88 Songwriting Wrongs and How to Right Them: Concrete Ways to Improve Your Songwriting and Make Your Songs More Marketable [Paperback]

Pat Luboff (Author), Pete Luboff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1994

Eighty-eight ways to spot what's wrong with a song, point out pitfalls and supply solutions every measure of the way.

Product Details

• Paperback: 145 pages
• Publisher: Writer's Digest Books; 1st edition (December 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898795087
• ISBN-13: 978-0898795080
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,569,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for Lyrics But Lacking In Music Information, March 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: 88 Songwriting Wrongs and How to Right Them: Concrete Ways to Improve Your Songwriting and Make Your Songs More Marketable (Paperback)

This is an amazing book as far as teaching you one of the fundamental aspects of song writing goes, which is giving the song proper STRUCTURE. It teaches song structure from strictly a lyricist's point of view however, such as verse/chorus structures or verse/bridge etc. The book is worth its weight in gold for this info alone. But it lacks ANY information on how to write the music for the song. But nevertheless, it has some greeaattt ideas. Buy it for its really cool ideas on how to write song lyrics (but don't look for music composition in it.) One of the great ideas it has, though, is to write lyrics while listening to one of your favorite song's music. Conversely, you could write the music for your song's lyrics, by arranging your music to one of your favorite song's lyrics. Do you see what I'm saying. This really really works to give you an awesome song structure!

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Credibility Lacking, May 10, 2003

By 

"gmstudio01" (Shaker Heights, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 88 Songwriting Wrongs and How to Right Them: Concrete Ways to Improve Your Songwriting and Make Your Songs More Marketable (Paperback)

Some decent information in here, but most of it is common sense. The deceptive title doesn't help matters, either. "88 Songwriting Wrongs" implies 88 specific items to help your songwriting, but you don't get 88, unless you consider items such as "Don't Send Songs By Certified Mail" or "Don't Send Songs To A Company Without A Specific Person's Name" as invaluable songwriting tips. (Yes, those are 2 of your 88 songwriting wrongs.)

When the authors do address specific songwriting mistakes, they do provide some good information, but there is a definite "The more you know about music theory, the worse you're going to do as a songwriter" attitude...there's a definite bias against formal music training, as if the authors feel the need to defend their own lack of training, and attack it as a negative quality in the songwriting world. (Tip #28 is where they really lose all credibility.) It would be one thing if this was Lennon/McCartney writing this book, or Taupin/Elton John...but the authors themselves have only a couple of minor songwriting credits themselves (one for Patty LaBelle, of which they remind you about on every other page, seemingly.)

The book is not a total waste, but it's certainly not the be-all and end-all in songwriting aides. You'll learn more about songwriting by studying the actual masters than by reading this book.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After reading this book ,everything looks so obvious, June 1, 2000

By 

Johan Vorster (Pretoria, South Africa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 88 Songwriting Wrongs and How to Right Them: Concrete Ways to Improve Your Songwriting and Make Your Songs More Marketable (Paperback)

There is a saying, the obvious is only obvious once it becomes known. This is the case here. While reading the book I said to myself this is so obvious mistakes that one often make - however it was not so obvious until I saw the common wrongs and how to right them. It is very practical and to the point, yet it helps tremendously. This is the kind of book one has to read thoroughly the first time around, and then scan through every so often just to refresh the memory. It can serve as a "checklist" from time to time to make sure you are on the right track with a song. I enjoyed the book and think it makes a contribution to songwriting skills.