Compose Yourself!

This is the book now being serialized in conjunction with a free video course at americansongwriter.com (series began on 9/16/2013). Once-a-month blogs explain the content of each chapter. Free PDFs of selected content from the book are provided through americansongwriter.com. Video blogs will illustrate chapter content and allow you to play along in dialog games. Supplemental material on sight-reading and music theory ensure that no student is left behind. This is the only course that treats songwriting as an extension of your natural language abilities. It is the only course to combine playful creativity with musical discipline in dialog games that resemble a foreign language class. Inspiration for the course comes through the author's association with Jef Raskin, creator of the Apple Macintosh, who was also a brilliant musician and UCSD music professor, and Howard Roberts, founder of GIT, which matured into Musicians Institute, LA. "Compose Yourself" also derives from a two-year project researching and arranging the "most memorable" parts of over 2,000 Billboard Top-Ten songs, and years spent in testing the course material with students ranging in age from 9 to 80 years of age. The author writes "Measure for Measure" -- a bimonthly column for American Songwriter magazine that plumbs the depths of songwriting techniques, often with illustrations from the songs of Lennon & McCartney ("The Beatles," Paperback Songs, published by Hal Leonard, is recommended for scores of the songs discussed). Five free e-books and numerous "Measure for Measure" columns are available online. The author has substantially reduced the price of "Compose Yourself" as a "welcome" gesture to new students.