Music Composition For Dummies, 3rd Edition Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Introduction

Welcome to Music Composition For Dummies, 3rd Edition!

Are you the type of person who walks around all day with a maddening melody in your head that makes you stop whatever you’re doing so that you can pay it full attention?

Do you often find yourself tapping out rhythmic passages from these melodies on your desk at work or scribbling down song lyrics on scraps of paper?

Is music sometimes more of a slave driver to you than a muse?

If you said yes to any of those questions, all we can say is this: We’re here to help.

About This Book

Music Composition For Dummies, 3rd Edition, contains everything you need to know to get startPicking out the perfect rhythm and tempo for your composition Matching keys and chord progressions to the moods that you want to convey Working within the confines of musical form without confining your creativity

Forcing yourself to sit down and come up with musical ideas, even when your mind is drawing a complete blank
Doing exercises related to each chapter’s material In this book, we discuss the basics of composition, from writing natural- sounding chord progressions and cadences, to composing atonal music, to making yourself a demo recording and getting it in the hands of the right people. If we really tried to do any one thing here, it’s demystify the process of composing music and writing songs.

There are few things more satisfying than plucking a melody from inside your head and nurturing it into a full-fledged song, or even an orchestral piece. This book can hopefully make that process a whole lot easier for you.

Music Composition for Dummies, 3rd Edition, is organized into seven parts; the first five focus on a particular aspect of music. Part the Part of Tens, contains information about some of the fun aspects of composition that may have little or nothing to do with actually playing music. And Part 7 contains some helpful appendixes. Throughout the book, you can find short interviews with musicians, profiles of important composers, and summaries of music genres worthy of further study.

Because each chapter is as self-contained as possible, you don’t have to read every single chapter to understand what the next one is talking about — but if you want to, of course, read the book cover to cover! To find the information that you need, use the Table of Contents as a reference point, or you can just flip through the Index at the back of the book.