One of my projects for this fall is to do more composing. On finding myself at the local library last night, I thought to check their catalog for books that might give me inspiration or fresh insight.
There was nothing in the catalog that would be even faintly useful to me.
They have both Music Composition for Dummies and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Composition, but since I’m neither a dummy nor an idiot, those titles don’t sound promising. They have an online copy of Composition for Computer Musicians, so this morning I glanced at that. It’s an introduction to using the technology to write pop music. Trouble is, I already know the technology, and I don’t need an introductory text of any kind. What I need is the real skinny.
If I were a painter, I’d have a lot more books to choose from — three on using water colors, three on using pastels, and so on. I’m not saying any of these is a great book; I wouldn’t be qualified to judge. But none of them is for dummies or complete idiots.
I’m not planning to complain about this to the librarian. For one thing, the reason I was at the library last night was to attend a meeting. The head librarian was also at the meeting, and she shared some discouraging news Read the rest of this entry »
