Tunesmith : Inside the Art of Songwriting

Rating:
Summary: Insightful glimpse at the craft and the process
Review: Although it can get dense at times, and it's several kinds of books at one time, this book is fascinating and helpful in many ways. Webb has thought a lot about writing songs and about his own creative processes. He has written some great songs over the years, but it's hard to place him in the pop vs. traditional music spectrum. Of course you don't want to write Jimmy Webb songs anyway, but a lot of the stuff in here is anecdotal and rambling, how HE came to write and do various things. How does it apply to you? It may not! It's not a simple how-to but it's very stimulating. I'd balance this with more development/exercise/education oriented books, such as Pat Pattison's excellent "Writing Better Lyrics."

Rating:
Summary: Thank you for the Magic Mirror..I needed one!
Review: I bought this book with the intention of probably starting it and getting bored, then tossing it...mainly because I don't read that much (rarely actually). I have always been impressed with Jimmy Webb's songwriting abilities, especially his tunes not known by the majority such as "Adios", as well as dozens of other tunes. I am a songwriter, and I had always thought I was strange when I would say, "that would be a great song title..." in public. People stare at me wondering what I'm thinking when in fact, I am thinking songs, much like J.W. describes in this book. With this book, I discovered that I am in fact a songwriter. I had my doubts prior to reading it, but I now label myself as a songwriter. This book has inspired me to keep doing what I've done for years and it also has provided me with inspiration. The book is anything but boring to songwriters. Those who consider themselves songwriters (who aren't), will find the book too instructional and informative. They will want a quicker fix, a tune from the first page...forget it. If you wonder about your songwriting abilities, or you are just starting to write songs....buy it and find out.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, Educational and funny!
Review: If you write songs - you should have this book. You won't believe the things you'll learn. An eye-opener to the business and reality of the music world! It sits on my coffee table and i always pick it up when I find myself in dangerous or unknown territory upon writing a new song! Mr. Webb knows his stuff and shares it in his modest, funny way!

Rating:
Summary: TUNESMITH: INSIDE THE ART OF SONGWRITING
Review: It's an event when Jimmy Webb, the songwriter who epitomized both the romance and the innovation that characterized the songcrafting of the sixties and seventies ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "MacArthur Park," "Up, Up, and Away," etc.) turns his attention to writing a book about the songmaking process. Not only a great songwriter, Webb in his heyday was also admired as the possessor of a bright youthful intellect and a zany, happy sense of humor. The bulk of his hit-laden song catalog was completed by age twenty-five or so, at which time Webb mostly disappeared. For those insiders and fans who have been paying close attention, Webb has added to that catalog in more recent years, contributing such underpublicized gems as "If These Walls Could Speak" (Amy Grant, et al, early eighties) and "California Coast" (Linda Ronstadt, about 1990), a song that also helped celebrate the comeback of Brian Wilson, who created delicious and plaintive Beach-Boys-style background vocals for the cut. In TUNESMITH, we're allowed to be there as Jimmy Webb explains which writers and which songs he has admired, and we watch in fascination as Webb dissects a few of these personal favorites to lay bare the structure and the art within. Jimmy Webb is said to have spent four full years creating TUNESMITH, and his love for the craft is obvious as you turn the pages and absorb the insights being shared. A tip for researchers: Paul Zollo did an excellent retrospective interview with Webb after the songwriter had been silent for at least a decade. The original interview can be found in the annals of SongTalk, the journal of the National Academy of Songwriters, or much more easily in Zollo's excellent book of reprints, SONG- WRITERS ON SONGWRITING. And finally, a trivia question for Webb fans: on which pop album can a version of Jimmy Webb's very first song, "There's Someone Else," written as a teenager in Oklahoma, be found? Answer: Art Garfunkel's "Watermark."

Rating:
Summary: best when he gets down to a discussion of craft.
Review: Readers, please forgive me for being technical in my opening remarks. I know of no other way to make my point.
I first opened to chapter 7, where Webb talks about harmonic movement in accompaniment. It turned out to be, in my opinion, the book's finest hour, or at least the most useful to me for these reasons: 1. He gives CONCRETE EXAMPLES. 2. This is absolutely subjective, but for me (a composer of instrumental music, chiefly jazz, and roughly of Webb's generation and weaned on much of the same music), the most lasting and valuable contribution of that period's better writers (Stevie Wonder, for example) is the ingenious way they found to manipulate simple triad harmony by using pedals and "open" sounding chords (No 3rds, etc. which Webb explains and demonstrates beautifully). It goes without saying that they also wrote good melodies, or they'd have been long forgotten. Analysis of melody construction/components also is first-rate here (Webb deals with treatment of lyrics in depth in in other chapters). Stephen Sondheim has said "art is craft". Webb spells out the mechanics of that craft masterfully. Also to his credit, he dismisses the inference that any formula for good writing can be gleaned from his (or probably any) book. He encourages people to learn those mechanics, but trust their own creative muses. Other well-turned discussions (of his predecessors' work, for example) show a man who has thought long and hard about his craft--and learned much. (A chapter on at least basic arranging---beyond piano voicings---might have been helpful, too, because presentation is half the battle, especially for people trying to sell songs to extremely jaded artists, executives, etc).

Now for the bad news: throughout the book's body, Webb continually digresses, editorializes, and especially seems to want to settle accounts with the (mostly Broadway) scribes of the past, whom he upbraids for their snobbery and rebuff of rock and roll. (In fairness, he goes on in the epilogue to dress down his own generation for their OWN hypocracy and peevish conservatism in rejecting today's young writers.) He grows especially bitter in the epilogue, and his philippics are kind of unbecoming. He is himself opinionated in the extreme, dismissing (for but two of many examples)the chromaticism of late Romantic music and the Schoenberg people (so much for "lightweight" Alban Berg) in a way that frankly doesn't convince me he really listened.

What's wrong with this? Nothing, on its face. It's food for thought,and at times great fun. But Webb, of all people, should know not to break his own first rule of composing, one which doesn't quite make the leap of faith from songwriting to book writing: make a promise in the first "bar", then deliver on it. Unless I got some bad drugs in the '60s and flashbacks are causing hallucinations, on the cover the subtitle is "Inside the art of songwriting". Webb also states more than once his purpose: to help the amateur songwriter, and I would never doubt his sincerity. But how these long winded polemics help aspiring songwriters, who after all are impressionable and more in need of bricks than brickbats, learn their craft is beyond me. Such raw and subjective ruminations belong---would be great---in an autobiography or a "rant", NOT this book where they end up a distracting sideshow.(I don't mean music business advice, which he also gives, along with his work habits/routines, both to good effect.)

I feel guilty coming down so hard on elements of a book still so valuable, but that first chapter I read promised so much. I find it ironic that someone who so successfully reads and speaks to his public (and is his own best editor in his imaginative and well-constructed songs) could so succumb to self-indulgence and come dangerously close to being saboteur of his own best intentions. But this is merely my opinion. And I still recommend "Tunesmith".

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and helpful
Review: Songwriting is similar to painting in that some people will like what you create, and others will hate it. There's a lot of subjectivity in music, and Jimmy Webb's music strikes me as being a touch "cheesy".

However, that does NOT diminish the usefulness of this book, as you will learn some interesting and different ways of going about constructing melodies, lyrics, chord progressions and song structures. It can be hard reading sometimes (particularly the chord substitution section, which is excellent though), but it finishes up with light, anecdotal stuff that's very easy on the brain. Make sure you understand basic theory first, and it's a great idea to read it with a piano / keyboard close at hand, to listen to the concepts for yourself.

You'll definitely learn things you can immediately apply to your own work, and for the better. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: It's OK
Review: The book has a tendency to meander aimlessly. It's like listening to an old-timer ramble on about something and then stop and start rambling about something else because he says something that reminds him of something else and then he moves on to another ... well... you get the picture.

There's a mixture of good ideas and bad myths in this book. It could have been a lot better.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: Theory about songwriting inside this book is the deepest I have found. Even the language of the writer is good, it is hard for non english spoken people because of the extensive use of non common words.

Rating:
Summary: a great book
Review: This is a great book,written by one of the greatest songwriters of the last 4 decades.Anyone contemplating a career in songwriting should read this book.Jimmy is one of the best.

Rating:
Summary: Inside the Head of Jimmy Webb - Genius
Review: Warning: People who want to learn basic songwriting should go elsewhere.

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From 1965 to 1970 or so Jimmy Webb was inescapable. You watched the Carole Burnett show, and there were the 5th Dimension singing "Up, Up and Away." Turn on the radio, and Richard Harris' cake melted in the rain. Glen Campbell rode the Witchia line, drove through Phoenix, and ruminated about Galveston. Those incandescent melodies entered my childhood and have stayed with me.

Hard rock drove this more upbeat music from the airwaves, but Jimmy Webb's legacy remains in the catalog of fine songs he wrote at a precocious age. Now his book gives us some insight into the mind who might arguably be called the last great songwriter of the 20th century.

Many people coming to this book will eagerly open it, hoping to extract the secret than made Jimmy Webb into a wealthy man, and they will come away dissappointed and frustrated. This is not a book about how to write a song, so much as it is a repository of the mind of Jimmy Webb. True, Jimmy writes about how he composes a lyric, and how he creates a chord progression. His discussion of prosody is excellent, too. But there is more here that simple technical discussion of song writing.

This book a cultural history of the American song up to the end of the 1960's. Jimmy Webb gives us stories, his own history, his background, and discussions of songs from the beginning of the modern era to the present. For some like me, who has a deep interest in American Cultural history, this book is a gem.

Musican theoriticans might have a fit when Jimmy Webb starts giving his version of Secondary Dominants and other chord substutions, but again, when they've written "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" I'll listen to them.

Other reviewers say that it would be better to have some knowledge of music theory before you read this book, and I agree with that. When Jimmy starts on about 7th chords No 3 with a minor 2nd in the bass, you might start stratching your head if you don't know what he's talking about. Have a keyboard around so you can play the examples.

This book is like taking a master class from a professional, not a seminar by a music teacher who never's sold one song, let alone had hit after hit, gold records, Grammies. Jimmy Webb is an authentic American genius - he and Brian Wilson on the west coast - Dylan on the East - who blew the roof off of the stilted 32 bar song and the 12 bar blues.

Tunesmith is about songwriting, not about how to write a song. If you have to ask the difference, you'll never know.