An essential resource for both students and professionals, offering shrewd insight into the business, process, and art of writing music for film and TV. Interviews with top film scoring professionals add the priceless insight of the wisdom that comes with experience.

Videogames, web sites, and other new media are creating more opportunities for contemporary music writers than have ever existed before. In this book, you will learn to write effectively for these new forms, mastering the devices, sounds, and techniques for supporting stories and responding to user actions. It details the technical and dramatic requirements necessary for each type of new media. In engaging language, illustrated by countless real-world examples and practical workshops, writers at all levels will find ways to create music for new markets, and find new opportunities for creative expression. Guided hands-on projects will help you create music in all these forms. A CD of examples and practice files illustrates all concepts and lets you practice the techniques.

Readers will learn to:

• Score videogames, developing music for different characters, addressing the standard types of scenes and cues, and the formats required by game publishers

• Develop music for web sites, including HTML and Flash code

• Use sound technologies within mobile devices to create distinctive ringtones and other sounds

• Create demos and portfolios for getting clients.

Write songs that sell! Hit-songwriter/educator Andrea Stolpe shares time-tested tools of commercial songwriting. Her ten-step process will help you to craft lyrics that communicate heart to heart with your audience. She analyzes hit lyrics from artists such as Faith Hill and John Mayer, and reveals why they are successful and how you can make your own songs successful too. Stolpe advises on how to: streamline and accelerate your writing process; use lyric structures and techniques at the heart of countless hit songs; write even when you're not inspired; more!

Capture the authentic sounds of contemporary hip-hop/R&B with this step-by-step guide. Follow the process as a professional, self-producing artist tracks and mixes two hip-hop/R&B songs. Learn the effects, settings, and techniques used by the industry's top hip-hop/R&B producers and engineers. The DVD-ROM includes multitrack audio files for you to practice these techniques on any audio editing platform, with “mix in progress” tracks that let you check your work against that of the recording. You'll learn essential tools and techniques, sound processing recommendations and tips, and how to reproduce the sounds of professional hip-hop/R&B recordings.

Veteran songwriter Pat Pattison has taught many of Berklee College of Music's best and brightest students how to write truly great lyrics. Her helpful guide contains essential information on lyric structures, timing and placement, and exercises to help everyone from beginners to seasoned songwriters say things more effectively and gain a better understanding of their craft. Features examples of famous songs for study, including: Be Still My Beating Heart • Can't Fight This Feeling • It Was a Very Good Year • Tickle Me • and more.