Creative Music Composing
Self-Teaching Manual
Paul Rodricks, Author
Self-Teaching Manual
Releasing soon......
Self-Teaching Manual
By Paul Rodricks
Have you ever felt the urge to write your own songs?
To compose your own lyrics and melody?
Are you a lyricist wishing to set music to your lyrics?
Or a music composer desirous of writing the lyrics to
your music? Or a music lover and hobbyist wondering
how songs are crafted?
If so, Creative Music Composing
is just the right practical
self-teaching manual for you. Because Songwriting has
never been made so easy and simple.
The Manual covers all the music aspects of Writing Melodies– melody notes, tonality of scales and harmony in chord progressions and rhythm. You begin from learning to create simple melodies to composing complete performing versions of songs by using the Digital Numbering System, the Solfeggio (do-re-mi) and ABCDEFG notation methods.
Become a successful Songwriter. Compose your
own Lyrics and Music to styles such as Pop, Rock,
Blues, Country, R&B, Jazz, Gospel and others.
Read here the Preview of the Section 1 from Creative Music Composing by Paul Rodricks:
Section
1
“I love the development of
music, that’s what I really dig about the whole thing. How we’ve tried to
develop, you know? It grows. That’s why every day people come forward with new
songs. Music grows forever.” – Bob Marley
Lyrics
and Melody
A Study of Contrast
Lyrics and musical
notes work together to produce a variety of effects, the important one being
that of producing a contrast.
You may have already learned in the
relevant Sections of the companion Manual, “Creative SongLyris”, that every line of lyrics in your verse or
chorus can be made to stand out and we do this in many ways:
(a) By proper use of the stressed and unstressed
word-syllables;
(b) Varying the length of the lines in your verse
and chorus/bridge;
(c) Doing a different rhyme scheme besides the
perfect rhymes, such as the near-soft-false-rhymes and even creating your own,
including making use of the intensity of inside and outside rhymes;
(d) Creating an air of expectation and suspense
in the flow of your rhyme pattern, i.e.
by rhyming and
un-rhyming end words;
(e) Giving a twist to the main theme in the bridge
section;
(f) Correct use of the personal nouns, genders, conjunctions and tenses;
(g) Adopting a chronology of events and
time-frame for constructing your verses;
(h) Presenting varying points of view in each of
your verses and the bridge;
(i) Using graphic, emotive and imaginary lyrics,
not the least metaphors and similes;
(j)
Repeating the hook or your title line
maybe once in every verse and twice in your Chorus;
(k) Repeating whole lines of phrases and so
forth.
That was mostly about writing some real
good lyrics.
Now to turn those lyrics into a successful
song, we need to put your lyrics to music, depending on your ability and
preferences.
If you have already done the music or have
some idea of it, you will still need to grasp the basics of writing lyrics.
You will find for yourself how easily
everything falls in place after you have acquired the necessary basic knowledge
and simultaneously with some practice.
begins with the
basic rhythmic value of the musical note. We then learning the structure of
melodic patterns, the changes and contrast that can be effected through
different values of the musical notes.
By altering the rhythm, we learn to write
short and long interludes, and how the correct use of scale-tones and music
chords can give us a wide choice of
melody variations.
Just as you learned to write lyrics in the companion Manual, “Creative SongLyrics”, you will now begin your journey into
composing melodies for your lyrics with ease and simplicity.
However, at this stage, it is essential that
you familiarize yourself with the basic elements of music, i.e. acquire some
knowledge of the shape and time value (rhythm) of the melody note, the Bar which is a division unit in a Measure; the latter containing the
melody-notes pattern of any song corresponding to your lyrics as they are sung
or played - known as sighting reading from sheet-music.
If you play the guitar or keyboard, you
would know or at least be familiar about the common major and minor chords
including the names of the music notes, namely
C-D-E-F-G-A-B.
These letters are the names for the notes
or tones of the music scale.
Both chords and scales play a very
important role in composing melodies.
You just cannot have any semblance of a pleasant or even unpleasant
sound without striking the right or wrong note or chord.
The study of music theory can turn
lyricists into accomplished songwriters.
So do not just stop at writing lyrics, as
the advantages to you of learning to compose music, as an experienced or
aspiring lyricist, are too many. And, it
is never too early or too late to learn.
Studying music theory is a mental learning
process that is richly rewarding.
Some of you who have played or still play
the guitar or keyboard or any musical instrument would be knowledgeable in
terms of the music theory or basic sight-reading at least.
Hence, setting music to your lyrics is not
that great a deal.
What matters is acquiring the right
know-how and the
experience that comes from learning and then practicing.
This is same as you would depend on your
regular individual practices and group rehearsals to prepare for any public
performance.
Playing by ear can be further aided and enhanced by learning to sight-read the music score.
Here we take a brief look (some parts are
more in details because of their related importance) into the essentials of
music theory.
It is possible that you may choose to skip
some of the following Sections; may be for later reference.
However, it would be worth your while going
through the book thoroughly at least once.
You would first become aware of the considerable
scope of knowledge available in terms of a clearer understanding of the various
aspects of the musical note, musical rhythm and the chord harmony.
Some of these elements, you may learn for
the first time, but the knowledge will certainly help you to advance in writing independently
the suitable music to your lyrics.
Those of you who are familiar with the
music theory would have the opportunity of writing better melodies.
***
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pre-release price,
I invite your comments and queries,
Paul Rodricks, Author
Contact: paulrodericks@gmail.com