Music reading

Last January (2025) I wrote about my evergreen plan to record a week's worth of Christmas songs. For one week in December, the songs of the day would be me!

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/01/whatever-happened-to-those-christmas.html 

It keeps not happening, but I keep believing it will.  

At that point I had discovered some books that I thought could be helpful.

Music Composition for Dummies by Scott Jarrett

Singing for Dummies by Pamelia S. Phillips

Home Recording for Dummies by Jeff Strong

Goodreads tells me that I have read a total of six For Dummies books; I have generally found them helpful.

I read Music Theory for Dummies some time ago, but it made less of an impression on me because I was already pretty familiar with music theory. I read that when I started discovering new music and things and listening to the Rolling Stone "Greatest Guitar Songs" and all that. 

Otherwise, I read Bartending for Dummies before going on Jeopardy! in case there was a potent potables category (not one of my strong suits) and I recently read Color Theory for Dummies as part of studying design.

Generally I find that they give a good grounding, with lots of good references. In the case of Color Theory, a lot of the works referenced could be hard to locate, being older and rarer, so having that as a source was great.

The most recent three were all interesting. 

I don't remember much now from Singing, though I have been doing other things that have lead to me singing more. Have I picked up tips that made me sing better? Because there were a lot of exercises given and I tended to ignore them. 

Home Recording was a lot more information than I needed, but I don't mind that. Sometimes situations will arise when an old piece of information pops up, ready for use. I am good with that.

If this ends up being the year that I do the recordings, I will probably decide to just do it with my phone or the mics built into my PC. That is probably a high enough level of quality. The technology has gotten pretty good, and my project would be simple enough that it wouldn't need advanced mixing or anything.

I did recently have to record a video (just speaking) for school. I didn't love noticing all of the flaws with my complexion and lighting and color choices and why-am-I-so-ugly, but I survived.

The most significant book for me was easily Music Composition for Dummies.

First of all, there was really fascinating information that I wasn't even expecting, like the keys we use today versus the ancient Greek modes and how they used them. Very interesting.

There was also gaining additional understanding of an old problem, even if it was kind of disappointing.

When I was younger (probably peaking between the ages of 14 and 17) I used to write a lot of songs. A great source of frustration with that was that I could never make it sound right on instruments. I would try and work things out on the piano, hearing that they were wrong but not how to fix it.

This was around the same time I took Beginning Guitar. At least, that's what the class was called, but I was the only true beginner in it. 

I could never tune the guitar it on my own. It was the same issue; I could hear it wasn't right, but I couldn't make it right.  

I have had musical friends a lot. I remember one telling me that it was very common, at least for famous people, to not be able to transcribe music so work with people who did, or that there were books that would help with this, though they could not actually name any of those books.

I saved Composition for last because there was this hope. I didn't think one book would fix it, but it might tell me how to fix it.

The answer is that you just have to stick with it and find "close enough."

Well, maybe not if you do have perfect pitch, but that was not an option for me.

I suppose instead of letting Max and Jennifer tune my guitars, I just should have kept trying, and kept being off-tune. I could have kept plucking away and pounding away, and somehow made it work, possibly offending others' ears along the way.

It's okay that I didn't. One of the things I have had to accept is that as much as I love music, being good at it is not the same driving force for me that reading and writing is.

No on can do it all. I know so many people where it's like they have no choice but to play music. They are all far more skilled than me, but that is their drive. 

I am good at appreciating them.  

But -- even though music is not my primary domain or talent -- I still like singing. I sometimes still think about getting back to piano and bass.

And I still think about recording some songs.