Music Book Review: How to Write Lyrics & How to Write Chord Sequences by Rikky Rooksby

How to Write Lyrics and How to Write Chord Sequences
by Rikky Rooksby (Music 781.315 Roo and Music 787.87 Roo)

This pair of books from long-time guitar teacher Rikky Rooksby are a great compliment to other songwriting books, because they’re more technical in nature. Once you get inspired by other books, these are a great place to turn for some concrete, line-by-line breakdowns of how to get lyrics to work their best, for example, or how to use chord progressions that will best support the kinds of melodic ideas that you’re working with.

 

In “How to Write Lyrics,” Rooksby starts with some big-picture ideas, but quickly moves into more detailed techniques to find the best way to phrase your ideas so that they are lyrically impactful but also musically punchy. After introducing a lot of concepts, I especially liked sections 7 and 9, in which he annotates a variety of good lyrics with the tools and techniques they contain. The enormous section 10 is also very intriguing, highlighting a variety of common themes in popular songwriting and listing noteworthy songs that have addressed them in the past.

 

In “How to Write Chord Sequences,” Rooksby is essentially presenting some basic music theory, aimed primarily at guitar players (though pianists will be able to follow along as well), introducing common chord progressions and song forms and discussing the hows and whys behind them. The book covers all of the basic chord progressions and song forms used in popular musical idioms, and eventually it gets into some fairly advanced harmonic ideas, too, again explaining how and why they work. I think books like this are especially valuable for aspiring songwriters in that they can help to both learn what has traditionally been done, while also pushing writers to try new things with some understanding of how they can be done successfully.

 

Between these two books, I think most songwriters focused on popular music genres will find the nuts and bolts of how modern music is put together, and in combination with other songwriting books that are more philosophical in nature, readers can really position themselves for success.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Music, Lyrics, and Life: A Field Guide for the Advancing Songwriter by Mike Errico, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting by Mary Gauthier or How to Write a Song That Matters by Dar Williams — see review below!)

 

( official Rikky Rooksby web site )

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

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