How to Write Songs on Guitar: A Guitar-Playing and Songwriting Course

by Rikky Rooksby

Overview

You want to write songs, and you want to write them on guitar. This updated twentieth-anniversary third edition of the bestselling songwriting handbook shows you how. Learn the techniques and tricks used in two thousand great songs by everyone from the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie to Kings of Leon, U2, Amy Winehouse, and Ed Sheeran. Explore and understand the four main elements of a song--melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics--and learn how to use them in exciting new ways. Master song structure, intros, bridges, chord sequences, and key changes. Make the most of your guitar, with innovative chords, scales, modes, tunings, and recording techniques. Use the skills and insights of the great songwriters to create better, more memorable songs.

The book gives many examples of classic chord sequences that can be used straight off the page. It explains the basic architecture of most songs. It contains an effective two-part chord dictionary for guitar, providing a set of basic shapes. A second section provides some chords for altered tunings. There are some examples of finger-picking patterns and strumming rhythms. There are chapters on lyric writing, rhythm, melody, and making a demo recording. There are inspirational quotes from famous songwriters, and a gallery of thirty notable albums from which much can be learned. It is everything you need to get started.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493051762
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/03/2020
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	993,495
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Rikky Rooksby is a guitar teacher, songwriter/composer, and writer on popular music. He is the author of How to Write Songs on Guitar (2000, revised edition 2009), Inside Classic Rock Tracks (2001), Riffs (2002, revised edition 2010), The Songwriting Sourcebook (2003, revised edition 2011), Chord Master (2004, revised edition 2016), Melody (2004), Songwriting Secrets: Bruce Springsteen (2005), How to Write Songs on Keyboards (2005), Lyrics (2006), Arranging Songs (2007), How to Write Songs in Altered Guitar Tunings (2010), and Songs and Solos (2014). He has also written fourteen Fastforward guitar tutors and arranged over three dozen chord songbooks, including The Complete Beatles. He has written entries on rock musicians for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and published interviews, reviews, and transcriptions in many UK music magazines. He is a member of the Society of Authors, Sibelius One, and the Vaughan Williams Society.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 20th anniversary edition 7

How to use this book 9

Introduction 11

Section 1 Songwriting methods 19

Section 2 Chord dictionary part 1 24

Section 3 Chord sequences 41

Section 4 Developing sequences 87

Section 5 Song structures 101

Section 6 Rhythm 119

Section 7 Melody 133

Section 8 How to write a lyric 144

Section 9 Chord dictionary part 2: advanced harmony 169

Section 10 Keys and key changing 188

Section 11 Guitar resources part 1 206

Section 12 Guitar resources part 2: altered tunings 219

Section 13 Making a demo recording 234

Section 14 Gallery of songs 244

Section 15 Famous songwriters on songwriting 259

Section 16 Recommended albums for songwriters 266

Indexes 271

Acknowledgments 287

About the author 288

Editorial Reviews

Deemphasizing theory and composition, this guide encourages readers to think and create like professionals. Musician/ journalist Rooksby discusses song structure, lyrics, melodies, and creativity. Over 1400 popular songs written by some of the best- known artists are cited to explain a tune's building blocks and how to combine them into a whole. With hundreds of color graphics and a discography, this is recommended for all public libraries. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

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