Recommend Some Books!

Recommend some good books to read about music, that are not standard educational theory-related school books.

I had in mind some books you think we will benefit from, and are not directly related to music theory.

Some areas that I have interest in are analysis on how do people react to music, creative processes of different musicians etc, something like that...

Oh yeah, I think that English is preferred language for most here.

Feel free to request some too.

This is Your Brain on Music is a fascinating one about music and the mind

Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise is great if you want a fun and very readable introduction to 20th century music history

Beethoven's Hair is a good read

Another good book about the composition process is The Muse that Sings

The Muse that Sings: Composers Speak ... - Google Book Search

The Cambridge history of twentieth-century music / edited by Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople.

The future of modern music : a philosophical exploration of modernist music in the 20th century and beyond / James L. McHard.

by McHard, James L.

The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers, Mozart.

by Peggy Woodford

Glass, A Portrait

By Robert Maycock

John Cage

by David Nicholls

The Great Composers, An Illustrated encyclopedia of the lives and works of the world's best-loved composers

by Wendy Thompson

And I know you said no theory books but you still have to check out

Structural Functions of Harmony

by Arnold Schoenberg

Amazon.com: Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within: Kenny Werner: Books

Noise: A political economy of music -- Jacques Attali

Here I have a couple:

Hearing and Writing Music: Professional Training for Today's Musician

The Truth About the Music Business (useful for a working musician)

Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry (also a good one)

robin, that's a good one.

Except every other sentence ends with an exclamation point!

EVERY COMPOSER should read the chapter about "fear-based composing." It really hits home.

The Muse that Sings: Composers Speak ... - Google Book Search

After reading the Steve Reich and John Corigliano excerpt from that book, I MUST HAVE IT!

Why must it be $110?:sadtears:

Don't read books.

Don't read books.

Explain, please.

Explain, please.

Books are for losers.

:O

wait.. I dont' mean that

Explain, please.

Play and listen to your instrument. It's way better. Books are too simple.

Play and listen to your instrument. It's way better. Books are too simple.

I'm sorry Schumann, but books are not "too simple."

Playing an instrument is an applied art within the discipline of music.. and so is composition to some extent. However, music is also largely theoretical. Understanding the works of past composers and the techniques of any composer from Bach to Berio requires some sort of example and explanation of the concepts. And this is all to just do with composition and theory!

Other aspects of music are entirely academic and SHOULD be in books or some sort of publication. I can't imagine musicology without books. :P

Before you pass judgment on anything involving something that you haven't done, you should try it first. It is a lot easier to make passing statements with certainty like you have when you are actually experienced and learned in the field of music. :thumbsup:

So it is of your inclination to steal a theory? Ok.

So it is your inclination to make up a theory completely on the spot? Ok.

Great composers steal.

Stravinsky likes to make good points, but they don't account for his lack of training unfortunately. So steal away if you're a thief. That is what you do. I expect to get robbed sooner or later.

Stravinsky likes to make good points, but they don't account for his lack of training unfortunately. So steal away if you're a thief. That is what you do. I expect to get robbed sooner or later.

I can't believe that someone actually believes this.

Learning music theory does not teach one how to compose... nor does it show how to compose like a specific composer. I reassert my basic point-- playing an instrument and listening to what you play will not teach composition and it will not teach musical theory. Listening to yourself play will teach you... well how to listen to yourself while you play.

The point of "stealing" a theory or something like that is a little asinine and beside the point that either you or I have made before. I don't know how old you are, but I would suggest to read some books, experience life and music, and use those who have succeeded before you as a guide. Most successful people on this forum would would agree that the learning of music theory, an abstract knowledge, directly relates to developing a compositional technique.

New ideas have completely sprung forth from old ones. People have "ripped off" and "stolen as well," but that doesn't come from reading or not reading a book. Again, these are independent ideas. It would help to not make assumptions or insinuate too much from what I've said. I only say what I mean. Just relax and take it all in.

So it is of your inclination to steal a theory? Ok.

no one said steal. You should learn from these books.

One can practice all day and listen to as much music as they possibly can, but if they don't know how to practice or who to listen to music or what to listen for, it is pointless. That is where these books come in.

All musicians, composer, performers, and music educators need to read books on their craft. If they don't, they are doomed to go no were outside of the circle they created.

You can play all the Schumann, Chopin, Schubert and Mahler all you want and listen to them to. But if you don't read anything about Romanticism or the Romantic period from a historical and structural point of view how can you possibly properly apply that to your own music, let alone truly understand what you are listening to or playing.

In a previous thread you talked about how directors of films and other big projects claim that your music is to old fashioned. Maybe you need to read Jack Smalley's book Composing Music for Film

or

George Burt's The Art of Film Music

It might take you a while to realize that stealing doesn't actually accomplish anything. You claim successful people to use music theory, yet they don't try not to. They are not as original or creative as successful people because of this, because those writing their own music agree with me that music is by far not a subject, but vast elements to be appreciated that can't be contained. I don't recommend books because they try to teach music. You don't "learn" music from a book. You listen and you play music. Points can be made in writing that perhaps you have never experienced before, though it doesn't give you the right as a human to obsess about another's accomplishments. You don't ever create something new from reading. You rearrange the notes you've heard so it sounds different but keeps that tradition that everyone loves hearing. It's not new, but it's different, and that is what losers prize. They can't perfect themselves so they continue to learn and learn until their identity appears to change. They aren't fooling anyone by representing the subject of music as it changes too.

I guarantee you that I've had more music playing experience, and book reading, and every thing else than you with the age that you're at right now. Believe me, some people on this forum are dinosaurs! You just have to realize that there is an academic part to music that is RIGID and is taught. What you describe as music is something that can't be taught, and I doubt even if someone playing an instrument all of the time can learn it. It goes a little deeper than that.

I can't believe that someone actually believes this.

About Stravinsky? Do you actually believe that he covered a majority of techniques aside from writing a majority of brilliant pieces?

Though a bit on the expensive side, I would recommend Gyorgy Sandor's On Piano Playing: Motion, Sound and Expression for a very detailed explanation on piano technique that can help you become a much more efficient pianist. It was recommended to me by my teacher, who had the opportunity to play in a masterclass for Mr. Sandor himself. It is a wonderful book.

Alfred Brendel is a wonderful interpreter of Beethoven and Schubert, and has a truly 'intellectual' look at the music. For his writings, I really enjoy Alfred Brendel on Music: Collected Essays.

Both of these books are more performance-based, pianistic books but at least the Brendel can be enjoyed by any musician.

It might take you a while to realize that stealing doesn't actually accomplish anything. You claim successful people to use music theory, yet they don't try not to. They are not as original or creative as successful people because of this, because those writing their own music agree with me that music is by far not a subject, but vast elements to be appreciated that can't be contained. I don't recommend books because they try to teach music. You don't "learn" music from a book. You listen and you play music. Points can be made in writing that perhaps you have never experienced before, though it doesn't give you the right as a human to obsess about another's accomplishments. You don't ever create something new from reading. You rearrange the notes you've heard so it sounds different but keeps that tradition that everyone loves hearing. It's not new, but it's different, and that is what losers prize. They can't perfect themselves so they continue to learn and learn until their identity appears to change. They aren't fooling anyone by representing the subject of music.

I know people like you, they were the ones that said that it is pointless to go to college and major in composition. You pride you self on being self taught and claim that books and teacher teach you only how to mimic. But that is not the case.

What you just described is actually the complete opposite of what really happens.

You can't possibly perfect something you know nothing about nor can you evolve from no where. Your musical ignorance keeps people like you in a box of self-fulfillment. You get better don't get me wrong, but you go no where.

As for me, just the three years of formal training in college has improved my body of work by leaps and bounds by applying what I know and growing from there.

I guarantee you that I've had more music playing experience, and book reading, and every thing else than you with the age that you're at right now. Believe me, some people on this forum are dinosaurs! You just have to realize that there is an academic part to music that is RIGID and is taught. What you describe as music is something that can't be taught, and I doubt even if someone playing an instrument all of the time can learn it. It goes a little deeper than that.

That's very nice of you to award me with notion of the forum members' knowledge of the subject, this I already know. I know how trained people are, okay. I don't need another person telling me this. Bullshit aside, you can learn ideas from just about anywhere, even books. When it comes to music, learning rules from books is a replacement for making them yourself, just as stealing music is a replacement for writing your own. You can't help stealing bits here and there, and the more you continue the urge to learn music, the more you overthrow your talent. The only way you would get me to read a music theory book is if I had no talent of my own. I've already read many music theory books, and I've learned not to be a puppet of art.