Beginning Songwriting: Writing Your Own Lyrics, Melodies, and Chords

by Andrea Stolpe, Jan Stolpe

(Berklee Guide). Learn to write songs! This book presents the basic concepts of popular songwriting, such as song construction, creativity techniques, melodic and harmonic development, how to write memorable lyrics, and other core topics. Hands-on exercises make it practical, and the accompanying recording illustrates the concepts for those who don't yet read music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2015

Reviews

[R.G. Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good exercises

I read this book as prep/homework for a songwriting workshop ill be leading. It has some good exercises, especially group exercises ill be using.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I really enjoyed this book & very helpful info and tips! Loved the advice for aspiring songwriters / singers too, I will definitely try to apply some of it to mine too! Thanks so much for writing this book to the author & So glad I decided to read it! Hope it will help other songwriters / musicians as well, definitely recommend!

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for new song writers. I learned so much and will be keeping it close when I’m writing songs.

[Alicia]

(I skipped ch. 8&9, since 8 is activities for reference and 9 is next steps and career considerations for songwriting. I'll refer to those parts as needed.)

[Silas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated that this book covered songwriting in a somewhat global fashion, covering both lyrics, melody, and harmony. With that broad of a focus, though, each area was covered a little bit shallowly. The lyrics portion also generally repeated the same sensory writing thing that a lot of other books cover. It's not that it's a bad technique, but it's one that doesn't work well for me, and I had hoped for something different. Since it is aimed at beginners, I guess it is also aimed at people younger than me, because the majority of the songs used in examples were ones I didn't know. I also found the fairly sizeable section about conducting a songwriting group exercise of little use, personally. I did find some useful tips in the melody and harmony sections, at least, and the writing was clear throughout. This is useful as a general overview, and the areas of the book where you wish that the author had said more give you some clues about what other areas might be worth investigating.

[Vedis Esenwein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good book to teach beginning song writing. My only complaints would be that it didn't come with a cd of the music you are supposed to listen to for it, you have to go online for that, and the songs weren't particularly interesting or original. Still, a good place to start to learn songwriting.