David Alzofon - Compose Yourself!: Songwriting & Creative Musicianship in Four Easy Lessons

Copyright 2010 by David Alzofon

All rights reserved.

Email ComposeYourself@live.com to receive notification of future publications, new editions, workshops, videos, MP3s of musical examples, or for permissions. Developers are invited to contact the author if interested in designing a software version of the course.

Klaf Rackner Mediaworks

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 1453724958

E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61789-518-0

for Susan

Table of Contents

The book you are holding is the one I wish Id had when I embarked on the musicians path in the 1960s: a practical introduction to music that values theory, but values musical creativity even more.

When I picked up the guitar at age thirteen, The Beatles were all the rage. So were The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Creedence Clearwater, The Doors, Carlos Santana, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, Donovan, The Grateful Dead, and countless other gods and goddesses of rock n roll, folk, rock, folk/rock, acid rock, surf rock, swamp rock, Southern rock, and Motown.

The harmonies were hot, the rhythms were cool, melody matteredit was easy to fall in love with music back then. But it wasnt an easy time to be a beginner. If you wanted to learn guitar, you copied licks from records, which was frustrating and tedious. Teachers tended to guard their secrets instead of sharing them on YouTubehardly a surprise, since YouTube didnt even exist. Neither did laptops, CDs, DVDs, or magazines such as Guitar Player or Guitar Techniques. Books on theory and technique were, on the whole, poorly written and confusing. Note-for-note transcriptions? Youve got to be kidding. You were lucky if you knew anyone who could explain how to tune a guitar, let alone why.

So there you were, on your own, thrashing about in the dark. Now its a brave new world out there. We have instructional videos by the thousands online, and armies of skillful teachers whove graduated from vocational programs in pop and rock in British trade schools, or similar schools in the States, such as Musicians Institute, L.A., Berklee College of Music, Boston, or Roberts Music Institute, Seattle. Books, software, and other tools of education have also gotten better and better with every passing year. Students who want to can learn as much in their first year now as students learned in five years or more back in the 60s.

Which raises a question: With all of the great educational opportunities available today, what could possibly justify yet another book on music theory and composition?

Plenty! If youve ever taken a course in poetry, creative writing, painting, drawing, or sculpture, you know that you begin writing, painting, drawing, or sculpting on the first day of class. But music is different. It takes a year, maybe two, maybe even four, to get past the fundamentals and begin composing, and by then you may have had the creativity wrung right out of you. What is needed now, just as much as it was way back then, is a course that cultivates creativity right away, before students drown under a mass of rules.

The importance of theory is undeniable, but the long delay in creative work in music is a clue that something is missing. More than that, it undermines a students natural gifts and desire for self-expression. It hasnt always been like this. In the Renaissance and Baroque, instrumentalists were expected to be co-creators of the music they performed. A lutenist, for example, was expected to improvise ornaments and divisions on repeated verses. Then came the printing press, and by the end of the eighteenth century, composers and audiences had begun to expect exact renditions of printed scores. In the nineteenth century, composer and performer split into separate career paths, and the artificial division became ingrained in school curricula.

In popular music, however, creativity has always been a part of the job description. The accent is not so much on talent as it is on craftsmanship. When I was in school, the results were easy to see. While I struggled with four-part harmony, counterpoint, and analysis, my friends in rock, blues, and jazz made rapid progress in writing songs and improvising solos. Something was out of whack. I wasnt sure what, but I trusted in the system. While there was no deliberate harm being done, I realize now that my intuitions were correct. There really is a better way.

Compose Yourself was conceived as a cure for the common music education. It invites everyone, not just the talented, to enjoy the creative side of music, and right away, not later. Decades of meditation, research, and experimentation have led to a unique teaching program that blends the best of academic wisdom and pop music instruction, plus language instruction, and even a smattering of computer science. But ultimately the course owes its existence to the influence of two gifted teachers, Jef Raskin (19432005, creator of the Macintosh computer), and Howard Roberts (19292002, jazz guitarist, music educator, and founder of Musicians Institute, L.A.).

In order to convey the impact these teachers had on me, it will be necessary to rev up the time machine and roll the clock back to the summer of 1963, my thirteenth year. This was when I first picked up the guitar, and when I first failed at musical creativity. Surfing was my obsession at the time, and I often went to the beach with a friend named Mike who had a reputation as a pianist. I had no idea how good he was until one day when he launched into a rhapsody by Liszt on the old upright piano at his parents house. When he noticed my jaw dragging on the floor, he instantly began banging out something that sounded like Jerry Lee Lewis.

Wow! Whats that? I asked, as he finished off with a Great Balls of Fire flourish.

Oh, that? Thats just something I made up. You wouldnt believe how easy it is to make up that stuff you hear on the radio.

Easy to make up that stuff I heard on the radio? When I wasnt surfing, I lived for pop music. The idea that an ordinary mortal such as Mike, let alone me, could compose a song such as the ones I loved set my brain on fire. So, can you show me? I asked, trying not to sound overeager.

I thought we were going surfin, he said, begging off politely. And so we went. Mike never did get around to showing me how to compose, but I could not forget what he said. A few months later, I sat down beside a swimming pool with a battered old hand-me-down guitar and a dozen chords, determined not to get up until Id written a song, preferably a hit song. The July sun melted the glue under the bridge of my guitar and the soundboard cracked and caved in, but the songs never came. Not even close.

Thus began a quest that led to four years of music in college, many additional years of private lessons in theory and performance, a book ( Mastering Guitar, Fireside Books, 1981), and a position as an Assistant Editor at Guitar Player Magazine, where my primary responsibilities were editing instruction columns and reviewing new books, most of them instruction books.

By the mid-1980s, I had done all my homework, everything I should have done, everything prescribed by my teachers, not once but many times over. And yet, perhaps like you, I still didnt feel that I got it. I could composeI had composed over a hundred exercises and pieces for the bookbut Mike had said it was easy, and I knew that I was still struggling. I also knew that most music students shared my sense of frustration, and that none of my professors had a magic potion for musical enlightenment. Something was missing. Back on that fateful day in 1963 when I had tried and failed to write a song, I had asked a friend whose abilities with guitar I respected what had gone wrong. Composers are born, not made, he said, with a streetwise air of authority. Either you got it or you dont. At the time, I refused to believe him. But now I was beginning to think that maybe hed been right.