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The core difference between a songwriter and composer


Sagicorn35

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Hi all. I'm very new to the site. I'm a Logic Pro X user for 2 years now and love it. I have one question tho. It's been kind of confusing for awhile. Just curious about this difference. Matter of fact, I'll throw in an extra term. Lyricist. Wikipedia says a composer is a person who creates music. But when creating popular music, they are now called songwriters. For years I thought songwriters were people that just wrote lyrics with harmony to it. I thought composers were people who created scores for movies, classical, jazz, sonatas. Somebody enlighten me. And lyricist were just people who wrote words without harmony to it. I've asked around, but most people don't know exactly what the terms mean either.
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  • 2 weeks later...

For what I understood, the songwriter wrote the lyrics of the song while the composer wrote the music, melody or symphony of a certain song. However, to have an accurate and more detailed explanation between their differences I read something like what's really behind the definition of a songwriter vs composer.

 

Read this for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songwriter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composer

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  • 7 months later...

At some point in time, two very creative people in a band called Led Zeppelin created a song called "Stairway to Heaven."

 

In various interviews since that time, (especially) Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have spoken, "with entirely-justified craftsmen's pride," about the details about how they engineered that song. They actually had ... and/or, in the end, arrived at ... a very detailed plan, or architecture, for how the song would evolve throughout its length.

 

(So far, so good?)

 

Okay, okay, okay: Now, we're gonna put together a show called Kennedy Center Honors, where we're gonna honor:

  • these two people ... in stunning performances such as
    ...
  • but also Sir Paul McCartney ...
    ...
  • ... and ... (well, you get the idea)

 

Now, my friend, you need a composer and an arranger, and probably a double-helping of both (and the teams of specialists that all of them bring with them), because: every one of those singers, and the instrumentalists, and the conductor, and god-knows-who-else (hint: "it's your job to k-n-o-w 'who'!!") are gonna need to be provided with everything they need to know to pull-off a fantastic evening for thousands of "paying ticketholders."

 

... each "ticketholder" of whom, (god help you) has a smart-phone in their pocket, with a short-cut to Facebook, if, (god help you) anything goes wrong ... :shock:

 

---

After you finally wake up from that sleepless night, determined at all costs to avoid it, you're now gonna discover that you're now dealing with specialists of another sort: "I know how to deal with a movie soundtrack," or, "I know how to tame a symphony orchestra," or, "I know Kennedy Center."

 

(And, "by God, thank God" ... they actually ("by God") do!!)

 

Their task is rather prodigious. Somehow, hundreds of pages of score are going to have to be put in front of perhaps-hundreds of musicians ... for each and every(!) song ... :shock: ... And, somehow, they will do it.

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