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[P]
Introduction to basic music composition. Part one.

By tombuck in Columns
Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 09:29:08 AM EST
Tags: Music (all tags) 		Music

This is part one of a basic composition guide for those of you out there who have talent, but don't quite know the basics and are therefore having the odd bit of trouble.

I have recently realised that there are now more and more home-grown wannabe composers out there than I thought. I personally put this down to the easy availability of sequencing software, such as cubase. It makes me think of days past when great games were written in bedrooms.

Basic theory
We could spend years covering basic music theory. Yes, it is a necessary evil and to be recommended. Unfortunately, it is as boring as hell and the UKian exam boards don't make it any easier. Many a time I have sat down in an exam and have had to answer what were essentially the same questions several times over. Yawn.
There are some basics that I am not going to cover. If you don't know what a scale or a chord is, or don't understand what I mean when I say "The key of C" then I'm afraid this guide is not for you.
For the curious, a simple guide to music theory can be found here.

Chord Progressions
Music, like computing, can be easily abstracted. As such, we don't need a base key. We can work around chord numbers instead.
For the key of C, we have the following chord numbers that match up with that number of the scale:

C - D - E - F - G - A - B
I II III IV V VI VII

Likewise, for the key of G, the chord numbers would match up thus:

G - A - B - C - D - E - F#
I II III IV V VI VII

E.g.
Chord I, when in the key of C, would consist of the notes C - E - G
Chord V, when in the Key of G, would consist of the notes D - F# - A

The "#" represents "sharp", so F# is the note "F sharp", on a keyboard it's the black note located between the notes F and G.

Now, as far as basic composition is concerned, there are only three chords we need to play around with: I - IV - V

In the key of C, these chords would be:
I : C - E - G
IV: F - A - C
V : G - B - D

A simple eight-bar composition could be done with the following chord sequence:

I - IV - I - V
I - IV - V - I

Try playing it on your instrument. Just playing a single note should sound vaguely melodic:

C - F - C - G
C - F - G - C

Now, why does this work? Why does it sound melodic?
The simple answer would be "because it does". This, obviously, is not good enough.
Each chord has its own properties. Its own "sound", if you will. Chord I is referred to as the "root" chord, as it is from here that your melody will have its "root", where everything else will come from and eventually return to.
Chord V is also important. You'll notice after playing I - V that the air around you will almost shout out its disagreement, there's an aniticipations somewhere out there, but for what? The melody has to be ended. Quite simply, chord V is used as a bit of a cliff-hanger. The reason that the first line ends with it is because it will let us lead on to the next line. Likewise, because of its jarring properties, it is a good penultimate chord to use to lead to ending the tune on I. Chord V is also known as the "dominant".
Chord IV is a good "filler" chord. It is know as the "Sub-dominant". Composition (and this is equally true with regards to improvisation) is all about getting from one note to the other, and how to do it in the style you like. Going straight from chord I to V and back again would make a rather boring melody. However, bring in chord IV and you instantly have many more options.
Chord IV also sounds "right" as it is always in the major. For example, if we are in the key of C, chord IV will be F - A - C, which is also the same chord as chord I from the key of F. Notice the relation? Now look at chord V. Notice anything about it along the same kind of lines? I'll have more of this to say in a later episode, but I'll give you a teaser: Ever wondered how you change keys in a piece without it sounding horrible?

Putting it all together
OK then, so you want to compose a basic little tune using the above chord sequence. This is how I would do so for the keyboard / piano.

(Things also get slightly interesting here as we have two hands to play with. The left hand plays the low notes on the keyboard, the right hand the high notes. The melody will, for the time being, always be on the right hand as it is much more prominent this way)

I start off in the easiest of all keys, C. That means that our chord sequence will consist of:

C - F - C - G
C - F - G - C

I will also be using 4-4 time - that is, four crotchets to the bar.

I would normally play block chords on the left hand (e.g. C-E-G, F-A-C, all three note chords slammed down.) but this sounds rather clumsy, So instead, I will play the following notes, two per beat of the bar:
C - G - E - G - C - G - E - G, F - C - A - C - F - C - A - C, C - G - E - G - C - G - E - G, G - D - B - D - G - D - B - D etc.

Now, using the notes from the scale of each chord, we can come up with a simple melody. The scales we will be using are:
I/C : C,D,E,F,G,A,B
IV/F: F,G,A,B,C,D,E
V/G : G,A,B,C,D,E,F

When we are on chord I, we can use the notes from that scale. Likewise, when we are on chord V, we should use the notes from that scale. Specifically, we should aim to use the first, fourth and fifth notes from these scales a lot, and use the rest of the notes to get to and from them.
There is a problem here, though. Not every note from the scale will sound "nice". Think of the key of "F". There is a B-flat (Bb) in there that wouldn't sound right whilst we're in the key of C. Likewise, if we play a B-natural whilst on the chord of F, things will sound even worse. The solution? Ignore that note and don't use it. At least for the time being.

So, that in hand, we can come up with a basic melody. The rhythm used with these notes isn't important for the time being. Play freely.

C - D - E - F - G, F - G - A - B - C, G - F - E - D - C, D - E - F - G (yes, that F will sound a bit nasty, but we can let it go)

Try and come up with your own second part based on what is being done with the first - namely, how do I get to note X whilst I'm on this note, Y?

Next time...
In part II, I'll cover more chord progressions and introduce having fun with chord inversions!

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Introduction to basic music composition. Part one. | 142 comments (120 topical, 22 editorial, 0 hidden)
GO TB, (2.50 / 2) (#6)
by nobby on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 08:02:12 AM EST

I'm tone deaf, so with the new rush of musical talent hitting the charts after this, you have condemned many a traveller on the tube to a nightmare of tuneless whistling from me (well done +1)
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Damn... (3.00 / 1) (#16)
by rootz on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 08:38:13 AM EST

You've just committed me to a night of tinkling on the ivorys (well, some sort of plastic, actually, but who cares). I've been self-teaching myself specifically for the purpose for getting all these melodies in my head onto paper, so I can forsee a couple of sleepless nights ahead...

Thanks a lot!

;-)

--
R.O.O.T.Z: Robotic Organism Optimized for Troubleshooting and Zoology

A bit of blues theory (4.66 / 3) (#18)
by conraduno on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 08:39:27 AM EST

For the record, I'm not much of a musician. But I do know a bit of blues theory, and I have played guitar for long enough to be considered good (especially when the listeners are all drunk).

Blues is all based on a pentatonic scale, that means unlike the octal scale it's a base 5. 12 bar blues, the most common, is always going to be based around 4 chords. The tonic, sub-dominant, dominant, and relative minor. The tonic is the I chord, sub-dominant the IV chord, and dominant the V chord. The relative minor is going to be one and a half steps down from the tonic, and minored. So, lets examine blues in E (very common scale).

I IV V Relative Minor
E F G C#min

The basic scale in half steps goes as follows:
1 4 6 8 11 and back to 1. Once again, these are half steps. On the guitar it looks like this:

43210
-x--x E
--x-x A
--x-x D

(The top is the fret number, the right is the string.) The 6th note in the scale is back to the E. Also, in blues, it is allowable to have a half step inbetween the 3rd and 4th notes. So you could also do:

43210
--xxx A

On the A string. Or really, anywhere you're between the 3rd and 4th notes.

And that's about all there is to it. Blues is quite easy, although granted this overview is ridiculously terse. But if you play around with the scales you can learn to solo pretty easily (took me all of a day), and you can at least pretend to sound like a dirty Chicagoan blues head with these chords. Try and figure more out yourself - take any key, look at what I wrote for the blues chord structure and scale structure, and start fucking around. It's tons of fun. :)

non.
great subject (4.83 / 6) (#19)
by speek on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 08:49:55 AM EST

I know you tried to say it, but it can't be stressed enough that there's a LOT more out there, if one is interested enough to learn more. You skip over a basic introduction to scales, which is practical if you want to talk about chord progressions, but there's a lot to be learned about scales, and it supports the theories behind chord progressions.

A musical scale can be defined by the pattern of jumps from note to note. For instance, in a major scale, the pattern is:
2 2 1 2 2 2 1

This means that the root note and the second note are separated by two half-steps, or two half-tones. The second and third are also separated by 2 half-tones. The third and fourth note are separated by only 1 half-tone, etc.

A minor scale looks like: 2 1 2 2 1 2 2

All the various modes and scales are simply variations of these patterns. Some scales have more note in them, and some have fewer.

An interesting thing about melody is that, once a scale is established in the listeners mind, certain notes are heard to "lead" to other notes. Predictably, when the next note of the scale is only 1 half-tone away, the listener tends to want to hear it next. In the major scale, the seventh note of the scale is only 1 half-tone below the eighth note. The eighth note also happens to be an octave above the root, so it is also the root. Thus, the seventh note of the major scale is called the "leading tone" because it nearly always leads to the root tone in a melody.

This leading effect is so strong, pieces in a minor key virtually always modify the scale to use this leading-tone-to-the-root (you'll notice, the minor scale pattern has 2 half-tones between the seventh and eighth note). These modified scales are known as harmonic and melodic minor, and there are some simple rules about when to use which.

When I compose, I usually prefer to invent a melody that sounds good (free form), and then analyze it afterward to understand what scale it's using, what it's natural chord progression is, etc. Then, I can set a harmony to it, or modify it to take advantage of what I know of music theory. It is also useful to know these things so that you can take two different melodies you've invented free form, and figure out how to "hook them up", and move from one to the other in a natural-sounding way.

--
al queda is kicking themsleves for not knowing about the levees

glad i'm not you tom! (4.00 / 1) (#30)
by jcw2112 on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:10:39 AM EST

...i taught theory for a couple of years. i am willing to bet that your lessons will result in more email than most humans can consume.

i do applaud your efforts, but i have tried to boil down things like scales and chord progressions for non-musicians and untrained musicians many times with little success. i think it's like coding assembly, you have to do it before you can "get it."

i look forward to your discussion of scales and modes.

for anyone who is interested enough to want the basics, but not enough to really do exhaustive research on the subject, this book is pretty good for some practical examples and is quite inexpensive.

beware Heinrich Shenker!



____________________
suck. on. it.

Good subject. (4.50 / 2) (#32)
by derek3000 on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:18:11 AM EST

I would like to make a quick recommendation for any intermediate guitarists out there. If you can find it, The Praxis System by Howard Roberts (et. al) is a 3-set series that is one of the most original, comprehensive and innovative approaches to learning how to play any style.

I would try to explain it further, but there isn't enough space to go on about the advantages of the series. Anyone who has it can back me up. I recently got my set from here, which was surprising because I had heard they were out of print. Good luck!

-----------
Not too political, nothing too clever!--Liars

music (2.71 / 7) (#33)
by turmeric on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:26:02 AM EST

music is an expression of the soul, there are no valid or invalid rules.

Cadences (4.00 / 1) (#34)
by timg on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:32:55 AM EST

I hope one of these installments will cover cadences. I liked cadences the most, taking music theory. Cadences are usually at the end of a song, and make the song "resolve" using a couple of chords. It's been too long to remember details, but there are perfect cadences, imperfect cadences, half cadences, etc. Very cool and very interesting how they just "sound right" or "sound wrong".

-Tim

Chord Numbers (4.00 / 1) (#36)
by lb008d on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:38:36 AM EST

I would differentiate between major/minor chords:
C D E F G A B
I ii iii IV V vi viio
Note that viio is diminished, hence the "degrees" sign.

Doh (3.00 / 1) (#41)
by conraduno on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:48:35 AM EST

My bad. In my haste I screwed up the E chord. It should be
-----|
-4-2-|
---2-|

Not 5, that should be a 4. Oops. Also, you should always play that extra note with your pinky. It's tough at first, but you get used to it.
non.
Sir, (3.00 / 1) (#57)
by Fon2d2 on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 11:29:10 AM EST

your bassline sounds familiar.

I think you people are all missing something (2.71 / 7) (#59)
by Prophet themusicgod1 on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 11:32:17 AM EST

this is the WESTERN and mostly Catholic Church method of composing music. it will only further lead to stale reincarnations of previous music, despite the large numbers of possible permutations. Music is SO much more deeper than this...although i believe someone else has allready stated the "music is an expression of the soul" bit so i will not restate this too much

while i love beethoven, bach1and much of the classics...the 8 note/octave system has been over used these past 400 years.
there ARE other forms and structures of music composition in the world, although i do not know how to compose with them yet, i know they exists: 2 examples : Japanese music chord structure and Islamic(????) chord structure (which has some 8 notes for every one of our notes, leading to some 64 keys per octave.)
on the OTHER hand you could also Use Hertz to compose music...yet another form of measuring sound.
But while this article is ok, there is SO MUCH MORE to music than it even begins to state.
[and btw i've been composing scince 1986...been in conservatory and otherwise lessons in multiple instruments, if that helps any]

1 (he is my great great...great grandpa after all...i understand his music on a far personal level...)
"I suspect the best way to deal with procrastination is to put off the procrastination itself until later. I've been meaning to try this, but haven't gotten around to it yet."swr
ArtisticFreedom.org (3.00 / 1) (#65)
by wedman on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 11:41:22 AM EST

Check out this site, set up for "home-grown wannabe composers".

~
DELETE FROM comments WHERE uid=9524;
Two alternatives to music theory. (4.66 / 3) (#73)
by Iesu II on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 12:08:49 PM EST

What you have presented as composition is really just music theory. There are, as several comments have already said more elaborately, zillions of ways to make music besides using music theory, and IMO it's somewhat misleading to impart such a narrow focus to an introduction to an extremely broad subject.

"Music theory", for musical bystanders, is the specific name of a method of analyzing music in terms of chords, melodies, and how they function. It assumes that your music uses melodies and chords that are derived from Western classical music. It can be applied with varying levels of nonsense to music that deviates from classical traditions.

I happen to like not using music theory at all. Some of my music has no notes, no melodies, no chords. Just sounds. So that's one alternative: to react to music theory by intentionally doing the opposite.

The other alternative to music theory, the one that most people go for, is to ignore it completely. Pick up a guitar. Learn some songs. Make up your own songs. Don't worry about whether your F chord is a I or an inverted IV or a subdominant of the relative minor. Just do stuff, and if you like it, probably some other people will too.

The reason I'm stating the obvious is to emphasize that music is for having fun. If music theory strains your brain and gets you down, just do something else and keep making music!

"avoid" note? (4.00 / 1) (#74)
by ocswing on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 12:28:25 PM EST

It's a very interesting article. Although the thought of music made by k5'ers scares me. The only thing I have an issue with is with making melody. I took Jazz theory for about 3 years and I always understood that the 4th in a major scale as an "avoid" note because it does not sound good. For a major scale it would be better to use the 1 5 and 7 or 6. Anyway I like how you introduced the concept of tension and resolution. That really is a key part to any melody. Waiting for the next one...

Don't forget the most overused chord progression i (4.00 / 4) (#77)
by E r i c on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 12:52:12 PM EST

G | Em | C | D

If I wanted to waste time I could name a dozen hit songs from the past few decades that use this.

I blame my past transgressions on Eminem's music. Reform number five is currently in progress.
Alternative guide for the musically challenged... (5.00 / 6) (#81)
by SIGFPE on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 01:22:24 PM EST

...who know some arithmetic.

Look, a note is a function with frequency f0. A chord is the sum of a bunch of such functions where the frequencies of the individual functions, f1,f2,... are connected by simple ratios that are (at least in western music) integer powers of the twelfth root root of two. The 'type' of the chord is a function of the ratios f1/f0,f2/f0,... and the chord is fully specified when the type and f0 is specified.

Rather than specifiy frequencies directly musicians use this brain dead notation based on letters.

  • An=440*2^(n-4)
  • Bn=440*2^(n-4+1/6)
  • Cn=440*2^(n-4+1/4)
  • ...
The bit that's brain dead is the fact that you can't predict the pattern. The fractions after the '-4' go up by either 1/6 or 1/12 in a non-predictable way. If the gap from one letter to the next is 1/6 and you need the note in between you can use the # or b operators (pronounced 'sharp' and 'flat', postfix notation). The former bumps the frequency up by 2^(1/12) and b is the inverse function.

Now an important property of music is that it has a degree of scale invariance. If you multiply the frequency of all the notes by a fixed frequency you get a similar piece of music (the key point is that it's still music due to some kind of frequency invariance going on in the ear-brain system). This is called transposition. Because transposition is such an important thing in music you'd thing that the music notation would reflect this. For example if you scale bf a factor of two An maps to An+1 and so on (I believe that's called transposing by an octave but try as I might I can't figure out where the oct- root in octave comes from because the number 8 doesn't appear anywhere in this operation). But if you transpose by 2^(3/12) say then because of the non-equal spacing of the letters you have to apply #'s and b's everywhere. What a mess.

(Actually the twelfth root of 2 thing is the easy version. pre-Bach they were ratios of small integers (apocryphally due to Pythagoras) making transposition a next to impossible task. Someone bright spark, probably an amateur mathematician, realised that this was pretty stupid and approximated these ratios with these powers of two. Unfortunately we're still stuck with the archaic notation.)

I could go on but I've other things to do. But I wish someone had given me a sensible introduction to music like this when I was a kid - I might be a successful rock star by now.
SIGFPE

Better more complete info (4.00 / 1) (#92)
by BOredAtWork on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 03:22:27 PM EST

Can be found here. Dansm's Acoustic Guitar page is quite possibly the best teach-yourself resource out there, period.

Music theory rules! (4.77 / 9) (#93)
by Khalad on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 03:24:09 PM EST

For me, theory is the underpinning of all of the music I write. I've never been able to adequately express how important I think knowledge of music theory is to composition.

The less you know about modes, scales, harmonic progression, and the like, the more limited you are. Not only in writing music, but also in listening. You simply cannot understand how much more enjoyment and fascination one can receive while listening to music if one understands the theoretical underpinnings of why something sounds good. It's not just that you understand the music better; it's also the fact that you can pick up on so many more subtleties.

The subtleties in music are what make it interesting, and are what keep me listening to an artist and not care a whit for most popular music. To the untrained ear, all kinds of things sound good, but you don't know why.

Oy, I know I'm sounding awfully elitist here, and awfully exclusionary. It's just that nothing riles me up like somebody asserting that music theory is unimportant, that it saps your soul and drains the meaning out of music, that trying to understand music on this level is stupid and unnecessary.

You'll hear people denouncing pop music left and right, but you'll never hear many people justify their animosity very well. For me, it comes down to the fact that most popular music is written in all the wrong ways, which means it's just rehashes of the same old musical tricks. I cringe when I hear a too-obvious V-I cadence. You can hear them coming a mile away, and they're just too obvious to be creative.

That's what uninteresting music boils down to... uninteresting musical ideas. 90% of songs don't break free of some combination of the I, IV, V, and vi chords. To make that concrete, Am-F-C-G would be one (the key is Am, though it is weak and could easily resolve to C as well); or G-C-D.

A V-I cadence sounds great, but if you can train your ear to recognize the sound it gets tedious to hear it so often. There are so many other interesting harmonic progressions. Not knowing music theory is to get stuck repeating the same old ideas because you don't know any better. That's why it matters to me—I can and have written stuff that just follows the established paths, and invariably people like it. I don't. To an untrained ear, most everything sounds good, which makes it hard to break new ground. Finding interesting notes outside of the established key is difficult if you don't know what you're doing. You end up just doing trial and error, playing random notes and chords hoping to find something interesting.

There's just so much great stuff outside of the normal diatonic scales and progressions that you don't know what you're missing if you don't try to learn about it all. You can change up your chords, break out of the key. Try modes other than major and minor; there are modes in between that are somewhat ambiguous, and modes even more "minor" than minor. Play with the harmonic and melodic minor scales. They let you resolve things nicely, at the expense of losing some of the minor tone. A V-i cadence (e.g. C-Fm) is probably the most satisfying cadence in existence.

Learn how to add tones to your chords, to thicken them up. Spice up that boring old G-C progression; try G7-C, G-Cm, G7sus4-C, G9-Cmaj7. If you haven't, play around with major 7 chords (e.g. Cmaj7 = C E G B). After that you can tack on other notes, which is the foundation of jazz. You know, those 9th, 11th, and 13th chords, with all their variations.

How about some other scales? The major scale is distinguished by its sharp resolution to the tonic, so if you stick to diatonic scales you'll always be stuck with that. Have you ever played around with the whole tone scale? Each note is a whole step away from its neighbors. Try C-D-E-F#-Ab-Bb. Or, similarly, a scale made of minor thirds (ever note three half steps apart), e.g. C-Eb-Gb-A. The former is quite exotic, while the latter is dark. Neither has any central tone.

Both of those scales have the interval C-F# (or C-Gb, same thing), which is called a tritone, or the devil's note. Why? Play it if you have an instrument available; it's dissonant, but not ear-bleedingly-so like a major 7th (C-B) or minor 2nd (C-Db). Music has tended to become more dissonant over the years as people became more and more used it. Long ago using a tritone interval was practically forbidden because of the dissonance. Now a lot of people use it to make music more interesting. For example, Metallica loves using a "flatted fifth" instead of the normal fifth, which is the backbone of the Enter Sandman riff. Jazz theory lets you make a tritone substitution: take a chord like G7 with a tritone (B-F). The tritone is what makes the G7-C progression sound so pleasant (the tritone B-F collapses into the more consonant C-E combination), so jazz players figured they were the only interesting notes. So, lose the G and D, leaving B and F, and substitute Db and Ab. Now you have Db-F-Ab-Cb, or Db7, as an alternative for G7. Try it out.

Most every great chord progression is characterized by notes moving in half-steps, which creates resolution from one chord to another. Like I said above, the canonical G7-C has B and F resolving to C and E, which are half steps apart. If you play around with this idea you can come up all kinds of great chord progressions. Tears in Heaven, which I'm sure you all know, has the chord progression F#m-C#-A7-F#-Bm-D/E-A. The chromaticism (half step movement) is so beautiful here, and I'll bet most people don't even notice it.

Music theory can become clinical, yes, but that should not be an indictment of learning about it. A good songwriter who learns music theory will be an even better songwriter. Theory helps you break into new musical territory, it lets you do something nobody's done before. Anybody can come up with a catchy hook; theory lets you flesh out that hook with a great song, and have people still listening to your music after the catchy part has lost its novelty.


You remind me why I still, deep in my bitter crusty broken heart, love K5. —rusty
In The Immortal Words of Frank Zappa... (4.50 / 2) (#98)
by Ricdude on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 04:35:36 PM EST

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture"

Fundamentally, either you like it or you don't. If learning the names for concepts you *can* figure out by ear (with enough work) helps you make better music or appreciate it better, more power to you. If it sounds like a bunch of pretentious crap, just listen to what you like, and don't worry why.

Hungarian Scale (not Hungarian notation) (4.00 / 1) (#101)
by maw on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 04:52:23 PM EST

One of my favourite scales is the Hungarian minor scale. In C, it goes C-D-Eb-F#-G-Ab-B-C. To me, it has a slightly creepy feel, similar to the melodic minor scale (probably due to the 3/2 step intervals).

(A submitted article about Hungarian notation reminded me of this scale.)
--

for the punkers: (2.50 / 2) (#111)
by auraslip on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 07:52:40 PM EST

If you play punk of some other music that uses power chords and almost nothing else here is some chords I managed to figure out that can be use like power chords but sound a lot more intresting:

-6- This one is a minor chord you can remove the
-1- the fifth most of the time
-3-

-6 This is a major chord, you can also remove the
-2 the fifth (# 6)
-3

-4 It's like a power chord, I have no clue what
-4 it's called, use it to build tension or if
-1 your not sure what chord to play(sounds bad on it's own)

-3 I dunnu, you can remove the fifth
-1
-1

-6 If you can play this you have big fingers,
-6 I'd say this was more major then neutral
-1

Ok this is some neat stuff I've learned in 2 years of trying to play punk.... and then I relized I don't want to play punk.
124
music isn't just harmony (4.50 / 2) (#113)
by chocolatetrumpet on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 08:16:06 PM EST

Music isn't just about functional harmony. If this sort of stuff excites you, then bravo - go for it. But if it doesn't, don't dispair - music is made of all kinds of sounds, and it's not just functional harmony that makes it interesting.

"If you are picking mushrooms to eat, you should not pick the deadly ones. However, there is no such thing as a deadly sound." - John Cage

Also, as pleasing as functional harmony can be, I think the music people most easily relate to is impressionistic music, where the goal is not so much a harmonic, rhythmic, or programmatic story as it is an atmosphere. Check out Debussy for some advanced non-functional impressionist techniques like planing, parallelism, quartal intervals, pedal bass, wide spacings, extended tertian chords, interesting tone colors, and best of all a powerful mood.

The truth is in the ice cream.

music theory (2.33 / 3) (#116)
by mikelist on Fri Apr 12, 2002 at 10:50:15 PM EST

I'm going to assume that it's just a page formatting thing, but the C major scale is: C(I), C#, D(II), Eb, E(III), F(IV), F#, G(V), G#, A(VI), Bb, B(VII), C(VIII). As long as everyone's on the same page here the rest of the text makes sense.

Theory is fine and all... (4.00 / 2) (#117)
by Chairman of the Republic on Sat Apr 13, 2002 at 12:15:45 AM EST

But too many people base their complete music structure around it, which results in an emotionless strcuture of a song. The best musicians I've heard know their music theory (People who say it's not necessary are only hurting themselves in the long run) but when it comes time to make their music, they forget every ounce of structure and let it flow as pure emotion out of their mind and body. They become the instrument, it represents them as a person. Of course they still operate on the basic rules of theory, but for the most part it's let go.

When I jam with people who operate on nothing but theory and interupt jam sessions stating someone is not following correct threory it's lame. When I see them improvising live and jamming using only theory, it's painful. The best musicians know their theory, and know when to let go of it.

There are no shortcuts (5.00 / 2) (#118)
by pedant on Sat Apr 13, 2002 at 12:47:26 AM EST

There are so many things I want to say about this column that it's difficult to know where to start. First, I'll just say that I don't know how helpful this is. As others have pointed out, there is more to composing than learning theory, and there is more to theory than learning about harmonic progressions.

The elements of music (more or less) are melody, harmony, rhythm, form, timbre, texture, and text. You should keep all of them in mind whenever you're composing anything. Handle them deliberately -- make sure you have a reason for every decision you make. Try to provide contrast; for instance, vary between thin and thick textures, consonant and dissonant harmonies, etc. This will make your piece more interesting (assuming that's what you want).

I think that most novice songwriters place too much emphasis on harmonic progressions (chord changes) and not enough on melody. Many wonderful songs have long passages with no chord changes whatsoever. But I often see beginners write songs that are nothing but chord changes, with the so-called melody never deviating from the roots of the chords. Chord changes can be interesting on their own, but not as interesting as chord changes with a great melody.

A working knowledge of music theory will make it much easier to write good music quickly. You will waste less time on trial and error. It doesn't necessarily have to be classical Western theory. But you should understand the idioms of whatever kinds of music you want to write, and have some way of codifying them. If you want to emulate someone else's sound, study their music as exhaustively as you are able. I once copied the entire orchestral score for "The Rite of Spring" note for note because I wanted to learn how to orchestrate like Stravinsky. I learned more doing that than I ever did in orchestration class.

Theory is important, but if that's all you use, it generally results in detached, impersonal-sounding music. So, equally important to theory, but more often overlooked, is basic ear training. You should never have to write a song just by banging out different notes or chords and seeing which ones sound good. You should be able to hear something in your head, and you should be able to translate what's in your head into some communicable form (words, sounds, or lines and dots on paper). Also, you should be able to look at something you may have written and imagine how it would sound. This will prevent you from writing purely from theory -- if you can hear it as you're writing it, you'll be able to tell which rules to apply for the better result.

And above all, WRITE. A lot. You wouldn't expect someone to write the novel of the century just because they got A's in English. Likewise, no matter how much you know about music theory, and no matter how good your ear is, your first composition is probably going to suck. But as with everything else, you will get better with practice.

Seriously Lacking (4.00 / 1) (#126)
by marktaw on Sat Apr 13, 2002 at 02:56:26 PM EST

Music theory is important. Writing music is a craft as much as it is an art, and to my mind this is where all the debate comes in. I don't know where inspiration comes from, but once you have the inspiration you need to have the skill to turn it into a song. The skill isn't words on a page, it's knowledge of music. We give things names so we can talk about them, but we shouldn't mistake the names (theory) for the things themselves. I might know that Am7 goes well with Cmaj (and that there's only 1 note difference between them), but can I hear what that progression might sound like? I'm not saying you can't make music without a strong knowledge of theory. I believe it was Irving Berlin (but I could be wrong, still one of the greats of this century) couldn't arrange music. He came up with lyrics and melodies and hired people to do the arrangements for him. He had a great ear for music, but didn't understand the theory at all. He once attended music school and said "This is rediculous, I could write dozens of songs in the time it takes to learn this." The world is also filled with natural talents that hear all this stuff and don't need it spelled out for them, but for those of us who do... well, let's just say the written word existed long before recorded sound or video so we needed a way to communicate our understandings from one generation to another. This article itself is lacking in many serious ways. For one thing, there's the glaring ommission of major/minor chords. He tells us F# is in G Major, but F# WHAT? (F# diminished, I believe). The A chord is in C major, true, but it's an A minor chord. Oh, and minor chords hould be notated with a lowercase letter. For the record a C major scale is : C major, d minor, e minor, F major, G major, a minor, b minor*. * not really, but you can fudge a little, B flat major might even work here. Oh, and what is a minor chord? Not that it'll make much sense if you don't understand chord construction, but it most likely has a flat third, and possibly a flat 6th and maybe a flat 7th, depending on your particular flavor of minor. Honestly, this article sounds like someone regurgitating something he read somewhere (or read in multiple places). I applaud his efforts to share his knowledge, but there are so many half truths here that I think an article like this will do more damage than good. I also wouldn't call this composition, it's some random music theory that won't help the budding composer much.

Shut up and listen! (4.00 / 2) (#135)
by exa on Sun Apr 14, 2002 at 04:21:48 PM EST

You're not gonna write a good song without a good ear, a good listening experience and inspiration. Heh, keep that in mind. Meanwhile, I should promote my band: Malfunction!
__
exa a.k.a Eray Ozkural
There is no perfect circle.

Introduction to basic music composition. Part one. | 142 comments (120 topical, 22 editorial, 0 hidden)
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