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Composing Music: A New Approach Reprinted edition
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"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
- ISBN-109780226732169
- ISBN-13978-0226732169
- EditionReprinted edition
- PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
- Publication dateFebruary 15, 1988
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions11.01 x 8.93 x 0.77 inches
- Print length240 pages
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Product details
- ASIN : 0226732169
- Publisher : University of Chicago Press; Reprinted edition (February 15, 1988)
- Language : English
- Plastic Comb : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780226732169
- ISBN-13 : 978-0226732169
- Item Weight : 1.5 pounds
- Dimensions : 11.01 x 8.93 x 0.77 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,853 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #394 in Songwriting
- #484 in Music Composition (Books)
- #1,122 in Music Techniques (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Jeffrey Ainis was born on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on a Saturday night. And his parents were living on Saturn (street) at the time. He is a writer, editor, and graphic designer, and the author, with composers William Russo and David Stevenson, of "Composing Music: A New Approach" (University of Chicago Press). He is also a co-author of "Introduction to World Music" (Kendall Hunt Publishing), a part of a world-music course taught at several colleges through Coast Learning Systems. A freelance writer, book editor, and book designer, he has written and reported on spirituality, film scoring, world music, and other topics. As a musician and composer he has performed world music/kirtan on three continents. He is a former editor and writer for the Hollywood Reporter, and has edited numerous nonfiction books and memoirs. He lives in Southern California with his wife (and child from another species).
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The title is misleading. A New Approach would be to embrace the avant-garde rather than reject it. He disregards the expansions of microtonal composers (uncontroversially an uncharted field in Western composition) like Lou Harrison and Harry Partch. He supports using popular music as a source but only dated styles like folk, blues, ragtime and jazz. Apparently it is impossible to see potential in rock, hip-hop, and don't even get me started on electronic. The contemporary, resourceful, surviving musician today must embrace synthesis and software if she is to hear her compositions. We need a truly new approach. I was disappointed to see this is not one.
Once you know basic theory (or if you are looking for a refresher course), this is a solid book on both classical and universal music composition.
I recommend getting the Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory - unless you have all that down pat - as a supplement to the Russo's book.
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I bought this book a year or so ago, briefly fiddled with the opening exercises, and then let it get lost in the scruffy heap. However, a recent email from an Amazon customer regarding one of my reviews enquired as to whether I knew any books that might help in learning composition. That got me thinking and I suddenly remembered this book, which I dug from the heap for another go. And now, after about a fortnight of daily, sustained effort, I can report that it's really working. Things I have been trying to do for years are starting to happen with a growing sense of fluency.
I think the key to this book's success is that it trains your inner ear while it's teaching you to write, and it starts from such a simple place, the C major scale. It builds on this in such gradual increments that development takes place with you scarcely realising it is happening. There is an emphasis on simplicity and on constraints to be used, on the notes, chords, rhythms and time values, and there is a constant focus on expressing what you want to say whilst submitting to those constraints. It's now readily apparent that the main reason for my earlier failures was quite simply attempting to run before I could walk.
I'm now able to look at notes on paper and hear the music they represent in my head. It's still very simple music, but it's happening all the same, and improving day by day. When I put the book down and try to compose freely, the speed and confidence with which I write, and the duration of what I can hold in memory, has increased substantially from just a week or so ago. And when I write, I am hearing as I write it, and I can tap out the chords and melodies I am hearing on the piano with less and less fumbling. I can only wish I had encountered this book many years ago.
1) The explanations on each topic are very short. In most cases, important concepts are explained in one or two sentences, when it would be necessary one or two pages to do so (I had to consult other books to understand what the author was talking about). In this sense, the book was of little help to gain new knowledge of compositional techniques. Moreover, the style of his writing is very distant and unfriendly -it doesn't motivate or create empathy between the reader and the author.
2) The music examples in the book sound -to me- quite awfull in general. The main reason is because of the scales "imposed" by the author: he restricts the compositions to be made by the reader to -mainly- the Dorian, Phrygian and Pentatonic scales, which are not -in my opinion- the ideal scales to work with when starting to learn composition techniques. All this was quite demotivating for me and didn't encourage new compositional ideas.
3) The beggining of the book is very basic, but a few chapters later, the difficulty rises exponentially. So the book is not clearly for beginners, and an experienced composer will find the first few chapters useless.
After reaching the middle of the book, I realized why I didn't like the music examples and why the author used such unfrequent scales as the Phrygian scale: the author has a clear bias towards Minimalistic music (there are a few chapters dedicated just to this kind of music) and the whole book is written in a minimalistic style (is this what "A New Approach" means?). And this, finally, is the main reason why I didn't like the book: I was looking for a book that would teach me compositional techniques based on CLASSICAL HARMONY, and would explain each concept IN DETAIL, with PLEASING sounding musical examples based on CLASSICAL functional harmony. This is not so in this book.
In conclusion, if you like Minimalistic music and have a good backgroung in Harmony and Composition, you might find this book useful. If you are looking for in depth and clear explanations of compositional techniques, based on classicai harmony, I don't recommend this book at all.









