The Art and Business of Songwriting
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In this valuable resource guide for both beginners and professionals, veteran songwriter, producer, arranger, vocalist, music director, and educator Larry D. Batiste shares practical advice and tips from his decades of experience in ways that are bound to help all readers improve their songwriting skills. Through this book, readers will learn the craft of professional songwriting, including the ins-and-outs of song structure, lyric and melody writing, and the essential elements of a hit song. From the start, Batiste incorporates exercises to help songwriters strike upon ideas for song titles, concepts, and stories that will appeal to their audience. He also discusses critical business aspects of songwriting, such as copyrighting, publishing, royalties, networking, and digital media. In addition to the fundamentals, the reader will learn how to build their songwriting career, generate income, build an online community and fanbase, release music independently, expertly place their songs, and navigate the world of digital music. Throughout the book are interviews with iconic songwriters and producers such as Peter Asher, Lamont Dozier, and Narada Michael Walden, as well as independent recording artists, including Fantastic Negrito, a winner of multiple Grammy Awards, and Meklit Hadero.Understanding the artistic and business aspects of songwriting is essential for a successful career in the music industry. The Art and Business of Songwriting can be applied to every genre of popular music and is written to encourage, motivate, and unlock the idiosyncrasies of the business for music professionals as much as for beginners.
2015 Songwriter's Market
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The most trusted guide to songwriting success! There is a home out there for every song you've written, but in order to place those songs and advance your music career you must arm yourself with steadfast determination, unending passion, and the most accurate music business knowledge available. For more than 38 years, Songwriter's Market has provided songwriters and performing artists with the most complete and up-to-date information needed to place songs with music publishers, find record companies and producers, obtain representation with managers, and more. This comprehensive guide gives you the tools and first-hand knowledge you need to launch your songwriting career right now! In the 2015 edition, you'll also gain access to: A new foreword by hit songwriter and best-selling author Jason Blume New interviews with music publishers, Grammy Award-winning producers, and major music industry leaders Articles about how to create and mix a professional demo at home, how to get the most out of music conferences, and much more Hundreds of songwriting placement opportunities Listings for songwriting organizations, conferences, workshops, retreats, colonies, contests, venues, and grant sources (helpful for indie artists looking to record and tour on their own) *Includes access to the webinar "Song Seeds: How to Jump-start Your Songwriting Process" from author and Berklee College of Music professor Mark Simos.
The Art of Songwriting
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How do you turn songwriting talent into a professional career? This essential guide tackles that question, alongside many others, taking songwriters through all the developmental phases and commercial experiences along the way in order to inspire and encourage the reader to find their own voice and write successfully within their chosen genre.Collating the best-available expertise with fresh ideas about the industry, Andrew West equips the reader with what every productive songwriter needs to know: how to write communicative songs that express meaning and convey individuality; how to develop songs into records; how the writer can function as a marketer and seller of original work; how domestic and international markets operate; and how to act and interact meaningfully within the culture of those market.Armed with this knowledge, the songwriter is able to engage creatively and financially to make the most of their potential.
Righting Wrongs in Writing Songs
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This book gives both aspiring and seasoned songwriters a powerful new approach to writing songs, focusing on common obstacles in the songwriting process and techniques to help songwriters overcome them. Each chapter goes to the root of a specific songwriting problem and provides exercises to help readers over the hurdles and put their new skills to work. Topics include writing approach, purpose, structure, melodic significance and construction, basic music theory, word meaning, word design and arrangement, chords, and how they are all pieced together. Along the way, a song is created to act as a case study and a demonstration of what each exercise can result in. The lessons are fun, informal, and include fresh suggestions and exercises born out of the author's experience in teaching songwriting at the college level. The book's companion website provides audio clips to accompany the relevant exercises and examples presented in the book.
New Oxford Rhyming Dictionary
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From writing poems to writing birthday cards, and from the garrett to the classroom, the New Oxford Rhyming Dictionary has what every writer (or budding writer) needs. It contains rhymes for over 45,000 words, including proper names, place names, and foreign terms used in English. The organization and layout are remarkably clear, making it easy to find the rhymes you're looking for. Words are grouped clearly by sound and there is also a complete A-Z index to help you quickly navigate to the relevant section. In-text notes offer tips on using rhymes effectively, makesuggestions for expanding the rhyming lists included in the book, and give examples of how poets past and present have used rhyme. The fascinating introduction by Professor John Lennard offers a brief outline of rhyming in its literary and historical contexts, and gives further advice on creative writing. This new edition includes over 200 words added to the Oxford Dictionary of English since the publication of the lastedition, including iPod, Americano, and vuvuzela. The New Oxford Rhyming Dictionary is a must-have tool for poets, lyricists, and writers of all kinds, as well as a delight for everyone who likes to play with words.
The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music
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In both video games and animated films, worlds are constructed through a combination of animation, which defines what players see on the screen, and music and sound, which provide essential cues to action, emotion, and narrative. This book offers a rich exploration of the intersections between animation, video games, and music and sound, bringing together a range of multidisciplinary lenses. In 14 chapters, the contributors consider similarities and differences in how music and sound structure video games and animation, as well as the animation within video games, and explore core topics of nostalgia, adaptation, gender, and sexuality. Offering fresh insights into the aesthetic interplay of animation, video games, and sound, this volume provides a gateway into new areas of study that will be of interest to scholars and students across musicology, animation studies, game studies, and media studies more broadly.
The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound
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The music and sounds of video games have become an inescapable part of our world. Not only do these sonic elements profoundly shape the experiences of billions of players every day, but also the soundscapes of games have stretched out from our living rooms to encompass spaces as diverse as pinball arcades, concert halls, museums, and classrooms across the globe. Research on game music and sound is equally diverse-a vibrant, innovative, and multifaceted field that incorporates approaches from media studies, musicology, sound studies, music theory, psychology, and more. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars and practitioners from around the globe, The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound features nearly 50 chapters on topics ranging from the earliest pinball machines to the latest in virtual reality technology. The resulting volume provides both a comprehensive introduction to the study of game audio and an indispensable resource for experts.
The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music
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Video game music has been permeating popular culture for over forty years. Now, reaching billions of listeners, game music encompasses a diverse spectrum of musical materials and practices. This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of video game music by a diverse group of scholars and industry professionals. The chapters and summaries consolidate existing knowledge and present tools for readers to engage with the music in new ways. Many popular games are analysed, including Super Mario Galaxy, Bastion, The Last of Us, Kentucky Route Zero and the Katamari, Gran Turismo and Tales series. Topics include chiptunes, compositional processes, localization, history and game music concerts. The book also engages with other disciplines such as psychology, music analysis, business strategy and critical theory, and will prove an equally valuable resource for readers active in the industry, composers or designers, and music students and scholars.
Nostalgia and Videogame Music
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The first multi-disciplinary study of the connection between memory and music in video games. This book allows readers to understand the relationships and memories they often form around games, and music is central to this process. The quest into the past begins with this book, a map that leads to the intersection between nostalgia and videogame music. Informed by research on musicology, memory, and practices of gaming culture, this edited volume discusses different forms of nostalgia, considers how videogames display their relation to those forms, and explores the ways theoretically self-conscious positions can be found in games. An important scholarly addition to the burgeoning field of ludomusicology, this book will appeal to researchers, educators, practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students, and videogame fans and players alike.
Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games
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Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games brings together a range of perspectives that explore how music and sound in video games interact with virtual and real environments, often in innovative and unexpected ways.
Soundtrack Success: A Digital Storyteller's Guide to Audio Post-Production
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Whether you make narratives, documentaries, news shows, training videos, podcasts, games, or some other media, sound has a great impact on what people see, believe, and remember. When you dedicate attention to every element that makes up the whole soundtrack -- dialogue, sound effects, and music -- your story will hold more meaning for the audience, and you'll deliver your message in a more memorable way. Thankfully, putting together a better soundtrack is the easiest, fastest, and most effective way to make your production better. SOUNDTRACK SUCCESS will show you how to do it. It's a non-software-specific guide to the entire realm of audio post-production, with particular attention paid to fixing problems, sweetening sound, and pulling together a complete soundtrack. You'll learn how to use dialogue, voiceover, walla, backgrounds, sound effects, Foley, and music, and you'll discover how to record, edit, mix, master, and deliver high-quality and high-impact soundtracks. The companion DVD includes video tutorials and examples that further demonstrate the many concepts and techniques described in the book. This complete primer is your key to making soundtracks that soar.
The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio
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As audiences are increasingly no longer solely listeners but also active producer-consumers, and as video games and other interactive systems increasingly permeate our daily lives, understanding interactivity and its impact on the audience has never been more important. A collection of newlycommissioned chapters on interactivity in music and sound edited by preeminent scholars in the field, this book marks the beginning of a journey into understanding the ways in which we interact with sound, and offers a new set of analytical tools for the growing field of interactive audio. What does it mean to interact with sound? How does interactivity alter our experience as creators and listeners? What makes interactive audio different from non-interactive audio? Where does interacting with audio fit into our understanding of sound and music? What does the future hold forinteractive media when it comes to our musical and sonic experiences? And how do we begin to approach interactive audio from a theoretical perspective? The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio answers these questions by exploring the full range of interactive audio in video games, performance,education, environmental design, toys, and artistic practice. Examining these questions from a range of approaches -- technological, emotional, psychological, and physical -- the book provides a thorough overview of the fascinating experience of interactive sound.
Composing Music for Video Games
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Composing Music for Games is a guidebook for launching and maintaining a successful career as a video game composer. It offers a pragmatic approach to learning, intensified through challenging project assignments and simulations. Author Chance Thomas begins with the foundation of scoring principles applicable to all media, and then progresses serially through core methodologies specific to video game music. This book offers a powerful blend of aesthetic, technique, technology and business, which are all necessary components for a successful career as a video game composer.
Writer. Producer. Engineer: a handbook for creating contemporary commercial music
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Writing Music for Commercials
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In Writing Music for Commercials: Television, Radio, and New Media, professor, composer, arranger, and producer Michael Zager describes the process of composing and arranging music specifically for commercials across the growing variety of media formats. Writing music for commercials requires composers not only learn the craft of writing short-form compositions that can stand on their own, but also understand the advertising business. In this third edition of his original Writing Music for Television and Radio Commericals, Zager walks starting composers through the business and art of writing music that aims for a product's target audience and, when done well, hits its mark. Chapter by chapter, Zager covers a broad array of topics: how to approach and analyze commercials from a specifically musical perspective, the range of compositional techniques for underscoring and composing jingles, the standard expectations and techniques for arranging and orchestration, and finally the composing of music for radio commercials, corporate videos, infomercials, theatrical trailers, video games, Internet commercials, websites, and web series (webisodes). This third edition has been updated to include more in-depth analysis of the changing landscape of music writing for modern media, with critical information on composing not only for the Web but for mobile applications, from video-driven advertising in online newspapers to electronic greeting cards. Zager also includes new interviews with industry professionals, updated business information, the latest sound design concepts, and much more. Writing Music for Commercials: Television, Radio, and New Media features: -Easy-to-read chapters for beginning and intermediate music composition students -Over a hundred graphics and musical examples -Interviews with industry professionals -An assortment of assignments to train and test readers, preparing them for the world of writing music for various media -Online audio samples that illustrate the book's principles Writing Music for Commercials is designed not only for composers but for students and professionals at every level.
Music Editing for Film and Television
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Making music for the movies is a complicated, involved, and challenging process. Music Editing for Film and Television covers the practical skills needed to successfully hone your craft. Through an overview of the music editing process, this book will equip you with detailed techniques to solve musical problems encountered during editing. An abundance of interviews with well-known professionals provide a wide range of perspectives on music editing for film, while special features address an array of projects, from a low-budget documentary, to a Hollywood blockbuster, to indie projects.
Introduction to Digital Music with Python Programming
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Introduction to Digital Music with Python Programming provides a foundation in music and code for the beginner. It shows how coding empowers new forms of creative expression while simplifying and automating many of the tedious aspects of production and composition. With the help of online, interactive examples, this book covers the fundamentals of rhythm, chord structure, and melodic composition alongside the basics of digital production. Each new concept is anchored in a real-world musical example that will have you making beats in a matter of minutes. Music is also a great way to learn core programming concepts such as loops, variables, lists, and functions, Introduction to Digital Music with Python Programming is designed for beginners of all backgrounds, including high school students, undergraduates, and aspiring professionals, and requires no previous experience with music or code.
Fundamentals of Music Processing
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The textbook provides both profound technological knowledge and a comprehensive treatment of essential topics in music processing and music information retrieval (MIR). Including numerous examples, figures, and exercises, this book is suited for students, lecturers, and researchers working in audio engineering, signal processing, computer science, digital humanities, and musicology. The book consists of eight chapters. The first two cover foundations of music representations and the Fourier transform--concepts used throughout the book. Each of the subsequent chapters starts with a general description of a concrete music processing task and then discusses--in a mathematically rigorous way--essential techniques and algorithms applicable to a wide range of analysis, classification, and retrieval problems. By mixing theory and practice, the book's goal is to offer detailed technological insights and a deep understanding of music processing applications. As a substantial extension, the textbook's second edition introduces the FMP (fundamentals of music processing) notebooks, which provide additional audio-visual material and Python code examples that implement all computational approaches step by step. Using Jupyter notebooks and open-source web applications, the FMP notebooks yield an interactive framework that allows students to experiment with their music examples, explore the effect of parameter settings, and understand the computed results by suitable visualizations and sonifications. The FMP notebooks are available from the author's institutional web page at the International Audio Laboratories Erlangen.
Pro Tools 11
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Hone your Pro Tools music production skills and create better tracks with Pro Tools 11: Music Production, Recording, Editing, and Mixing. With Pro Tools 11, you'll get more than descriptions of Pro Tools features and menus--this book grounds its Pro Tools instruction thoroughly in real-world music production. Learn to leverage this powerful DAW and bend it to your will, whether you're recording and mixing a band or producing a dance track. Get tips that will save you time, even if you're an old hand at Pro Tools. Extensive full-color screenshots visually guide you through the book, and an informal writing style keeps you engaged. Includes coverage of additional features incorporated into version 10.3.6, which can be co-installed alongside Pro Tools 11 to allow use of TDM and RTAS plug-in formats. Author Mike Collins, an independent music producer and music technology consultant who has worked with Pro Tools since 1991, gives you a frank view of the software without the hype. This book is carefully designed for users with basic music production experience or knowledge, but can serve as a quick learning guide for ambitious beginners or as a reference for the advanced or professional user. Pro Tools 11 includes coverage of the application's new features, including: Avid Audio Engine Dynamic Host-based Plug-in Processing Low-latency Input Buffer Offline Bounce Unified Workspace Browser Advanced Metering for Pro Tools HD 11 Co-Install with Pro Tools 10.3.6 Level: Intermediate
Learning Pro Tools 11
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In this video based Pro Tools 11 training course, expert trainer Joe Godfrey teaches you the fundamentals of using this digital audio workstation software. Pro Tools 11 brings you the power of 64bit recording and mixing to your computer - with retooled audio and video engines in this latest version from Avid. This course is designed for the absolute beginner, and no prior experience with Pro Tools is required. Joe starts by introducing you to the basic skills you will need, such as working with dialog, music and sound effects. You will learn to edit music tracks, work with elastic audio and how to utilize MIDI in Pro Tools. This tutorial also covers more advanced features such as beat making, composing using virtual instruments, scoring to picture and tracking live instruments. You finish off this video based training course with an in-depth look at Mixing and Automation. Once you have completed this video tutorial for Avid Pro Tools 11, you will have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of recording and mixing using this popular software. Working files are included, allowing you to follow along with the author throughout the lessons.
Scoring with Logic Pro
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Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Development
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This book is a standard tutorial targeted at game developers which aims to help them incorporate audio programming techniques to enhance their gameplay experience.This book is perfect for C++ game developers who have no experience with audio programming and who would like a quick introduction to the most important topics required to integrate audio into a game.