When I first started composing music there were two things that I found quite difficult (well, more than two but I'm only going to talk about two here). The first was the lack of fluidity that is a necessary part of the composing process. I didn't know how to capture musical ideas quickly in a way that also allowed me to play them again. For example, I could play a song while recording it with my iPhone but then when I listened to it again I could easily duplicate the melody but not the harmony. The second problem was knowing where to go next. I would be in the middle of writing what I felt was a great song and suddenly I'd finish a section and just have no idea what I wanted to do next.
It took some time, but eventually I began to find solutions to these problems. It helped a lot to just use a lead sheet format for notation at first and put the basic structure of a song in place (words, chords, melody). For vocal songs I always wrote the words first, and this provided a map for the music. For instrumental songs I originally just wrote the melody notes I was playing all as quarter notes and added chord symbols. Then I created a set of section by section audio recordings so I could listen to them later and figure out the rhythm. That allowed me to capture ideas quickly while composing, but it was still pretty difficult to figure out how to play sections of a song - especially after I hadn't worked on it for several weeks or months, as sometimes was the case. Later I started creating "placeholder" words for my original instrumental songs, or for introductions and transition parts. Seeing the words gave me a way to store the melody associated with those words in my brain (and I think it made my melodies more lyrical). The words I wrote could have been song lyrics, but I didn't refine them or spend a lot of time on them the way I would with actual song lyrics. I just made sure they had meter and rhyme and didn't worry about meaning, since they were just used as a mnemonic device to help me remember the melody. Once I figured out the melody to a section with placeholder words I would play it over and over again, and I'd also do an audio recording using the Voice Memos app on my phone just in case I somehow forgot it in spite of my efforts to memorize it. Most of the time I never needed to listen to that recording because having words was enough to help me remember the rhythm of the quarter notes I was looking at (that I hadn't bothered to turn into notes containing their actual rhythmic values). At that point I just used a pencil and a notebook with lined staff paper that I bought at music store for $3, and my written music was divided into phrases but not yet divided into measures (I hadn't even applied a time signature). I probably am just a slow learner, but for some reason taking as much time as it would require to write out the actual rhythms made the composition process very frustrating for me. It was kind of like saying, "Play the piano, which is fun, but stop every 30 seconds or so to do something that is NOT very fun and takes like 10 minutes. Oh and also if you have a really complex rhythm you probably won't notate it right anyway."
Over the years I continued to improve my site reading skills, and I learned how to transcribe piano music just by listening to it -- which was a very time-consuming process that taught me how to more accurately notate rhythms. I also purchased an iPad and in combination with a very useful app called Notion ($10 on the Apple store) I was able to notate music with a tool that could then play it back for me instead of just putting it on paper and hoping it was right. That way I was able to get instant aural feedback to tell me if I had correctly captured the musical idea I was trying to notate. It was a game changer for me, since I use my ear as a guide for much of my composing. In addition, I had purchased an electronic keyboard ($200) and a digital audio workstation program called Reaper ($60). This allowed me to play music in midi format and have it captured on a piano roll. In the past I had tried playing midi music directly into Sibelius ($400) with very disappointing results. Because I don't play like a robot, the software notated exactly what I played. If I paused a little before the downbeat on a particular measure, it would notate a 64th or 32nd rest and then if I held that note for the correct amount of beats at the end of that same measure it would have me crossing over into the next measure with a slur and a 64th or 32nd rest. Basically, it turned my music into uninterpretable garbage -- which really wasn't what I wanted. The piano roll, however, made a lot more sense to me (see example below):
By looking at the piano roll I knew exactly which notes I had played while recording and I could easily just listen to what I had recorded while watching the piano roll to identify the pitch and length of each note. It was MUCH better than having to listen to an audio recording and duplicate each sound with no visual assistance.
I wrote my first songs (sometimes on guitar and sometimes on piano) by coming up with a chord progression and then "finding" a melody that fit the chords, but later I tried composing melodies alone and then adding chords to them. This, in my opinion, produced a much better result as harmony became a slave to the more important element of melody rather than the other way around. For some reason I found it easier to sing the melody than to play it on piano, because when I played a melody on the piano I tended to follow familiar fingering patterns and get stuck in a rut. So I would sing a melody phrase by phrase into my recording device as I experimented with different vocal ideas. After I had sung all of the unique parts of the song (verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) I would then listen to it and notate the melody, adding chords to it afterwards. Since I am an imperfect vocalist, sometimes I found that my pitch would slide from one part of the song to the next. Usually I would fix this by keeping the song in the same key, but occasionally an accidental key change sounded okay so I left it in the final product. Finding the right chords to add to a melody requires a bit of music theory knowledge, such as knowing what key you are in and knowing the primary (I, IV, V, iv) chords for that key. It is also essential to know the various types of chord qualities (major, minor, dominant seventh, major seventh, augmented, etc.) and extensions (which are usually not essential at this stage of the composing process unless you are creating jazz music). It is also helpful to understand how chord functions work. For example. the IV and V7 chords lead back to the I chord, but the V7 chord leads more strongly than the IV chord. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, click here to read one of my previous blog entries about basic harmony.) And it's helpful to have a bit of knowledge about chord substitution to create a more unique and varied sound. For example, because the C chord and Am chord share two notes (C and E), these chords can sometimes be interchangeable. C and Em share the E and G notes and these chords are similarly interchangeable in certain cases. It is even possible to substitute a chord with something that isn't part of the primary key to create a unique harmonic effect.
When I first started writing music I kept it pretty much in the same key, as modulations were more advanced than my limited music theory knowledge. However, I studied the circle of fifths to learn how to make some key transitions and later I learned about pivot chords. Using a pivot chord, for example, I could be playing in the key of C and after playing the C chord I could play a Cm chord and the I was in the key of Eb. I also practiced various other key modulation techniques, sometimes using published sheet music as a guide.
Another thing that helped improve my songwriting/arranging/composing skills was a knowledge of structure (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus is one example). In instrumental music the "rules" of structure are a little different than in songs with vocals, but it's still important to follow some kind of structure with repeating patterns to hold the song together. At first glance this might not seem very important, but if you listen to an instrumental hit song from any genre (classical, jazz, pop, new age, etc.) you will be able to hear the form of the song and identify repeating sections. Repetition and motif variation are absolutely essential to effective instrumental music composing and arranging. As a general rule, though, I try to avoid EXACT repetition and always try to change something when a particular section is repeated in an instrumental work. It may be something as subtle as a change in volume or moving from one register to another, but SOMETHING has to be different - otherwise I'm are wasting my listener's time. Modern listeners have access to recorded versions of songs that they can play on demand and simply don't have the patience that listeners in the era before recording technology was invented might have had. Song structure is often the answer to the problem of wondering "where to go" with a song. When I got done writing my first section, I labeled it as the verse or chorus and then proceeded to create another section, labeled that one, decided if I wanted to repeat something I had previously written or composed a bridge of some kind, then threw it together and listened to the end result. If it was only 56 seconds long (as was often the case when I first started writing songs) then I started thinking of strategies that I could use to extend the sections and/or add new sections that still fit within the song structure (for example, and intro or outro or pre-chorus or second bridge). Sometimes I've written two different short songs and, unsure how to proceed with the composition, I've set them aside only to realize later that if I put the two songs together in a creative way then I was able to create a full-length song. Sometimes the only thing I could do was set a song aside for a while and continue to improve my general music skills. When I came back to it 5 months later I was often surprised by the new ideas and skills I was able to bring to the composition process.
I recently released my first album. It's called Christmas Notes and is available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Bandcamp. It took me about 4 months to arrange all 12 songs. Because I am so familiar with these Christmas tunes and have been hearing them my whole life, when I began arranging them I was able to play the melodies without any music in front of me. I was then able to experiment with the left-hand chords to get the harmonic texture that I wanted, and for the first several songs I simply wrote the chords above the lyrics so I'd remember them. Then I used an app called Notion on my iPad to write down the melodies and chords for each song, adding intros, transitions, conclusions, etc. I also created new melodies and wove them into the existing melodies in various ways. Sometimes my new melodies were based on the same harmonic chord pattern as the original song (a common jazz improvisation technique) and sometimes they featured completely new harmonic structures and time signature and/or key changes. After a while I skipped the lyric/chord process altogether and just started using Notion from the beginning to notate the melody and chords. I added a bass clef line to my music but I left most of the measures blank (which allowed me to later fill in those parts as I played the song and determined what notes I liked best). However, if there was something in particular that I really wanted to do a certain way with my left hand (such as a "walking" bass line or a chord inversion) I would notate that part of the bass clef and follow it. In some of the songs I also added fills that I never really wrote out -- I just played them by ear during the recording process. The result of this was that I knew essentially what notes to play but also had the creative freedom to make adjustments to the songs along the way rather than notating them in a more precise manner (which might have kept me from more fully developing them prior to recording them).
As strange as it might sound, mistakes play an important role in my composition process. As I'm playing along and make a mistake I might discover that I like the mistake I made better than what I had originally written and I can make adjustments accordingly. (An example of this is playing a note that is NEAR the actual note I wanted to play and then moving up or down to the note I originally intended; such a movement can create a very pleasing effect.)
I'm currently working on my second album and am going to be adding parts for instruments other than piano. This has required adding an additional step to my composing and arranging process. I've arranged one song so far and am working on my second. For the first song I made a piano arrangement including the melody and chords (similar to what I did for my Christmas album), then I printed sheet music and marked up the parts I wanted the piano to play and which parts I wanted the other instrument to play (and which parts would feature both instruments together). After that I downloaded the FL Studio app ($20) from the Apple Store. I painstakingly entered the notes from my lead sheet into FL studio and added a "placeholder" chord accompaniment. Then I went section by section whenever there was a duet featuring both instruments and experimented with potential harmony notes by using the virtual keyboard included in the app (while listening to the other instrument and placeholder chord accompaniment). This allowed me to use my ear to create more flowing harmonies than I would have been able to do by using my knowledge of music theory alone. Which brings up an important point: it's great to be an expert in music theory, but that will only help with the "craft" part of composing and arranging. When it comes to the more artistic elements, I ultimately let my ear be my guide. I've been listening to music your whole life and I know what is and isn't good when I hear it.
I'm sure there are much better and more efficient ways to compose than the ones I have been using, and I have no doubt that I will eventually discover them. However, I am not worried about efficiency at the moment. I'm composing songs, I'm learning and growing, and that's what really matters to me.
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