angel bencosme offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $10.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Discountcitybooks offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $10.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

sbd- from IN, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $10.30 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

thermite-media offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $10.41 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

pbshop from , United Kingdom offers this stuff for:

Price : $10.42 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

pbshopus from NJ, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $10.42 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

smokymtnbooks from TN, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $10.48 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

a1books from NJ, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $11.04 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

a1books from NJ, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $11.35 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

bookrackrh from SC, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $11.38 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"Very rich and deep", A lot of great ideas here. The exercises in the first couple of chapters and the instructions about using a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus were very helpful to me. I find the layout to be a bit confusing. Some times it takes me a little while of reading to try and figure out what he is talking about. (for example one exercise says to write about a "real" object, and then he uses "holding your breath" as an example). I find I have to really work hard to make sure I'm doing the exercises right. I would have also liked a little more in-depth analysis of the songs. Very good book.

"An invaluable resource", This book is a gem. Any songwriter who wishes to improve their lyric writing will find techniques and tools which are immediately applicable and which can also be referred to time and time again.

As far as insights and tools to aid your own writing process this book is by far the best I have read.

I have had this book two years now and I still have "aha" moments when I read it today.

"SO useful", I'm a serious student of songwriting. This book was recommended to me by a multi-award winning songwriter and I can see why. The exercises and presentation of concepts are extremely valuable. A must-have book.

"Very thorough..a bit too much for me", In short, I feel this book is focussed too strong on technique and excercises that require a LOT of time to grasp. It is written for people who have a mission in life to WRITE and have a lot of time on their hands trying to learn and practice. I feel the writer sometimes confuses poetry with lyrics, but coming from a Berklee Professor that is probably fair...

"Need a jumpstart?", If you do, her exercises will help you jump right in with an idea. I agree with someone else who recommended Jimmy Webb's Tunesmith (the best songwriting book I've read) but this is my second favorite- very practical, very creative.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Greatest book ever!!", ok, maybe the title of the review is a little over the top, but it's still pretty close when it comes to writing lyrics. I got this book after being a frustrated songwriter for many many years. I had trouble putting the simple things together when writing a song (even creating good rhymes was hard for me).

After getting this book and working with it for a couple of days on my lunch break, it's opened a world of possibilities. The book starts off by getting the reader to do some creative writing exercises focused on things you can use for writing lyrics. Then it tells you how to create worksheets of major ideas and words for your idea. Then it talks about song structure, etc, and how to go about putting what you have on the worksheet to good use.

I honestly haven't even had to spend that much time going through the exercises in the book. After three or four days of working on this book, I am able to sit down and rough out a reasonably good song that only needs some polish of the lyrics, and backing tracks to make it recordable.

The one knock that I would give this book, is that it has a lot of group exercises. If you are using this in a class setting, or even with a friend or two, then these will be great for you. If you are working on this alone, then you will have to creative in working on some of those exercises.

To the other reviewer that said the book didn't help with actualy formulating rhymes, go back and read it again. The first two or three chapters cover rhyme creation.

"Walking you through the process", This book is a good step-by-step overview of things to keep in mind when writing song lyrics. Some of the steps you probably know inherently, just from having heard lots of successful songs and poems, but Pattison systematizes the process and makes it explicit. What I personally found most useful in this book were the object writing exercise, the point about the difference between metaphor and simile, trying out different points of view, "courting danger on the high wire", i.e. creating suspense, and the last chapter, in which the author walks the reader through the process of working together with a composer to develop lyrics from a seed of an idea. The last chapter pulls the pieces of the whole book together nicely and is a good review, plus an illustration of how Pattison's lessons can be applied in actual practice. A small point about the printing: the copy of this book that I got is peppered with patchily printed words here and there. This doesn't interfere with understanding, but is a small distraction, and it should be an easy thing to correct.

"No help for beginner songwriters", As a beginner songwriter, this book was of minimal help. It starts with a method of generating ideas, called "object writing", then skips to a song with lines already written that just need polishing. That's a big leap! He skips the hardest part--how to generate lines. Free-form writing, stream-of-consciousness writing--that's relatively easy, since you don't worry about rhyme or rhythm. For me anyway, the hardest part about songwriting is to generate lines--words with rhythm and rhyme, and more importantly, lines that express what you want to say in a few words, and are *interesting*. Pattison's book is of no help in this regard.

For songwriters who have no trouble generating lines, but would like to work on polishing your lyrics, this book may be of help. But for a beginner who struggles to get lines written, it won't help you. Instead, I recommend Jimmy Webb's book, *Tunesmith*. Webb takes you through the painful process of generating lines, by using a song he's trying to write.

"Best available for its type", Pat Pattison has produced what is the ultimate book on lyric writing. Actually, Pattison's exercises and techniques are valuable for any aspect of creative writing, from poetry to fiction.

He begins the book with the staple of his teaching, "Object Writing". Object writing is defined as writing on a specific thing - it can be anything from polyester to holding your breath - while incorporating as many senses as you can: touch, taste, smell, etc. The exercises last for 10 minutes, exactly, and you do it every day. He likens this to a pearl diver holding his breath and diving for pearls. Each time you hold your breath a little longer, dive a little deeper. It's the same with object writing. At first your writing will be awkward and fragmented - and that's okay. But as you do it on and on, eventually you will hit that vein, that underground river where your creativity rolls free and the words will pour out. As you continue it day to day, you'll hit this river more and more frequently and at greater depths, until eventually you'll just exist there.

Here's the amazing thing - it works. Object writing on a regular basis has improved my reading ability, my writing ability, my comprehension skills - my overall thinking. It gets your brain in shape and gets you in better touch with the powerful subconscious parts of your mind, where the majority of creativity happens.

From here he brings you more into the disciplined aspects of writing, showing you how to build a worksheet to write a lyric from. It involves object writing on your lyric title or concept and extracting anything useful from that, then using a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary to brainstorm even more ideas, and to place these on a worksheet to write from, giving you tons of related ideas at your fingertips.

He then discusses verse development, song forms, rhyme structures and meter. It goes very deep into these topics, and you can go as far as you want.

It's one of those books that you can continually read, diving into various chapters as you get stuck in different parts of different songs you are writing. I highly recommend this book for any aspiring lyric writers, even for composers who want a better understanding of the lyric writing process.

"Good technical information not so good group requirements...", I have been writing songs for the better part of my 32 year old life. I've even sold some and made some money. I can say though that it's never too late to improve a good thing.

For someone who is looking to strengthen their potential, learn how to formulate verse from a single idea and even generate ideas, this is a great book.

The one thing I have to mention is the "group" requirement. Many if not most of the more beneficial exercises ask you to gather in a group of four persons or more. When we talk about brainstorming, most of us understand the benefits of doing it with a group; it is simply most effective with a group of people participating. However, those of us who carry notebooks in our pockets, take our laptops everywhere we go, keep a voice recorder in our pocketbook and go into seclusion for days on end to capture ideas and think through a song know - writing is done alone. I just don't have anyone I can call on to sit in a room and think of metaphors with. In fact, why would I want to?

Other than that, this book does have a lot of good stuff inside. It's worth a read and the exercises have helped me immensely.