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Composing Music: A New Approach | 
 enlarge | Authors: William Russo, Jeffrey Ainis, David Stevenson
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $19.97
You Save: $5.03 (20%)
New (21) Used (12) from $13.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 177509
Media: Plastic Comb
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.7 x 0.6
ISBN: 0226732169
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.61
EAN: 9780226732169
ASIN: 0226732169
Publication Date: February 15, 1988
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Aimed at those who have some knowledge of music but not formal training in composition, this concise introduction to composing starts right in with a brief composition exercise, then proceeds step by step through a series of increasingly complex and challenging problems, gradually expanding the student's musical grammar.
"This is a wonderful book for anyone who is developing improvising skills or who would like a fun way to explore music."—Jim Stockford, Co-Evolution Quarterly
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 a wonderful tool for composing January 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was very helpful to me; the excercizes have you writing right away, and I liked that- learning by doing. I had very little technical knowledge when I started, but it didn't hinder me from understanding and using this book. I think this is an excellent starting point for someone just learning to compose. It is encouraging to be writing right away, especially when something ends up sounding good. I never thought I could write music!
An excellent self-teaching method for aspiring composers September 25, 2007
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
I picked this book up a few years ago, and am still getting a lot out of the exercises. The processes used are very refreshing, from a music student's perspective. The approach is from the view of more contemporary music, and the text leaves out the stuffy, "unnecessary" theory. If you want to study theory, get a theory book.
This book is designed to teach the individual who has little experience outside of very basic music fundamentals. From the first page you'll be writing "mini-compositions". The book works through the following concepts (chapter by chapter):
1. The Cell, the Row, and Some Scales
2. Harmony (I)
3. Transformation
4. The Small Theme and the Large Theme
5. More Scales and teh 12-tone Row
6 Isomelody and Isorhythm, Combined
7. Ostinato
8. Accompaniment Procedures
9. Harmony (II)
10. Counterpoint
11. Organum
12. Imitation: A Useful Game
13. Words and Music
14. Picture Music
15. Popular Music as a Source
16. Minimalism
Although you certainly don't need to have advanced theory knowledge to make use of this book, once you do gain those skills, the book will prove that much more helpful.
Nice book-Gave me Ideas October 3, 2005
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
If you are a real musician or lyricist, this book will help inspire you and give you some background in the format of western pop music. I recommend this book to any seroius songwriter, but please no more songs about butterflies!
 fails to teach application of theoretical principles well May 24, 2004
55 out of 77 found this review helpful
I see that most people have high ratings for this book, but I cannot give it more than 2 stars for several reasons. First of all, the book does give a ton of exercises, but I didn't find these very useful--most of them were very simple exercises that had restrictions on how you could write the piece. This book does give much information about music theory, and the author does allow you to use this theory to write small (usually 10-15 bar) monophonic melodies, but by the end of the book this was all that I had learned to do. Yes, I did learn a lot of theory but I did not learn how to use the theoretical concept to its fullest potential when I composed a piece. At the end of the book, I found that, since the book gave me no practice at writing for more than one instrument at a time, I was not any better of a composer than I was at the start of the book.In my opinion, the author should add a CD to the book to illustrate how each concept he teaches is used to its fullest potential in a musical example. A major part of learning to compose is to listen and imitate--without listening, how are you supposed to know how to use this new music theory that you have just learned? Overall, the book is just a music theory book with a bunch of useless (to me, anyway) compositional exercises. Perhaps this book is for people who already have experience composing for a while. Personally, I am an ameateur and have piano skills and I wanted a book to teach me to compose, but I am afraid it did not help me very much, and I don't think it will help other ameateurs either.
Clear, logical, complete. January 14, 2004
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
The book's author is clearly influenced by minimalism not only in his approach to music, but also to writing and music instruction. His clearly modal approach to both melody and harmony is presented in superbly logical and fluff-free sequence of explanations and exercises. Some of advanced chapters on topics such as mating lyrics with music or writing picture music are brilliant as well.
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