I am currently reading a combination of four music related books of which I am different states of progress, in some cases only having read the introduction and contents. This is aside from the biography (paid link) ‘Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician’ by Christoph Wolff, that I have currently stalled on.
The other books are all related to some form of learning and mostly have some connection to the course that I am following trying to increase my knowledge to make the course make more sense.
The first book is (paid link) ’Musical Composition’, by Alan Belkin. It is an interesting book and the one that I have made the most progress in so far. It is talking about motifs, phrases, periods, and so on and approaching these in an example driven way. The latter part of the book looks like it will be concentrating on musical form.
The second book is (paid link) ‘Exercises in Melody Writing: A Systematic Course of Melodic Composition (1900)’ by Percy Goetschius which I have not really started yet. It begins by talking about essential tones and musical phrases and I think will support the Alan Bekin book nicely regarding the melodic side of things.
The third book is (paid link) ‘Harmony in Popular Music: Tonal, Modal, and Negative Harmony in Modern Music’, by Alfonso Girardo which I picked off my shelves as it looks like it may be simpler than a lot of the more academic books that I have. It also looks to include lots of varied material but starts with the basics.
The final book that I am looking at currently is (paid link) ‘Creative Orchestration: A Project Method for Classes in Orchestration and Instrumentation’, by George McKay. This book I have started reading and it looks to be very comprehensive, dealing with each of the orchestral sections and standard instruments, pitch ranges and timbres.
This is my current pile of reading. Any recommendations?
What is your current pile of reading?
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