Composing Music: A New Approach Reprinted edition

This book dives right into the act of composing, which is ideal for someone with neurotic tendencies like myself. I was surprised to find the list of rules (i.e. constraints) at the beginning, but their implementation mercifully pares down the choices available at any given moment. (Further restrictions in the exercises themselves serve the same purpose.) I'm excited to do the work and glad to have a launching point into the world of composition.

I had studied classical composition in college, and I was looking for a refresher. This book has fit that purpose very well. It is practical right from the start and takes a gradual but steady path from the basics up through more advanced topics. Others have remarked that it takes a minimalist approach, but that is how I recall learning this material initially. Like learning a language, you typically study the basic elements of vocabulary and sentence structure in isolation. The artist, equipped with the new knowledge, then has more freedom to apply the various aspects however they see fit.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.

Yes, this was assigned for a course of Music Composition at the local junior college, but I find there's a reason the professor selected it! The author gets your right into working with scales, notes, and scores.

Book is great but I never got in my order amazon was nice to refund and I got in another place!! is amazing book my husband loved it

If you have music theory down, Russo's book will take you right into writing. The exercises are great - they start you out at a very elementary level and you work your way up. This is a great method for someone just staring out - and you stay encouraged because you are actually writing melodies / songs from the start. The book takes you right through to writing more complex pieces.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.

This book seems well laid out, but there are a lot of unstated things about what might make a "good" composition that mean one needs to have a good composition teacher to allow you to be most productive with the book. I have found the clarity and simplicity to be very helpful so far, and when I compare and contrast it with Kostka and Payne, it is less theoretical but covers the same subjects in different language; and when compared with "Everything you need to know about..." it is less breezy and more rigorous in development. So it's a help - with a good teacher to help use it. By the way, the book was labeled as Used but in good condition, and it was absolutely pristine.

good basics on dveloping music composition skills. i highly recommend it. good for singer song writers as as instrmentalists. exrcise choices and constraints are great

This books learns lots of composition tools by composing. Great easy to understand explanations together with exercises. A 'do and explore' book.

It's just what I was looking for! The exercises dive you straight into composing music right away without discussing music theory too deeply. It uses a straightforward approach by applying theory rather than studying the definitions alone. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn how to compose music.

Excellent!

Good but doesnt cover more on songwriting/lyrics,and doesnt go into orchestration,otherwise a good if somewhat oversimplified approach to the subject

I bought this book because of the good reviews I read. Unfortunately, I must say I am quite dissapointed with it for several important reasons: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.