed out, you'll have to use the Steinberg VST SDK and code in C++. A great book on that topic is The Audio Programming Book. There's a lot of examples and in one chapter you're actually walked through the process of writing a full VST from start to finish (there's also a bunch of other stuff in there about coding low-level audio). Another option would be to use something like JUCE to simplify the coding process. The other nice thing about JUCE is that it makes it really easy to write a VST that's also wrapped as an AudioUnit or RTAS plugin, so you get some great cross-compatibility there. JUCE also has a built in GUI library, but I've never really cared for the default style of it. A third option would be to use Faust, but it's kind of a weird language to learn and FaustWorks, the IDE that it comes with, is buggy as all hell. That said, it'll deploy as a VST, AU, RTAS, Max External, Pure Data external, or Pure Data abstraction and small effects plugins are generally really easy to write once you get the hang of the language syntax. There are a bunch of example VSTs on the site under the Online Examples section and it even has an online IDE, which is nice. IMO, if you're trying to really learn about signal processing and such, the best way to go would be to just write using the normal SDK. This is definitely doing it the hard way, but in my experience I learned so much more by not having anything of the functions abstracted away from me. On the other hand, if you're just trying to bang the VST out and use it, I'd look at JUCE or (depending on the complexity of the effect) FAUST. Either way, I hope that you'll post your results on /r/FreeSounds.

I've been working through this book: http://www.amazon.com/Edlys-Music-Theory-Practical-People/dp/0966161661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256044776&sr=8-1

I sort of love it, though take that with a grain of salt, as I haven't finished it. It's not your typical music theory book -- it doesn't come across as dense, pompous, or tedious. I have taken a rudimentary music theory course before, but already I feel as if I understand a few of the concepts much better, thanks to the explanations in this book. Read the other Amazon reviews, too. (Also, it can be had for a bit cheaper from small bookstores via Barnes & Noble's website.)

If you do get this book, actually go through with the exercises that appear throughout. I've found them helpful in reinforcing the concepts presented. (Who would have thought that the exercises would actually fulfill their intended purpose? ;-)

Depends on what you like. I was big into metal and hard rock when I was starting out. Black Sabbath is easy enough that you could be playing songs within the first couple months, if not just weeks.

If you're interested in actually learning guitar and not just memorizing songs I'd recommend working through these as well:

• Fretboard Theory
  
• A Modern Method for Guitar
  
  You'll want to take the Berklee book someplace to get it spiral bound. Also note that it's not a tab book. You'll have to read standard notation. It starts off super easy and gets progressively harder, page by page. A looper pedal for the duets will be helpful.

Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory By Joseph Straus is my personal favorite in terms of discussing the 12 chromatic pitches of Western music in an objective and mathematical sense, but it really is more of a textbook for composing 12-tone and serialist music. Still a great read and tremendous resource. Any book on acoustics will discuss the repeating patterns in wave propagation that are responsible for our experience of pitch and harmony, but that will contain little info on music theory per se. Hope this helps! Also check out Vi Hart's videos if you're interested in weird theory stuff.

Ars nova has a really nice entry level text on their website if you’re just getting started. For a more complete introduction, check out the book “Music Theory ” by George Thaddeus Jones. That’s the one I started with, and while it’s very thorough in its discussion of musical concepts, its treatment of counterpoint is not my favorite. Something is definitely lost when the inner voices are treated as mere filler. Amazon and goodreads both gave it 4 stars. I feel like the ars nova text holds the readers hand a bit better and has the added bonus of being able to hear the examples. It also includes a chord progression game based on root movement principles). Though it’s missing some information here and there, so definitely check both texts out (yes, even though you probably understand some of their contents anyway) And of course, there’s the Gradus as Parnassum, the Bible of counterpoint that Bach praised and practically all subsequent composers learned from (though the rules presented there are über-strict!). It’s written as a dialogue between a student and a master which is absolutely brilliant.

If you’re looking to compose in the baroque style, there’s a good textbook called “Baroque Counterpoint ” by Peter Schubert and Christoph Niedhöfer, though the introduction says that you already need to know scales, figured base, 4-part voice leading, how to harmonize a melody, how to use non harmony tones, and some basic keyboard skills. It mostly (but not entirely) focuses on fugue and imitative counterpoint in general. So, it’s intended for the musically literate. Don’t go there until you’ve got a good framework to build on.

You also ought to have a collection of Bach’s chorales on hand as they are good examples for beginners to analyze and model on. Here’s 40 of them. Remember- analysis consists of more than just labeling chords; it involves INTERPRETING how all the different musical features contribute to the piece.

As a final note, remember- you don’t HAVE to fallow the rules all the time in your own music, but they’re still worth learning.

You might enjoy The Complete Musician, by Steven Laitz (former theory professor at Eastman, currently a professor at Juilliard). It's used for undergraduate music theory courses in many conservatories and universities these days; the explanations are extremely thorough and there are many examples. However, I don't think it goes through the very basics (such as how to read music).

You won't really *need* this sort of knowledge until you're working on more difficult repertoire, although an understanding of form and musical structure can be very helpful in learning more basic repertoire as well. Some people learn music by hacking through it and imitating their teachers (or imitating a recording); others learn by analyzing it from a theoretical and historical perspective, and applying that knowledge to inform their approach. You might find that you enjoy music (even more than you do currently) if you know more about its processes and inner workings!

As for the very basics, you might find Teoria to be helpful - it has a lot of great tutorials and exercises that'll help you get a good handle on the fundamentals.

There's a single book I've found it in B&N the other day about creating audio filters and what not. It's a very hard thing to find information about and I've been curious about diving in to it myself. I just left my job as a radio engineer for almost a decade, I was constantly trying to learn about codecs and lossless audio file formats with the hopes of taking an open source format like ogg or flac and piggy backing ads to specific tracks with the hopes of creating a new type of automation system. anyhow, long story short, if you're truly willing to learn you're going to have to hunt down the guys who make the codecs and learn from them directly, try emailing the devs who make this stuff. I would start with Radio because radio engineers love to show off tech and teach people what they know.

15-20 minutes is going to be pretty ambitious for your first classical composition! It'd be a real treat if you pull it off.

First, find some tutorials on the internet for reading sheet music. There's tons of them and it's not worth getting a textbook for; it's just something that needs constant practice. Once you're reasonably fluent in sheet music, you've won half the battle.

Second, get the fifth edition of Walter Piston's Harmony. It starts out with the very basics - scales and intervals - and proceeds to cover all the important contrapuntal and harmonic practices of the Common Practice era, then gets into some modern stuff at the end. It also has exercises for the reader to work out. However, it assumes you can already read sheet music.

If you have the time, I'd recommend teaching yourself the basics of piano as well, just enough to know your way around a keyboard. It's a terrific visual aid when it comes to classical music and theory. Some famous composers got by without it though (most notably Berlioz).

Sure! Here are a few that have helped me out:

The textbook that my school uses for beginning theory classes is The Complete Musician by Steven Laitz. It is a pretty comprehensive look at tonality, covering the very basics through 19th century theory. Isn't too pricey either: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Musician-Integrated-Approach-Listening/dp/0199742782

Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum is a great place to begin working on counterpoint: http://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368896313&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=gradus+ad+parnasam+fux

Samuel Adler's The Study of Orchestration is my current go to book when researching the basics of different instruments and orchestration techniques: http://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestration-Third-Samuel-Adler/dp/039397572X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368896395&sr=1-1&keywords=samuel+adler+orchestration

Lastly, once you feel you have developed a solid foundation with your theory knowledge, I can't stress enough the importance of studying/analyzing scores. It is (in my opinion) the best way of learning how to compose. One can learn so much from one score!

I don't even know where to begin with you.

There's no way you've studied theory if you then go on to say that music has to be "complex" to be "good". And is that to say, then, that the higher the level of complexity, the better the music? Because there is plenty of crazy shit out there that's just nutso on technicality, but is God-awful to listen to.

I'm mostly unfamiliar with Bieber's work, so I can't comment on it. But if you've ever actually listened to a Taylor Swift song, you'd know it's not "objectively simple". What about it is so simple? The form and chord structures may be, but that's true for nearly all music (and not even just pop music!). Going beyond that, however, into instrumentation, melodic progression, and vocal harmony will typically yield far more pleasing and "complex" results.

Not only that, but repeated studies on humans and how they both interpret and retain audio information has shown that simplicity is actually pretty key. Music in and of itself is damn complex, and too much information at once throws our brains off. On top of it all, our brains will hone in on pattern recognition (both in terms of structure and harmonic build) and repetition to further the consonant experience of music.

Related reading on the topic - Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy.

That depends on how good you want to get. Staying free, sadly, won't get you very far, because your hands are not like my hands, or the YouTube self-learn video creators' hands. We also do not know how you learn (whether you're tactile or something else). You would need a teacher to examine specifically how you learn, if even through video-chat.

The problem with the all-in-one adult books is that they don't prioritize hand posture: their stance is that as long as your fingers aren't splayed out all across the keys like a corpse's, then you're fine. That's totally false, though. The wrist needs to stay no higher than where the keys are (too many students keep their wrists too high which hampers reach and dynamic control), and the knuckles need to be typically the highest part of the hand, if examining the hand from a side view. Instead of sticking the knuckles up, too many students crush them down, which results in weak fingers that they can't lift up efficiently.

Many a great pianist has been lost in the vital beginner stages because of little heeding of proper, healthy posture. It also tends to be extremely difficult to teach yourself this (or goad yourself out of it if it's been a bad habit), and even more difficult to reinforce without repeated adjustment (at first) by a teacher who's physically present.

If you still insist, try https://smile.amazon.com/Adult-Piano-Adventures-All-Course/dp/1616773022 but it would be best to save up, get a teacher, and factor in lessons like another monthly bill like your phone cost or utilities.

There's no expectation that you produced every sound yourself either. Just ask the Beastie Boys, or any rapper for that matter.

The thoughts you express here are harmful to creativity. I'd advise you to change your perspective on what constitutes authenticity.

Also, you don't know me. Don't assume that you know my artistic process. My post here comes from having studied and taught mindsets that are beneficial for creative output.

Some resources for you that I'm sure you'd find helpful:

The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production by Jason Timothyhttps://www.amazon.com/Music-Habits-Electronic-Production-Procrastination-ebook/dp/B00ZJG398U

The Secrets of Dance Music Production by David Felton
https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Dance-Music-Production/dp/0956446035/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538863017&sr=81&keywords=the+secret+of+dance+music+production

I'd also highly recommend the music school taught by Mike Monday. He's coached people like Claude Von Stroke and is a well-accomplished producer himself. His insights into the creative process are among the best I've found. Nothing technical, all mindset, which is the biggest stumbling block to making and releasing lots of quality music in my opinion. https://mikemonday.com/

Yes but you should at least be following a guided curriculum starting at complete basics and progressing onward, just as you would be doing with a teacher. It sounds like you are just picking songs you like, and trying to play them? That is of course not going to work well. I would recommend to you to pick up the Adult Piano Adventures books. The two of them will take you from complete beginner to mid intermediate. There are plenty of youtube lessons for each exercise.

https://www.amazon.com/Adult-Piano-Adventures-All-Course/dp/1616773022/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=adult+piano+adventures&qid=1572471026&sprefix=adult+piano+&sr=8-1P

For orchestration, the Adler book is definitely the modern day definitive book, but as a high schooler, paying for the Adler is probably not on your to-do list. Instead, I recommend the Rimsky-Korsakov because it's free on IMSLP.

http://imslp.org/wiki/Principles_of_Orchestration_(Rimsky-Korsakov,_Nikolay)

For composition, I recommend Persechetti's book, Twentieth Century Harmony. It's not really about telling you how to compose, it's more like an encyclopedia of possibilities and descriptions of what those possibilities sound like.

Pick up some basic music theory knowledge. As ridiculous as it sounds, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory is actually pretty well written and informative:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Music-Theory/dp/1592574378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254261425&sr=8-1

Personally, I run Propellerheads Reason 4 and Record.
http://www.propellerheads.se/

My MIDI controller is the M-Audo Axiom 49:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Axiom49.html

My audio card is Native Instrument's Audio Kontrol 1:
http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/audio-kontrol-1/

As mentioned, Ableton Live is amazing. I picked up Live 7 LE a while because I thought it had ReWire capability, but it doesn't. I am planning on upgrading to a full version. I'm lusting for the Akai MPC-40 and Maschnine. Live really comes alive with the addition of VST instruments. While you can find them for free all over the net, some of the best will cost you extra money (see Native Instrument's line of VST's).

I would recommend going to your theory teacher's website/class website and look at what book they want you to get. This is a big sign of the approach the university will take in teaching from Theory I and upwards. This way, you will know the "common language" professors will use at your school regarding theory. What I mean are specifics, ranging from calling something an "accented passing tone" vs. making no distinctions between a regular passing tone, to various systems of abbreviations, and to differences in how the cadential "V^6/4 - V^7 - I" is viewed. Some people interpret this as " I^6/4 - V^7 - I." Basically, do you call a cadential^6/4 chord a V or a I chord? One use is not universal. Little clarifications like these, which can only been gleaned from your actual theory book, will make you better prepared and less confused on day one than learning one book's method, only to be presented with a completely different approach.

I think, given your background in theory, you will be surprised how far ahead you are compared to many people. A lot show up to their freshman year with a low level of theory competence.

I went to a university that used the Laitz textbook, so its about all I can recommend.

I've also been exposed to the Straus book for post-tonal theory.

For Species counterpoint, you can't beat the Schacter and Salzer book: "Counterpoint in Composition,"

For Schenkerian analysis, there is the Salzer book: "Structural Hearing." That is a bit more specialized, but it may pique your curiosity.

Great theorists like Felix Salzer and Carl Schacter, students of Heinrich Schenker, along with the acclaimed Steven Laitz, are good to learn about and be knowledgeable about. Looking into them, their associates, and their teachers can lead you to other good books.

This book is one of the best. It goes to a beginner level and introduces you reading music and then playing in a fingerstyle that is original music but with a heavy classical feel. Note that it is best done with an instructor or used by someone with a good background in music. It offers some instruction along the way but if done without an instructor, it can be a little tough. Still, I think it is awesome.

> Was it to simply introduce something more melodically interesting?

I can only assume so. The bass's independence is thematically necessary since it's where the opening motif is repeated. It gives meaning to the G-E-D-G-E-D line. If a line has structural/thematic significance, it should remain independent so the listener can pick it out.

I can't tell if the vocals or the instrumental was written first, sorry. Reading material on this subject would be any harmony/counterpoint book you can find. You seem pretty knowledgeable about those topics already though, so maybe it's just getting the style down. Books like [this] (http://imslp.org/wiki/Guide_to_the_Practical_Study_of_Harmony_%28Tchaikovsky,_Pyotr%29) and this. You may have read those already as they're pretty popular. If you haven't, you can most likely find them for free somewhere.

I took an arranging course for my music degree and I really love the textbook they made us purchase. It's this! http://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestration-Third-Samuel-Adler/dp/039397572X/
I personally think it's very helpful. :) I know it's expensive, but I think the investment is worth it.

As for counterpoint, I like Joseph Fux! There was a textbook that I used, but unfortunately I don't remember it. (It's at home and I live at an off-campus apartment) http://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772

I hope this helps :) But if you want somethiing free there's this .... http://imslp.org/wiki/Principles_of_Orchestration_%28Rimsky-Korsakov,_Nikolay%29

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!

Just start working on the Bach Sonatas and Partitas, It'll be confusing at first but keep pushing through slowly and you'll get more and more understanding. This is considered the daily bread of the famous virtuoso violinists. Definitely don't need a decent instrument it's all just wood and string, and don't bother trying to find a teacher they don't love music as much as you do. If you need info on learning the music try reading a theory book such as an introduction book. If you end up needing some inspiration try reading this book about some history of the violin


gg ez

I don't think science will be ever to fully explain the beauty of art (specifically music), but I think it can help us gain at least some understanding as to why we love it.

This book helped me: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452288525/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?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=04RCE4HM6JAF6YNB7QZ5

(sorry I don't know how to link)

Not disagreeing with ya - looking forward to that source :)

I thiiiink my source was http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0452288525 but it might have been some other brain book. I think I've been through about 4 in the last 2 years. They are (annoyingly) not loaded with details. The brain is still a pretty serious mystery. But new techniques for study have been found very recently. One that makes the brain transparent! Oh yeah! http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/19/flying-through-inner-space/ Also subscribe to http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/25/fridays-elk-a-newsletter-for-those-who-like-their-science-by-email/ - It's always interesting.

So I'm hoping that science will have the brain all figured out before I croak.

Sure, you can basically go as simple or as complex as you'd like. The most basic "synth" You could make would probably be a tone generator based on the 555 timer, something like the Atari Punk Console. Music From Outer Space is a good resource for more involved synth projects and the book Make: Analog Synthesizers is a pretty popular resource (you can find pdf versions online). Finally, r/synthDIY has some good resources too.

Any melody can be accompanied by an almost endless number of chord changes, so there's no one "correct" way to do it.

The oldest way to do this is a technique called counterpoint. Long story short, you first write a bass part under your main melody, favoring contrary or oblique motion over parallel motion, and avoiding parallel 5ths and octaves as much as possible. The bass part should make sense as its own melody, ideally.

Then fill in a middle voice, again its own melody, observing the rules of counterpoint with respect to the other 2 melodies already written. When you're done with the 3rd voice, you have a basic chord progression.

You might want to repeat with a 4th melody or more after that, but you'll find that subsequent melodies are less interesting because your options are pretty narrow at that point. That's why alto parts tend to suck.

If this seems interesting to you at all, I highly recommend the classic Study of Counterpoint. It's been out for almost 300 years but it has a unique narrative-style approach and is a lot of fun to work through. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, et. al. would have been familiar with it.

OTOH, if this seems like overkill, then just sit down with a piano or guitar, pick a key, start with something structured around I-IV-V-I or I-vi-ii-V-I or something, and go from there. Again, there's no one correct chord progression. Just find something that tastes good in your ears.

It's true that there's a ton of great information online, but books present the info in an organized, trustworthy fashion. Online learning should be fine for more introductory music theory and common practice period harmony, but once you're looking into more advanced stuff, check out these books:

-20th Century Harmony by Vincent Persichetti

-Contemporary Harmony by Ludmila Ulehla

The best book I've found on that is Jimmy Webb's "Tunesmith." I took courses in music theory, but no one ever talked about how people write lyrics, and he does a good job of getting into both, like doing poetic analysis on song lyrics, dealing with poetic meter and that sort of thing. He's also a pretty engaging writer as well.

This might be miserable at first, but if you want to get the maximum amount of development for your composition, I recommend these two books:

http://www.amazon.com/Scales-Arpeggios-Cadences-Alfreds-Library/dp/0739012975

^ This comes with cadences. Learn to play scales, arpeggios, and cadences. All of them.

http://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Fifth-Walter-Piston/dp/0393954803

^ This book will teach you pretty much everything you'll want to know about harmony and composition. Highly recommended.

William Russo's "Composing Music a New Approach" answers your question very well. Basically the author presents a rudimentary ensemble that can be thought of as a game, with certain rules.

In Chapter 12, titled "Imitation: A Useful Game," he identifies 7 rules and shows examples. Basically one player introduces a "simple figuration of one or two measures," then the next player player either imitates the first figure or introduces their unique figure. Each player is only allowed 1 unique figure, they can rest at any time, and they can imitate at any time (and not necessarily consecutively).

The examples explain it better than the text, but this "game" is basically a band. This helps with the rhythm and melody aspect, while the harmony and structure would probably benefit from a composition or thematic approach.

You're going to have a hard time finding someone to explain the biology of it in laymen's terms. There's a good book called "Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy" that spends the first third explaining the biology of it.

Sound waves are produced by vibrations (guitar string, vocal chords, etc.) These vibrations start at a fundamental frequency (what you called "pitch") but they also vibrate at higher frequencies relative to the fundamental--these are called overtones. These higher frequencies aren't perceived as readily as the fundamental but they will color the tone of sound (timbre).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone

http://www.amazon.com/Music-The-Brain-And-Ecstasy/dp/038078209X

EDIT: I guess, in an overly simplistic way, you could say that the overtones do excite the nerves in the ear dedicated to those frequencies and the brain decodes them in pretty much the same way it does the fundamental. So, since the two sound sources emit different overtones the brain can tell them apart.

This is the version of the Laitz in use today: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199742782?pc_redir=1409923101&robot_redir=1

There are also workbooks accompanying this text. I think the red one is written theory and the blue one is aural skills. I recommend using the written workbook and the main text and getting your aural skills somewhere else.

There's also a graduate theory review book. In a lot of ways, it's better, and cheaper. But it's really probably best used with a teacher to guide you, whereas The Complete Musician leads you by the hand more and thus works better for self-guided study.

You could check out some autobiographies such as Timbalands, Zaytovens, Jay-Z's & the Beastie Boys book. Those are good for specific artists and producers experiences. But there are plenty of music production books that can inspire you as well. Check out Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies. The ebook is a good value:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Music-Strategies-Electronic-Producers-ebook/dp/B00WHXYZG8

It would help if we knew more about your own level of knowledge too. For instance I could recommend Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony or Levine's Jazz Piano Book but those books expect a lot out of their readers, so you may be better off with simpler books.

One book I liked a lot was Carl Humphries The Piano Handbook. It doesn't assume you know much and goes over a lot of material without a lot of depth. It might be a good starting point. It has something to say about pretty much every musical style from 1400 to today.

EDIT: I just reread your post and see you already have the piano handbook.

As a six-month player you probably need to work on physical technique more than anything. And you'll need a teacher for that. :( Can you find one to even meet once a month for 30 minutes?

Well, my best advice (if possible) is just to pick up any book that has a combination of scales and basic chord progressions (like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences/dp/0739003682/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343850716&sr=8-1&keywords=piano+chords+scales) and spend a few months working everyday learning them on piano or a keyboard. When you're making a song if you know ahead of time what key you want to write it in and then limit yourself to the notes available in that scale you'll find that you feel a lot more in control. If that's not possible you could try to pick up a music theory textbook, but in general those tend to be geared almost exclusively towards people that are going to be composing with pencil and paper (AKA Sibelius) in the Western Classical tradition so a lot of the rules they impose early on (avoidance of parallel/hidden fifths and octaves, some of the rules dealing minor scales) won't really apply what so ever to the stuff you're trying to do, but if you're interested in doing modulations (fancy smancey word for key changes) or utilizing weird scales like the half diminished you're probably gonna want to pick up a music theory textbook eventually.

NOW if you wanna go really deep down the rabbit hole, I'd pick up this book: http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Harmony-100th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0520266080/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1343851092&sr=8-3&keywords=schoenberg

It's partially a music theory textbook but it's more an investigation into why harmonic structures work the way they do. Schoenberg's theory relating bass notes to chords completely changed the way I make music.

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing.

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gradus+ad+parnassum&qid=1555859668&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Awesome! Appreciate that. This is not going to be easy. But I love challenges.

If you are already comfortable with reading and playing simple material on the piano with good technique, etc. You might start with the second book in a series--Bastien's, Alfred's, John Thompsons, etc. But honestly it'd be good review if you're just coming back to it to start with the first book in a series to improve your fundamentals.

If you're not interested in learning to read music for piano much, I can't really think of a book that works with that. Maybe this book. You might just try putting together chord progressions using music theory and ultimateguitar.com. Just chords and a bass note to begin. Fancy stuff later.

I have no single favorite chord. But if I shared my whole list of favorites, I would be giving away all my compositional secrets!

Here's one though. I like this monster:

B♭2 A♭3 C4 E4 G4 B5 D5 F#5 B6

Those doubled B♮ notes over the B♭ bass ought to sound like a train wreck -- but they don't, thanks to the other supporting notes.

As to how to hear it or parse it, you can treat it as a polychord: in slash notation, perhaps Bm / B♭13#11? That's how you are likely to play it at a keyboard.

Alternately, read composer Enrique Ubieta's thoughts on the idea of augmented 15th chords, which Vincent Persichetti also considers in his Twentieth-Century Harmony. I think the notes in this stack mesh well enough that you are less likely to hear it as a polychord, and more likely to hear it as a dominant 13#11 with a #15.

​

Laitz is what we used for theory, but the way to approach different things is different amongst different people...

Edit: [Straus] (http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Post-Tonal-Theory-Joseph-Straus/dp/0131898906/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376717704&sr=1-4&keywords=theory) for base 12/12 tone

Edit 2: Don't forget that looking at various texts is another great way to think about understanding how different composers approach things, so once you learn a fundamental way of slapping labels on things, actual music is the best way to learn theory. Also, check out [this.] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis)

Well, it all start there. If you know it well enough, you start to extend the harmonies by including chords from the parallel minor/major, relative minor/major, secondary dominants of diatonic chords, diminished 7th chords, neopolitan chords, aug 6 chords, tritone subs, etc. At the point you seem to be at, it's probably time to buy a good book on Tonal Harmony. There are some really good ones out there, I prefer [Laitz's myself] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Musician-Integrated-Listening/dp/0199742782/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383066513&sr=8-1&keywords=The+complete+musician)

30 min. of practice just on technique is not much. I do 1 hr and it seems like peanuts. I'd say endeavour for 2 hrs. with 1 hour playing what you want and 1 hr of music theory. Throwing in 30-60 min of aural training is pretty ideal as well. Head over to /r/musictheory . And I'd also recommend this book to learn music theory.

Never did this book, but the one I always recommend and should be a part of any kit player's canon is The New Breed by Gary Chester. It's the best way to learn true 4-limb independence.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Breed-Systems-Development-Creativity/dp/1423418123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317505773&sr=8-1

Buy "A Modern Method For Guitar Volume 1" by William Leavitt. Its written by the guy who founded the guitar department in Berklee College of Music. The book teaches you all of the basics of guitar in volume 1 and moves at a fast, yet manageable pace.

Here's a link to the combined 3 volumes for $22
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114

But you get a DVD if you just buy Vol 1 that has a guitar professer at Berklee (the current head of the department) teaching the book to you.
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-DVD-ROM-Berklee/dp/0876390696/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370752061&sr=1-2&keywords=a+modern+method+for+guitar

The book gives you an amazing foundation for being a good guitarist and musician that you won't get searching for tabs on the internet.

I know I'm gushing over this, but I'm just amazed by how good at playing I've gotten by going through the book. You don't need a teacher or lessons if you have this book.

Hmmm. I mean basically, music is organized sound. Nobody's really sure why, but for some reason there are certain frequencies that we associate with positive and negative emotions, and certain frequencies that we deem "unpleasant-sounding".

I'm not super knowledgeable on music theory actually. I just know what sounds good and what doesn't. You should read up on the Pentatonic Scale, the Pythagorean theory of music, and also this wonderful book I'm reading.

U/Insolace is correct and his reply futher explains, correctly, why terms are so. We've pretty much nailed down the language at this point. It's more a matter of if a musician is educated in the language or has only learned from ear and coined or invetned their own terms for the same communicatio , which is perfectly understandable and plenty of high end musicians, and drummers, do not read music or have much of a formal education in music theory.

I would recommend Gary Chaffee's Rhythm & Meter Patterns and Time Functioning Patterns for an indepth study into this area of drumming and music in particular.

https://www.amazon.com/Rhythm-Meter-Patterns-Book-CD/dp/0769234690

If you want to get into Danny's style, he is a huge propenent of Gary Chesters 'New Breed'. Highly recommend studying out of this book as well.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Breed-Development-Creativity-recording/dp/1423418123/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468607035&sr=1-2&keywords=The+new+breed

There are a lot of courses. Any specific topics you're interested in?

Edit: I'll just list a few anyway that I've used in classes (this may not reflect all professors' choices for the same subjects).

Tonal Harmony: Kostka-Payne - Tonal Harmony

Counterpoint 1: A Berklee book by the late professor Rick Applin. Some also use this Fux translation/adaptation

Counterpoint 2: Bach Inventions & Sinfonias (any edition, really)

"Advanced" Counterpoint: The Well-Tempered Clavier (again, any edition)

Early Twentieth-Century Harmony: Persichetti - Twentieth-Century Harmony

Post-Tonal Theory/Analysis: Straus - Intro to Post-Tonal Theory

Instrumentation/Orchestration: Adler - The Study of Orchestration &
Casella/Mortari - The Technique of Contemporary Orchestration

Western Music History - Burkholder/Paiisca - A History of Western Music (8th or 9th edition)

Conducting 1 - Notion Conducting

Conducting 2 Notion + Stravinsky's Petrushka

Berklee's own (jazz-based) core harmony and ear-training curricula use Berklee textbooks written by professors which, as someone else mentioned, come unbound and shrink-wrapped at the bookstore. You can find older (PDF) versions of the Berklee harmony textbooks here. Of course this list only represents explicit book choices - there are a lot of excerpt-readings, and there's a lot of instruction that isn't found in these books even in the associated courses.

The other guys covered your specific filter question, so here's some general info on learning/implementing DSP via code. I don't know whether you're a programmer already or not, so if you're not, DSP is not a great way to learn C programming from the beginning. Basic DSP like your low-pass filter is not very demanding of more advanced programming skills, but it IS (relatively) hard to debug. I don't even want to imagine how awful debugging DSP output would be for a new programmer who's not yet sure his basic code even works properly. Much easier to learn C by writing some scrubby text output programs rather than staring at a huge pile of output floats.

If you're already comfy with C, you're just going to have to dig into some textbooks and work your way through them. Don't let them scare you. The math looks ugly, but it REALLY isn't! I highly recommend combining at least two sources for each topic.

http://www.dspguide.com/ is free and great for understanding what you're doing. Very little math, very heavy on explanations of how DSP works. Read the section on filters or whatever from this book first.

http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Programming-Book-Richard-Boulanger/dp/0262014467 is the math side of the same DSP topics + lots of actual C code implementations of each

If you make it through the pair all the way, you've pretty much got an entire foundation

We need to understand what theory is and where it comes from.

For example, it might not be very useful to analyze a rap song with the same techniques we do with Classical stuff. It's certainly not useful to analyze a drum cadence in that way.

So first you need to pick out a style that you really want to analyze out. Hell, you could start with a single song. But either way, follow that backwards through time/formal analysis. You'll find that many styles follow this thing called "tonal theory". The idea is that much of music has a tonal center - that's to say, a single chord (and by some extensions, a single pitch or note) that we can use to define the entire key/song.

The beginning of tonal music came around the Baroque era, but we can start with Classical-era stuff (i.e. Mozart, Handel, Haydn). At this point there's clear structure to it - there are ideas of tonics, dominants, and predominants. This will end up being the basis of a TON of music - so-called "classical", rock, pop, jazz - much of the music we have today is reliant on this set of ideas.

So how do you start? Well, find some structure. Music has absolutely zero shortcuts. You need to carve out your own path through theory. Unfortunately this means acknowledging some permanent, temporally-obstacles (for example, learning atonality after tonality changes your understanding of atonality), but a not-so-bad way to do it is chronologically.

To do this, you can hit up musictheoryonline. Don't skip any of the exercises, boring as they may be. Or pick up a textbook. This was my undergrad textbook^1 , and I think it's pretty good. Read through each chapter. Take the time to listen to all the examples.

1. Notice what I said? It's my undergrad textbook. That means I had to learn theory. Talent will only get you so far. If you want to study existing music, you need to put time into seeing what the contemporary theory is.

Yeah. You have to ask yourself, why am I obsessed with collecting all this information? It's not enough to just stop it, I'm sure you've tried that and found yourself back in the same old familiar patterns. A book that I really enjoyed reading was this, music habits His message is really simple, but his whole philosophy of music production is really good. There are a lot of bad habits we pick up when we first start music production and one of them is that obsession with collecting more info.

Also what really helped me is stick to a few good resources. Forget about the internet because I find more often than not there is a ton of bad advice floating around that you don't want to take on. Occasionally you find these amazing posts full of wisdom and 9/10 their knowledge came from a professional who knew their shit who probably already wrote a book that would be really beneficial to read.

And if you're like me you probably just overthink everything way too much. And collecting all that info isn't helping you to trust your own judgement and just making music.

If you think you are ready for some heavier academic writing on music theory, here's how you can get into it:

1. Music Theory Online, the free, peer-reviewed journal created by the Society for Music Theory. It's convenient and very legit. Some articles have animations, videos, and sound linked right there.
   
2. Look at the award-winning publications list on the Society for Music Theory website. If something piques your interest, get it! Either from Amazon or from a university library (or really, really good public library).
   
3. If you go to university, you probably have access to JSTOR—a huge database of academic articles, including articles about music theory—through your university's library website. The big journals are Music Theory Spectrum and Journal of Music Theory. You can also check out Intégral, Theory and Practice, Perspectives of New Music, Music Perception, and way more on JSTOR.
   
   I would also recommend getting familiar with counterpoint and set theory, if you haven't already! My recommended books on counterpoint are by Robert Gauldin, A Practical Approach to 18th-century Counterpoint and the 16th-c. version as well. It's called "a practical approach" because Gauldin does not teach via the species method. (I tend to find species unrelated, anyway—species counterpoint is a good and important exercise, but not exactly the same idea as 16th- or 18th-c. writing.) For set theory, I recommend Joe Straus's Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory. It's expensive for such a small book; unfortunately, this is a fact of life for any book about 20th- and 21st-c. music, since copyright laws make publishing them quite expensive. You might be able to find older editions for cheaper.

I'm a composer by trade (now working toward a PhD in Composition) and I don't know one book that introduces composing well, or at all. I got started in high school, just writing little pieces for myself and friends to play. I just kept at it all these years, through college, grad school and now.

What I found helpful along the way was to learn and be the pro at music theory. After all, music theory is a bunch of rules formulated based on what other people people from long long before have written. One thing to work hard on is counterpoint. It's a step by step on how to write good lines, good secondary lines and basically gives you a very rough idea of what works and what doesn't work. Of course, this is based in the tonal tradition. This is my recommended book. It's written in the socratic style, so just beware. Otherwise, this is what people use in school today.

Again, orchestration is important if you want to write for acoustic instruments. See my comment below~

My advice would be to JUST START WRITING! If its bad, you will know it is and why it's bad. Sometimes, you need a little help. PM me if you want me to look at some things you've done.

2 of the books which helped me a lot, both great for beginners (but also pros):

This ones focuses more on the right mindest towards learning the skills (hugely important imo): https://www.amazon.de/Music-Habits-Electronic-Production-Procrastination-ebook/dp/B00ZJG398U

And this one is more about concrete techniques: https://www.amazon.de/Making-Music-Strategies-Electronic-Producers-ebook/dp/B00WHXYZG8

And this one is what iam reading right now, it's more for experienced practicioners who want to understand how to make the step from being "solid" to "great".

It's also very much about developing a healthy mindset to learning and playing / producing. It's written by a classical music / piano guy, but most of what he says translates 1-1 to electronic music production.

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B005OUHOLY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

When i look at my own progress, i really feel "mindset" is the key word - in short, you need to accept your current level, and that learning takes time - but you also need to feel that your potential is only limited by the time and effort you are willing to put into your craft.

And: when you wanna learn a certain technique, try to find a youtube video about it! That can really speed things up.

If you want to learn how to read, buy this: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Otherwise it sounds like you just want to do some ear training. There are lots of programs to do that. Or just record yourself playing intervals and when you play them back try and guess what they are. Start at thirds and fifths in the same octave and then expand as you get better at it. Do that every day.

If you don't know basic theory like scales and chords, that's where you need to start. There are roughly a bajillion books on the subject.

I'd recommend this book as a great starting point. I am 25 and my teacher and I have really made progress :)

Lots and lots of hand PT and exercises. I am in a similar boat except I'm returning to music after about 20 or so years of not practicing and it's pretty much like learning anew, except with much stiffer fingers and joints.

Depending on how limber, agile, and your stamina, I would say start slow and pay lots of attention to form and posture, take break often and stretch. Do arm/hand/finger strength drills a few times a day and stretch A LOT, and I don't mean just hands and arms, develop and follow a routine to maintain overall mobility (which isn't a bad thing to do at this age anyhow).

Other than that — The Complete Musician could be a good start and a teacher to get you started with your instrument though be careful as early bad habits are very hard to fix in the future.

There are some great resources available on songwriting.

Check out "Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting" by Jimmy Webb
http://www.amazon.com/Tunesmith-Inside-Songwriting-Jimmy-Webb/dp/0786884886/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452090486&sr=8-1&keywords=tunesmith

Or anything by Pat Pattison of Berklee College of Music.

Pattison has a great online course on Songwriting offered by Coursera (coursera.org) that they offered free, but it looks like it's not free now. Keep an eye out, though. It may be free again sometime.

Couldn't agree more. Gaining independance with the left foot on the hats is an excellent first step in double kick drumming. Think about it like you were working on your hands. You don't just hammer out single stroke rolls, you play paradiddles, doubles, flams. Your left foot is a limb that can be as workable and useful as your hands.

As boredop mentioned, dropping the hats on the 2 and 4 gives a really cool groove to a steady ride beat, and in a lot of folk it's almost expected. Same applies to jazz. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what you can do with your left peg. [See: The New Breed] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chester-Breed-Revised-Edition-Drums/dp/1423418123/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371779559&sr=8-2&keywords=the+new+breed+drummer)

Furthermore, every drummer worth his salt has at least one ostinato based rhythm in their repertoire (edit: repertoire). Look at Steve Gadd's Samba, and go from there. The work you do in separating the feet from the hands is something Mario Duplantier, Danny Carey and many other heavy drummers have mastered.

The Complete Idiot's Guide is a surprisingly good resource. I taught myself from this book in 6th grade and ended up with a strong command of theory before high school.

Once you get what you can from that, try
Kostka and Payne. From my understanding this is a very popular book for college theory classes. It also has a workbook that can be useful.

If you spend 20 minutes a day studying theory, you will have a solid foundation in no time.

The Berklee Method books are highly praised. They have a lot of great information about learning theory and sight reading. Alternatively if you dont want to buy them you can just download the PDF here

Of course having an instructor to really guide you along is the best way to learn.

If you like TIYBOM, Robert Jourdain's Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination is right up there. Awkward title to explain in public but a fantastic read. I liked it a lot more than TIYBOM but in fairness read TIYBOM second.

The William Leavitt books are good:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114

Also, depends on the style you want to go for. If you go classical, get a really good teach and learn where to place your right hand fingers. Its better to learn correctly than have to re-learn.

This is a great textbook and is one of the few college textbooks that wasn't a waste of my money. It has everything in there starting from rhythms, chords, and intervals all the way up to a bunch of crazy stuff analysis and part writing wise that really spices up music and will give you a great appreciation for all types of music. Once you realize how much of this "technical" stuff that you never knew is applied to even pop songs, it really changes your perspective on the artists and producers behind them. The first fourth of the book is really REALLY important stuff though and the rest is just really cool (or really boring depending on your love for theory) stuff that will make your music even better. Beat production doesn't "need" to involve a lot of the other stuff, but having more tools under your belt is what it's all about.

Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory (don't mind the silly name) is the best book I've ever read on the subject. Written in a way that's clear and easy to read and never talks down to you.

Go do yourself a favor and get this wonderfull work. http://amzn.com/1592574378

If you would like to end with Chopin, you only need to study tonal theory. So twelve tone topics are not of any use since that topic is 20th century, after tonality.

If you didn't do voice leading (SATB harmony): Are you interested in voice leading? If you want to get to the more advanced topics of tonal theory, you'll need to cover that. If so I would suggest this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Musicians-Guide-Theory-Analysis-Third/dp/0393600491/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535936804&sr=1-1&keywords=clendinning+theory

Have you done species counterpoint? Species counterpoint will be very helpful in dealing with just about all music. I would recommend Fux's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Counterpoint-Johann-Joseph-Parnassum/dp/0393002772/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535936929&sr=1-1&keywords=fux+counterpoint

If you've already done species counterpoint: For more advanced counterpoint (not useful for Chopin, but necessary for anything with fugues in it, obviously) I would suggest Mann's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Study-Fugue-Dover-Books-Music/dp/0486254399

For a complete discussion of forms I would suggest Berry's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Music-2nd-Wallace-Berry/dp/0133292851

For an in depth and modern discussion of sonata theory (remember that symphonies are also often times in sonata form), I would suggest Hepokoski's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Sonata-Theory-Deformations-Late-Eighteenth-Century/dp/0199773912/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535937360&sr=1-1&keywords=hepokoski+sonata

If you already know species counterpoint and voice leading you can study Schenkarian Analysis. For this there's two books I would suggest:

https://www.amazon.com/Analysis-Tonal-Music-Schenkerian-Approach/dp/0199732477/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535937496&sr=1-1&keywords=schenkerian+analysis

https://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Analysis-Schenkerian-David-Damschroder/dp/0393283798/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1535937488&sr=1-2&keywords=schenkerian+analysis

​

If you're interested in composition, that's the other side of the coin and so all the above are of limited use. Let me know if you want books for composition.

My suggestion is to learn on your own, and if you choose to go to college, pursue a major that has more profitable career options. Minor in music theory and invest your free time in practicing your instrument. Here is a reading list I recommend to start getting into serious music study and guitar playing:

• William Leavitt's Modern Method for Guitar - all three. buy it on amazon, this is your guitar bible
  
• Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene
  
• The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick - Seriously one of the best practice guides around. It is light on content, but explains how to practice and challenge yourself.
  
• A Real Book, for reading practice
  
• Tonal Harmony by Kostka
  
• Materials and Techniques of 20th Century Music, by Kostka
  
• The above books by Kostka will cover most of the theory content in the general undergraduate requirements for U.S. music programs
  
• Elementary Training for Musicians, Paul Hindemith - Very good book, particularly work on the sight reading material
  
• Progressive Sight Singing One of the most important skills for a well rounded musician
  
• Paul Gilbert's Terrifying Guitar Trip - Out of place with the above, but easily the best technical guide to guitar playing I have ever found. Even applicable if you don't want to play rock guitar.
  
  That was a fucking wall of text. Hopefully I didn't come off like a negative asshole or bore you to death. If you have any questions or complaints, let me know!

Make: Analog Synthesizers is a great introduction. It even details an example project, the Noise Toaster. But I think its strongest section might be the appendix, which is a good reference for various utility circuits you need in an analog synth, especially the LM13700 OTA, which you can use to build VCOs, VCFs, and VCAs.

The only glaring omission in the Make book is the lack of voltage-controlled exponential current source circuits that drive the OTA's current bias inputs. You can find more about those by digging through the textbook Musical Applications of Microprocessors (beware, much of the content regarding embedded systems is a bit outdated, but there is a surprising amount of analog material in there) and this Electronotes newsletter. In fact, this collection of Electronotes newsletters is a gold mine in itself.

Happy tinkering.

Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?

Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.

Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.

Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
   
3. Einstein: His Life and Universe
   
4. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
   
5. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
   
6. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
   
7. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
   
8. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
   
9. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
   
10. Cosmos
    
11. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
    
12. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    
13. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
    
14. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
    
15. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    
16. Thinking, Fast and Slow
    
17. Chaos: Making a New Science
    
18. Isaac Newton
    
19. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
    
20. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
    
    And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.

This is definitely not a rule for how to write music now, just a rule for how to write music in the style of Bach/Mozart/Beethoven/Haydn etc. If you're interested in Tonal (read: Common Practice) Harmony, here are a few good theory books used in Freshman/Sophomore college music curriculums (in my order of preference):

The Complete Musician


Techniques and Materials of Music


Harmony and Voice Leading


Tonal Harmony

I'm also a composer, and I tend to write more modally (and sometimes without a strict tonality), so I just teach these, I don't necessarily follow them in my own writing.

Not exactly sound, but This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin is a great read. The author is a musician turned neuroscientist who pretty much analyzes how sound/music is understood by humans

Edit: just realized you were specifically looking for an audio book. I don't know if there is one

sorry for the late reply! well nearly all books will have some rhythm learning which is excellent. [Berklee's A Modern Method for Guitar - Volumes 1, 2, 3 Complete] (http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410004474&sr=8-1&keywords=Berklee%27s+Modern+Method+for+Guitar+123) By William Leavitt
as for more books focused on rhythm some good ones are:

[Rhythm Guitar: The Complete Guide] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rhythm-Guitar-The-Complete-Guide/dp/0793581842) by Bruce Buckingham and Melodic Rhythms For Guitar

Music theory is not different on a guitar than on any other instrument. And it gets very hard to get music theory correct when it is taught by largely self-taught guitarists, because they have a tendency to think every shape they play requires a name (a trait shared by musicians on most chromatic instruments).

Go get a basic music theory book like Music Theory for Dummies or Music Theory: From Begginer to Expert. After youv'e gone through and really understood what's in those texts, you'll be ready for more advanced stuff like Mark Levine's Jazz Theory or Walter Piston's books such as Harmony or Counterpoint.

Alternately you could look at texts on arranging and orchestration at that point as well.

Stay away from instrument specific texts, particularly those related to chromatic instruments (of which the guitar is one) because you'll almost find something that is a well-intended, but mistaken, concept. Also avoid texts aimed at Berkelee school of music. While they are a great school in terms of their performance degrees, they have an odd fascination with modes that is shared by virtually no other music school in the world.

Thanks for the tip on that book. Looks amazing and gets great reviews.

There's a book I've been wanting to read but haven't yet: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

If you've got more free time than me go for it, but I'm extremely interested in studies on the subject. I think music is something bigger than we understand so far and I want to find the answer.

A Modern Method For Guitar by William Leavitt is a great book for this. Starts of with teaching you the staff and how to read notes all the way to advanced theory and improv. It is all standard notation though so you need to be able to read music OR be willing to learn (and will make it easier to learn theory), which this will help you with. It has a ton of songs and practice pieces in every position in it to guide you, and you'll know the fretboard in and out if you stick with it. I highly recommend it.

In truth, I'd try to add sight reading somewhere in there, perhaps subbing out the initial use of your music theory flashcards. For one, most music theory you'll want to learn will be in notation. Learning theory in the absence of how it immediate relates to your instrument will stall learning.

If you focus on working out of something like Modern Method for Guitar for the first six months, not only will you be compounding a lot of good practice technique, but you'll start providing yourself a strong foundation to play the theory that you learn.

If you really have your basic chords and scale theory down, I would recommend a book that was recommended by my teachers : Arnold Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony. It is a very deep theory book that challenges a lot of the preconceptions that existed (and still exist) before its realease around 1910. I started reading it and it is a great book indead, though I lack some elementary knowledge to get the best out of it.

I have to strongly reccommend Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination by Robert Jourdain!

Best book I've read so far concerning this matter.

I use Edly's Music Theory for Practical People with some of my students, and I find it super useful for exactly the kind of thing you're talking about.

Yeah, it starts out really simple, and yeah, it's full of dumb jokes and goofy cartoons. But it gets to the good stuff (higher tertian chords and how to voice them) really quick, and makes good sense of it. A lot of theory books are more like notation analysis manuals than theory books - this one doesn't ignore or avoid notation but isn't about it, it's about using theory in your playing and composition more than post facto analysis.

Is it this one?
It certainly looks like something that might be able to help me, I'll probably get my hands on a copy! Thanks for the input!!

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/

upvote but i respectfully disagree. i think a lot of guitarists feel more relaxed when they're blazed and more "in the zone". also ya i've heard the same about improv too.

here's a good book that talks about music and your brain:
this is your brain on music (amazon)
i thought it was kind of interesting

When limitations are self-imposed, you always have the option to go beyond them if your piece calls for it. I think that working within limitations can lead to inspiration, which you can then follow. Sometimes that means abandoning those initial principles, but often times the material doesn't call for that. Limitation exercises are also good because you force yourself to try something you've never done before, which can lead to a personal sense of style. Composing Music by William Russo is a great resource for exploring new techniques through a variety of limitation exercises. i'd highly recommend checking it out, it totally changed the way i write. http://www.amazon.com/Composing-Music-A-New-Approach/dp/0226732169.

If you're talking about orchestral composition at all, you'll need to know quite a bit about instrumentation and orchestration as well. Alfred Blatter has an excellent book on that. As for composition in general, you'll need to read up a bit on music theory, if you're not already familiar with it. This is the book I used in college; it has a variety of composition exercises with various restrictions, and is a great place to start.

Online Articles
Designing a movie for sound by Randy Thom
The sound of Star Wars by Ben Burt
Plus most other articles on filmsound

Books
Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound by David Yewdall
Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema by David Sonnenschein
This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin Not directly sound design but still very interesting and useful.

Websites
Sound Works Collection
Designing Sound
Film Sound

These are just some of my personal picks but I'm sure there are plenty more resources out there.

Try the Fretboard Logic series. Very informative and a great place to begin to understand the connections of the fretboard. Another great series is A Modern Method for Guitar.

If you want a gentle way to get into the meat of fundamental music theory, check out The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory. Check out the reviews at least. I found it very easy to follow and very easy to learn from. After that, you'll have the foundation to take music and theory whichever direction you want to go in.

In general, our brains are occupied with both novelty and repetition. When we listen to music, the repetition gives us the context for understanding what we're hearing and the novelty keeps our brains actively interested.

For example, listen to the horn melody of the original Hawaii 5-0 theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LnK8b_jk8w

The first part of both initial phrases is the same but then suddenly, it changes. That novelty after repetition is what your brain likes.

It is possible though to listen to a piece enough times that the novelty disappears completely. At this point, unless you have a different experience of the song, like nostalgia after a long absence, your brain is no longer captivated and can in fact be repulsed by the repetition alone.

Hope that makes some sense. I'd suggest reading something like Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy if you want to get into it further.