Compose Yourself!: Songwriting & Creative Musicianship in Four Easy Lessons PDF
Preview Compose Yourself!: Songwriting & Creative Musicianship in Four Easy Lessons
Copyright © 2010 by David Alzofon All rights reserved. Email [email protected] to receive notification of future publications, new editions, workshops, videos, MP3s of musical examples, or for permissions. Developers are invited to contact the author if interested in designing a software version of the course. Klaf Rackner Mediaworks Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 1453724958 E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61789-518-0 for Susan Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Preface Prelude Lesson 1–Juggling Rhythm Interlude–The Elements of Harmony Lesson 2–The Harmonic Journey Lesson 3–The Heart of Melody Lesson 4–Secrets of Songwriting Coda Recommended Reading Acknowledgments About the Author Preface The book you are holding is the one I wish I’d had when I embarked on the musician’s path in the 1960s: a practical introduction to music that values theory, but values musical creativity even more. When I picked up the guitar at age thirteen, The Beatles were all the rage. So were The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Creedence Clearwater, The Doors, Carlos Santana, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, Donovan, The Grateful Dead, and countless other gods and goddesses of rock ’n’ roll, folk, rock, folk/rock, acid rock, surf rock, swamp rock, Southern rock, and Motown. The harmonies were hot, the rhythms were cool, melody mattered—it was easy to fall in love with music back then. But it wasn’t an easy time to be a beginner. If you wanted to learn guitar, you copied licks from records, which was frustrating and tedious. Teachers tended to guard their secrets instead of sharing them on YouTube—hardly a surprise, since YouTube didn’t even exist. Neither did laptops, CDs, DVDs, or magazines such as Guitar Player or Guitar Techniques. Books on theory and technique were, on the whole, poorly written and confusing. Note-for-note transcriptions? You’ve got to be kidding. You were lucky if you knew anyone who could explain how to tune a guitar, let alone why. So there you were, on your own, thrashing about in the dark. Now it’s a brave new world out there. We have instructional videos by the thousands online, and armies of skillful teachers who’ve graduated from vocational programs in pop and rock in British trade schools, or similar schools in the States, such as Musicians Institute, L.A., Berklee College of Music, Boston, or Roberts Music Institute, Seattle. Books, software, and other tools of education have also gotten better and better with every passing year. Students who want to can learn as much in their first year now as students learned in five years or more back in the ’60s. Which raises a question: With all of the great educational opportunities available today, what could possibly justify yet another book on music theory and composition? Plenty! If you’ve ever taken a course in poetry, creative writing, painting, drawing, or sculpture, you know that you begin writing, painting, drawing, or sculpting on the first day of class. But music is different. It takes a year, maybe two, maybe even four, to get past the fundamentals and begin composing, and by then you may have had the creativity wrung right out of you. What is needed now, just as much as it was way back then, is a course that cultivates creativity right away, before students drown under a mass of rules. The importance of theory is undeniable, but the long delay in creative work in music is a clue that something is missing. More than that, it undermines a student’s natural gifts and desire for self-expression. It hasn’t always been like this. In the Renaissance and Baroque, instrumentalists were expected to be co- creators of the music they performed. A lutenist, for example, was expected to improvise ornaments and divisions on repeated verses. Then came the printing press, and by the end of the eighteenth century, composers and audiences had begun to expect exact renditions of printed scores. In the nineteenth century, “composer” and “performer” split into separate career paths, and the artificial division became ingrained in school curricula. In popular music, however, creativity has always been a part of the job description. The accent is not so much on talent as it is on craftsmanship. When I was in school, the results were easy to see. While I struggled with four-part harmony, counterpoint, and analysis, my friends in rock, blues, and jazz made rapid progress in writing songs and improvising solos. Something was out of whack. I wasn’t sure what, but I trusted in the system. While there was no deliberate harm being done, I realize now that my intuitions were correct. There really is a better way. Compose Yourself was conceived as a cure for the common music education. It invites everyone, not just the “talented,” to enjoy the creative side of music, and right away, not later. Decades of meditation, research, and experimentation have led to a unique teaching program that blends the best of academic wisdom and pop music instruction, plus language instruction, and even a smattering of computer science. But ultimately the course owes its existence to the influence of two gifted teachers, Jef Raskin (1943–2005, creator of the Macintosh computer), and Howard Roberts (1929–2002, jazz guitarist, music educator, and founder of Musicians Institute, L.A.). In order to convey the impact these teachers had on me, it will be necessary
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