Recommended reading
Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers by Dennis DeSantis
This is a great resource full of useful tips and tricks to help you out when your stuck. To be honest its not even really a book, it follows the format of for problem x here’s solution y. Its nicely organised too and groups the various chapters into top level categories such as problems with beginning, progressing and finishing.
The topics are all very relatable and you can tell the author knows what problems songwriters face rather then click bait style headings and info that’s too vague or philosophical to be applied.
Highlights
The chapters under the problems of progressing have been really helpful and the mutation of clones technique especially works well.
How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
Trying to sum up how much of an impact this book has had on my music can’t be understated. Its written in a very honest and casual style with Jeff talking through his process and with bits of his life thrown in but in a way that’s entirely focused around the current topic.
I would also highly recommend purchasing the audio version alongside the written book as Jeff includes several audio examples of melodies and parts of songs at various points to illustrate the topic being discussed.
The book breaks the process down into several parts, which include the why and habits of a songwriter, the lyric writing process, music generation and putting it all together.
It doesn’t have all the answers and doesn’t pretend to either but what it gives you is the permission to create without judgement and help you find your own process along the way.
Highlights
The lyric writing chapters were an eye opener for me and are packed full of writing techniques. I also enjoyed the whole vibe of the book and the final chapters in part IV were also really insightful.
Dance Music Manual by Rick Snoman
Manual is the right word to use when describing this book. It covers so many topics and focuses on digital music creation and dance music (hence the name) as a whole. There is even several chapters at the end where the author breaks down the key characteristics of several genres.
This book covers a lot of topics and goes into a great amount of detail. You’ll find topics covering equipment, sound design and music theory.
Highlights
I’ll be honest I’m still working my way though this one, but the genre break downs have been priceless. A second mention has to go to the sound design chapters and they also come with audio samples so you can follow along.
Piano & Keyboard Chords by Jake Jackson
This can barely be classed as a book and with the internet at your finger tips I wouldn’t blame you if you judged me for including a book on chord charts.
The reason I have though is because for me having something I can quickly flick through when working on my piano or in my DAW has been more useful then I would like to admit.
Highlights
As its a book for musicians it provides the fingering for both left and right hand which is great if your looking to improve your piano skills.