Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14836 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-10
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Synopsis
The prolific songwriter offers novices advice on creating melodies, harmonies, and lyrics, as well as tips for marketing compositions and dealing with the music industry.

Customer Reviews

Inside The Song Writing Process
This book goes through the process of choosing an idea / title for a song, then brainstorming potential lyrics, constructing first draft lyrics, determining an appropriate melody whilst adjusting the lyrics and writing the harmony.

The thinking behind each decision during this process is explained in a conversational tone with good humour and honesty. This is what makes this book uniquely valuable.

A more structured presentation would have made this more of a text book format and easier to navigate.

The final sections give some ideas about what market to sell your songs to (theatre, cabaret, pop etc) and in which American locations (NYC, LA or Nashville). Other books do this bit better, but Jimmy provides some inside information not available elsewhere as well as some interesting anecdotes from his past.

I've docked one star for the lack of a structured presentation and for the 'marketing songs' section being too lightweight to be really useful.

The songwriting chapters are very detailed and facinating.

The song he writes for the book may not be world class, but as a demonstration of how a song is written (by someone who has written many hits and successful songs over a long period of time, unlike most of the other song writing books available) this book is essential reading for writers of all levels of ability.

The best book on songwriting
As a teacher of songwriting to Popular Music degree students, I use this book as required reading for the course. Webb's take on the art and craft of writing is at times opinionated, but his understanding of the imperatives of the form is second to none. Highlights include his extended and frequent analogy of 'building' the song like a house with solid foundations (form), different 'rooms' (sections/verses) and an impermeable roof (melody); he also builds an entire song from nothing more than a title right through to a finished product. The book is not flawless by any means; at times (such as when he discusses melodic form) he is clearly speaking to the absolute beginner; at others (such as when he attempts to cover the whole of music theory in around 25 pages!) he makes assumptions about the reader. In my experience only around 20% of wannabe songwriters actually read music notation; still fewer have a strong grasp of diatonic harmony.
That said, there are many gems of information and inspiration in this book from a true master of the craft. Skip the middle bit about music theory, and you'll find much in here to hone your songwriting to the highest level.
For those who are really serious writers, the other excellent book about songwriting worth having is Sheila Davis' 'Successful Lyric Writing' - it's another one that we use as a key text for our songwriting modules.

more like a novel than an aid to teaching.
This book is probably great for intelligent people. Unfortunately i'm a bit thick so i didn't actually learn much....too many long words and pages that waffle on and on and on.It is more like a novel than an aid to teaching the art of songwriting. I was looking for a book that would explain the following; 1.Basic music theory [scales,circle of fifths] 2.Basic chord theory [keys,passing chords] 3.Basic poetry theory [poetic paradigms,rhyming] 4.Basic Lyric theory [structure and form]

This book didn't satisfy any of my wishes..........sorry!