Hal Leonard Book

Essential Songwriter

2.8 (2) - log in to review

Authors: Jimmy Kachulis and Jonathan Feist

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Foreword

1. Power Progressions

2. Fifty-three Songwriting Ideas

3. Hit Song Forms

4. The Songwriting Process

5. Resources

6. Authors' Bios

The Berklee in the Pocket Essential Songwriter is an accessible reference guide that will quickly lead songwriters to ideas that are at the heart of countless hit songs. The tips and strategies jam-packed into this concise guide will help you tackle writer's block and gain fresh insight into the songwriting process. Includes: the 17 chord progressions that are at the heart of the most popular hit songs, guitar charts and keyboard chords showing how to play progressions in all 12 keys, tips to customize essential chord progressions to suit your own songs, contact info for businesses and organizations most important to the working songwriter, and more!

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Reviews

frankbria
Submitted 9 months ago

Great content. Full of typos.

It's great reference content. The chord progressions have a ton of typos. Sometimes they're obvious (Like DIII instead of bIII) sometimes they're not (wrong chord.)

sebastianportillo
Submitted 10 months ago

Good for a historical, basic understanding

I want to honest and I did not read this book in entire depth but I have a lot of experience in writing songs - doing it for living and I was very excited when I first discovered this title but two things that prevents me from giving this more than 3 stars: It's based on older songwriting techniques where verses and choruses were very important (around the 2000's) and the other thing is that many interesting concepts lack deeper explanations and remain a bit superfluous in my opinion.

Jimmy Kachulis

Jimmy Kachulis has trained thousands of songwriters, including Grammy award winning artists on A&M and MCA; staff writers at Almo Irving, Sony, Warner Brothers, and EMI; A&R people at Warner Brothers, BMG, and Sony; artists on independent labels; as well as independent songwriters. He currently teaches songwriting and lyric writing at Berklee College of Music and conducts songwriting clinics nationwide.

Products by Jimmy

tutorial video
Essential Songwriter

The Berklee in the Pocket Essential Songwriter is an accessible reference guide that will quickly lead songwriters to ideas that are at the heart of countless hit songs. The tips and strategies jam-packed into this concise guide will help you tackle writer's block and gain fresh insight into the songwriting process. Includes: the 17 chord progressions that are at the heart of the most popular hit songs, guitar charts and keyboard chords showing how to play progressions in all 12 keys, tips to customize essential chord progressions to suit your own songs, contact info for businesses and organizations most important to the working songwriter, and more!
tutorial video
The Songwriter's Workshop: Harmony

In this digital book, learn the fundamental techniques behind today's hit songs, with easy-to-follow exercises so you can immediately apply these tools to your own songs. Quit wrestling with writer's block, and learn to make the songwriting process easy, fun, and intuitive.
tutorial video
The Songwriter's Workshop: Melody

Spark your imagination with hundreds of creative songwriting techniques! This hands-on guide provides lessons on how to write innovative songs, based on popular songwriting courses at Berklee College of Music. Whether you're a beginning songwriter who can't read a note of music, or an experienced professional looking for new ideas, this book will provide new insight into your craft; it teaches the fundamental techniques behind today's hit songs, together with easy-to-follow exercises so you can immediately apply these tools to your own art. This book comes with access to online audio recordings so you can practice your songs with accompaniment, even if you can't play an instrument.

Essential Songwriter is rated 2.8 out of 5 by 2 .

Rated 2.5 out of 5 by frankbria from Great content. Full of typos. It's great reference content. The chord progressions have a ton of typos. Sometimes they're obvious (Like DIII instead of bIII) sometimes they're not (wrong chord.)

Date published: 2020-04-18

Rated 3.0 out of 5 by sebastianportillo from Good for a historical, basic understanding I want to honest and I did not read this book in entire depth but I have a lot of experience in writing songs - doing it for living and I was very excited when I first discovered this title but two things that prevents me from giving this more than 3 stars: It's based on older songwriting techniques where verses and choruses were very important (around the 2000's) and the other thing is that many interesting concepts lack deeper explanations and remain a bit superfluous in my opinion.

Date published: 2020-04-06