Publisher's Synopsis
Inspired by Radiohead and Brian Eno, 2+2=5 Composer gives you direct prompts to inspire innovative music making.84 direct and practical prompts and strategies to inspire innovative music making. When you are looking to create something a little bit different but don't know exactly what to do, this book gives lots of practical suggestions and options to progress with your music and to make your composition stand out from the rest. It's a book to have with you at practice, jam sessions or in the studio to refer to and give you new inspiration to complete a new musical composition. It is full of clever and innovative suggestions to aid the contemporary composer and musicianSome ways to use this book: -Open a page at random to help when you a are stuck, like asking a friend or band mate for an idea.Read a prompt and apply your own interpretation to it. How creative can you get from the starting point? Can it be applied in another way?Use one prompt as a basis for a new songCombine and apply several prompts chosen at random as the basis for a new songRead a technique and and learn about it thus increasing your musical palette and vocabulary. Use as a reminder of possible other options when you keep going down the same route.Using the terms and ideas as a basis for further research This book uses a lot of techniques found in the body of work of the band Radiohead, but they can be applied to all genres of music and music makingThis book discusses mostly the key of C (all the white notes on the piano). If you want to use other keys, you can start in C and shift all the music up or down to shift keys. This book utilises a learning methodology called 'Retrieval practice" - where you try recall information. Research has shown that retrieval practice is much more effective than constantly being told something repeatedly.Foreword There we were sat around a darkly-lit kitchen table littered with empty crisp packets and half eaten meal deal sandwiches with guitars in our hands. Me, the amateur guitarist, getting as much advice as I could from Andrew about ways of being different with making music and techniques for making something sound original and fresh instead of using the same old chord transitions and key changes. I noticed that night that Andrew had a head full of creativity and seemed to look at music in a way that I had never seen before. That night, I saw a mind at work that looked beyond the surface of the music, a mind that saw past the rules and rhythms of simple guitar playing and shared ideas that completely changed the way something sounded. I thought then, that Andrew needed to share these ideas with everyone, so it's only right that he has made this book. This is his world of creativity laid out in a simple accessible form, aimed at musicians of all levels. Keep it close while you create, and I promise that you will never be short of that next great idea ever again.-Sam Ezra
