Music: Music For Fun

Music, like sport, can be a deadly earnest career, or something that people do just for fun. For professionals, many books have been written. But the man who just likes to sing in the bathtub or twang a lick on the jew's-harp has never had a book to tell him where to go from there. Such a book was published last week by long-nosed "Tune Detective" Sigmund Spaeth.

Starting from scratch, Spaeth's Music for Fun (Whittlesley House, $2) tells how to make musical instruments out of bottles, tin cans, old bones and nails. For ambition-maddened readers it even goes a step further, telling how to make up a melody, "How to play the piano in no lessons." Suggester Spaeth even suggests how to make conversation about great composers. Sample conversational bung starters:

Of Tchaikovsky—"I always think sad music is the best, don't you?" "There must have been something somebody could have done for him."

Of Beethoven—"Isn't it amazing that a deaf man could write such music!"

Of Bach—"If you can play Bach, you can play anything."

Of Mozart—"I always say if you can play Mozart, you can play anything."