course books

[Saku]

Hello People

I am new to this forumn, have just figured out how to use it. So forgive me me if someone has asked already.

I am teaching myself how to compose music. Any hints for books, I'm looking for more things like the W. Russo book "Composing Music, a new approach" that has assignments and tasks and everything. Am particualrly trying to learn how to write Baroque and Classical styles, for instance for strings? Sort of on the practical/beginning level. Oh yes, I have also read the ochestration books by, for instance Piston and Kennan, is the orchestration workbook by adler any good?

thanks for any help

Saku
Sweden

[Poolman]

See my review of orchestration books at:

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33676&highlight=orchestration+books

Terry

[Styxx]

Oh, this was a very informative review indeed!

[robfromholland]

I am teaching myself how to compose music. Any hints for books, I'm looking for more things like the W. Russo book "Composing Music, a new approach" that has assignments and tasks and everything. Am particualrly trying to learn how to write Baroque and Classical styles, for instance for strings? Sort of on the practical/beginning level.
Hi Saku,

Most composition books describe the building blocks for composing music, but not much about writing in a certain classical style or writing large scale pieces (such as symphonies).

For everything besides the building blocks, you just have to listen to existing music in which style you want to compose and study the scores. Find out how it is build, what the style elements are, etc.

You may want to look at the following book:

Craig Wright - Listening to Music
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0534603726/qid=1131021759/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-3916060-4591248?v=glance&s=books

Although the book title seems to suggest that it is mainly directed at serious classical music listeners, composers may also find it very useful. The book describes many classical styles, variations, etc, with musical fragments (on the CDs) and score fragments (in the book).

You can download a sample chapter (about baroque music):
http://64.78.63.75/samples/04MU103WrightListeningtoMusic4Ch07.pdf

If you buy it, I would recommend also to buy the accomponing 2 or 4 CD set (not included with the book).

Copied from one of my earlier posts:

When I listen to many classical / orchestral pieces, I am often impressed in how it sounds and flows. Then I get discouraged, thinking I will never be able to make such a piece of music. So much is going on in those pieces that it seems like an enormous amount of work to write it ...

The trick however seems that although a large amount of musical things may happen during a long piece, many classical pieces are often based on a rather limited number of musical ideas like motifs and themes. These ideas are repeated often during a piece, but transformed, varied and sometimes changed beyond recognition (melodical, rhytmical, orchestration).

The book "Melody in Songwriting" of "Jack Perricone" is one of the many books which describes how you can transform motifs to create longer melodies and phrases:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/063400638X/qid=1126127153/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-0975293-2612165?v=glance&s=books

Personally, I find Elgar's "Enigma Variations" (Op. 36) a really beautifull example of how to make variations on one basic theme. The piece consists of 15 sub-pieces of 30 seconds to a few minutes each. Although the motif reoccurs in each of these sub-pieces, each of the sub-pieces has its own unique character and sounds really different from the other sub-pieces.

I highly recommend listening to the "discovering music" radio program of the BBC about "Elgar - Enigma Variations". You can listen to it over the internet! In this radio program you can hear many fragments of the piece and many variations of the theme are pointed out by the presenter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/audioarchive.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/ram/cdmwk0129.ram

There is a relative cheap Dover full score of the Enigma Variations available:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0486273423/qid=1126126430/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0975293-2612165?v=glance&s=books

Greetings,

Rob.

[Garritan]

Falcon1 previously provided the following online list:

Harmony
http://www.uta.fi/mute/english/har01.htm (basic)
http://www.harmony.org.uk/index.htm (more advanced)
http://www.teoria.com (basic)

Forms
http://library.thinkquest.org/22673/index.html
http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/musical_forms.html
http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/jperry/virtual_textbook/index.htm

Orchestration
http://www.hberlioz.com/Scores/BerliozTreatise.html
http://www.hut.fi/~tbackstr/ranges/ranges.html (http://www.hut.fi/%7Etbackstr/ranges/ranges.html)
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/intro.html (http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/%7Eahugill/manual/intro.html)

Scores
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/intro.html (http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/%7Eahugill/manual/intro.html)
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/

[Saku]

ok thanks for all the suggestions, keep sending in more - does anyone know about the adler "workbook"? any good? can one use it without the main text?


Melody in songwriting is on my to buy list, the blatter is unavaiable but I'm seraching for it.

thanks again

saku

[Saku]

from one thing to a third, anybody have any useful books fror ableton live or cubasis/cubase that is more than just a repeat of what are in the manual? I know HOW to do things, why I would want to is a different bundle of fish...

saku

[Tangram]

.... the blatter is unavailable.....

All of the books Poolman is mentioning in his post are
available from amazon.com. (or amazon.co.uk)

/Mats