Product Description

Eighty-eight ways to spot what’s wrong with a song - along with expert instruction on how to fix it! Songwriters Pat and Pete Luboff cover it all, pointing out pitfalls and supplying solutions every measure of the way. 144 pages. 8-1/2 x 11.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #300709 in Books
• Published on: 1994-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 145 pages

Customer Reviews

Credibility Lacking
Some decent information in here, but most of it is common sense. The deceptive title doesn't help matters, either. "88 Songwriting Wrongs" implies 88 specific items to help your songwriting, but you don't get 88, unless you consider items such as "Don't Send Songs By Certified Mail" or "Don't Send Songs To A Company Without A Specific Person's Name" as invaluable songwriting tips. (Yes, those are 2 of your 88 songwriting wrongs.)

When the authors do address specific songwriting mistakes, they do provide some good information, but there is a definite "The more you know about music theory, the worse you're going to do as a songwriter" attitude...there's a definite bias against formal music training, as if the authors feel the need to defend their own lack of training, and attack it as a negative quality in the songwriting world. (Tip #28 is where they really lose all credibility.) It would be one thing if this was Lennon/McCartney writing this book, or Taupin/Elton John...but the authors themselves have only a couple of minor songwriting credits themselves (one for Patty LaBelle, of which they remind you about on every other page, seemingly.)

The book is not a total waste, but it's certainly not the be-all and end-all in songwriting aides. You'll learn more about songwriting by studying the actual masters than by reading this book.

Excellent for Lyrics But Lacking In Music Information
This is an amazing book as far as teaching you one of the fundamental aspects of song writing goes, which is giving the song proper STRUCTURE. It teaches song structure from strictly a lyricist's point of view however, such as verse/chorus structures or verse/bridge etc. The book is worth its weight in gold for this info alone. But it lacks ANY information on how to write the music for the song. But nevertheless, it has some greeaattt ideas. Buy it for its really cool ideas on how to write song lyrics (but don't look for music composition in it.) One of the great ideas it has, though, is to write lyrics while listening to one of your favorite song's music. Conversely, you could write the music for your song's lyrics, by arranging your music to one of your favorite song's lyrics. Do you see what I'm saying. This really really works to give you an awesome song structure!

After reading this book ,everything looks so obvious
There is a saying, the obvious is only obvious once it becomes known. This is the case here. While reading the book I said to myself this is so obvious mistakes that one often make - however it was not so obvious until I saw the common wrongs and how to right them. It is very practical and to the point, yet it helps tremendously. This is the kind of book one has to read thoroughly the first time around, and then scan through every so often just to refresh the memory. It can serve as a "checklist" from time to time to make sure you are on the right track with a song. I enjoyed the book and think it makes a contribution to songwriting skills.