DONNIE THOMAS » Musician’s Resources

Tipharah – True Inspiration

dthomas — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:44:03 +0000

Tipharah – A Hebrew word meaning Glory, beautiful.

This is a song from my album “The Glory Sound”. This is one of my personal favorites from that project. When I was writing it I did not particularly feel too great about it. But once it was finished I was very pleased with the results. I realized that I really don’t have to ”feel” inspired for the grace of God on my life for songwriting to operate. Inspiration is not really a feeling, although many people probably think otherwise because of how they feel when they are inspired.

To my fellow musicians;

If you just free yourself from the bondage of always having to “feel” your music, you open up a world of limitless creativity. ~Donnie

Pursue Your Dreams

dthomas — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:48:49 +0000

Just in case you are feeling like your art is a waste of time (much like I have been feeling lately), here is something to remind you never to give up.

Google Books – The Free Music School

dthomas — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:43:08 +0000

I am not sure how many musicians know about Google books, but it is a very useful tool for musicians and composers alike. I started using it almost two years ago to aid in my musical studies. To put it simply you can search through countless books on composition technique and music theory just like you would a typical Google search. However the results are not always accessible for free. Most books that are still in print have a link that takes you to a purchase page. But here is the secret sauce, part of the Google Books project’s initiative was to scan older books from University libraries in an effort to preserve them and make them digitally available via online search. Books that are outside the copyright window are available for full download in .pdf format.

I have multiple out of copyright ebooks in my collection from the Harvard School of Music. Now you may be asking why is any of this is useful. Well, think of it this way. Music is one of the few subjects in which the teaching methods have not changed much in the last 100 years. Orchestration and Composition have made the most advancements with additional instruments being added to the modern orchestra, and orchestration techniques being augmented by digital media composition (midi, etc). However the underlying principles of musical tonality, harmonic analysis, timbre, good counterpoint and musician technique are still very much the same. So a book on musical composition from say 1907 is actually quite useful if you can stomach the funny dialect that was often used back then. The same rule applies to sheet music.

But don’t take my word for it. Go check it out yourself be sure to check out the music books from the Harvard Library, and if anyone asks you , you can tell them that you got your musical education from Harvard. :-)

P.S.

I was obviously joking about that last part.

Donnie