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Recently I have been getting questions from people interested in improving their composition skills. Specifically I am being asked how to go about writing a tune, a melody or a chord progression that sounds good. I have considered the questions deeply over the past few months. I have analyzed my own particular approach to writing a tune and gathered my own thoughts on the subject here.
As a disclaimer, keep in mind that as a self taught composer my views do not necessarily correlate to the kinds of music theory one could learn in a college music course. These are simply my views which are subject to change as I learn more. As far as I have come to this day, my knowledge and understanding has worked for me, but it is also subject to change as I continue to learn.
Having made my disclaimer, I will now share part of my current knowledge and experience. I only hope that this will be of some benefit to someone.
Rules of Thumb
Over the years I have learned that there are certain rules of thumb which apply when trying to compose music. Like any rules, these can be stretched, or they can be broken completely, but the further away from these generally established norms you stray, the less likely it is that your composition will gain wide acceptance.
The entire musical universe is so large and complex there is no easy way to cover all aspects in such a short essay. There are technical composition issues such as which notes work well together and in sequence. There are personal issues such as what purpose does the composer have in constructing a piece. There are issues surrounding the social environment into which you will be delivering your piece. All of these issues will have an effect at many different levels, and the effect will change over time as the personal, technical and social factors evolve.
The general principles which apply to composing a good tune are akin to the general principles that apply to raising a child or taking a good photograph. No one can say that you must do something in a definite way every time without fail, because the situation is always different. The child never acts to our exact expectations in exact circumstances, the sun never throws light on our subject at exactly the same angle, color and brightness, and the musical note reaches a different mind every time it is played.
Therefore the science of studying and creating rules for musical composition is never fixed in stone. There are always new ways of expressing feelings through sound. Given the ever changing nature of musical expression, it may seem ridiculous to attempt to extract tangible principles from such a turbulent medium, but by making some simple comparisons we can see that doing so is possible, and makes a lot of sense.
If we compare the science of music to quantum science, with current understandings and tools it is impossible to state with 100% certainty where a sub atomic particle will be at a given moment of time. However by applying abstract rules and formulas it is entirely possible to determine the probability of said particle being in an area at any moment in time, and by using this abstract knowledge is becomes possible to engineer desirable results.
As with music, there is a degree of uncertainty when trying to determine the “correct” series of notes to achieve a desired result. For any moment of time in a composition, the composer has an infinite number of notes and sounds they can choose to use. Luckily there are abstract understandings, formulae and rules which will increase the probability that the composer will compose a piece that achieves their desired result.
Musical Relativity
In simple physics, the concept of relativity underlies all observations. For example, saying that the Earth is floating in space doesn’t tell us much about where we are. It is only when we see the relative position of the Earth to the Sun, the Sun to the Milky Way, and so on, that our location in the universe has a meaning.
This applies in much the same way to music. The laws of relativity affect all musical “observations” (or listenings, to be more accurate). From the technical structure of a piece, to the emotional and social environment into which the piece is delivered, relativity is at work.
Technically, a musical note by itself is just a sound. Just hearing one note tells us nothing about the meaning of that note. A single note only has a meaning when it is listened to relative to the other notes in a musical sequence.
If we look at a single bar of music, all of the notes are relative to each other. By changing the position or sound of just one note in the bar, the musical meaning of the bar also changes. Taking this even further, the following bar of music is directly affected by the notes in the first. The third bar inherits its meaning from the second, and so on.
It is easy to see how changing a single note in a composition can alter the entire feeling of the piece. One “bad” note can make a whole composition sound “bad”.
From the moment we are born our mind develops to interpret sound from the environment around us. One of the major influences in this development is language. At first speech may seem to be random noise coming from strange looking “big people”, but we quickly learn in our first few months of life to interpret the incoming sound over a period of time, which gives it meaning. Our mind becomes geared towards interpreting sound as something which has meaning over time, and this is a major factor in why the meaning music gives to the listener is highly dependent on the sequence of sounds which came before and the anticipation of those which will follow.
However, relativity affects more than just the technical structure of a composition. The listener exists in an environment filled with music of all styles of composition. Certain styles will be more popular and widely listened to than others at a given moment of time. How a composition is perceived by the listener is relative to all other compositions to which the listener has been exposed to.
The listener is also influenced by their emotional and physical situation, so factors such as war, poverty, economic success, health, relationships, politics and work (to name but a few) will all affect how a piece of music is perceived. While every individual will have a different set of circumstances, if you observe and seek to understand the trends in the majority of people, you can develop a sense of the average listener. By understanding the mind of the average listener, and by understanding how a composition will be perceived relative to the mind of the average listener, it is possible to compose accordingly.
Tastes in music may vary from person to person, different styles of music have different structures and new technologies may create different sounds for us to arrange in our compositions but the law of musical relativity is universal.
In Practice
In practice, the composer should first establish a purpose for creating a piece. For example if the purpose is to appeal to a wide audience, logically the composer should seek to understand the audience. The composer should study the music their target audience enjoys, sample the lifestyle of their target audience, socialize with the target audience, gauge the feelings, desires and needs of the listener to build a framework of understanding upon which to construct music which will appeal to the listener.
Quite simply, if the purpose is to evoke a desired emotional response in the listener, then a composer must know their listener and know how to communicate to them with music, because the musical composition is relative to the listener. Music only gains meaning in relativity to a listener and the meaning a composition gains is imparted only by the listener, which is why it is important to understand the listener.
Writing music goes way beyond the technical structure of a composition, as I hope I have illustrated. Everything in music is relative, from the notes in sequence to the other compositions people are listening to, to the actual mind of the listener at the moment they hear the composition.
Learning to use the tools of music is, I believe, the easy part of the game. Anyone can learn to swing a hammer just as anyone can learn how to arrange notes on graph paper or in a digital sequencer. Learning to write music that other people can enjoy means understanding other people, what makes them tick, who they are, the world they live in, current trends, cyclic paradigm shifts, and so on.
In Conclusion
This is a learning journey that never ends, and I enjoy every moment of it. My purpose in creating music is to get a reaction from the people who listen to it, and I have found that as my understanding of people expands, my ability to reach out and touch people emotionally with music has also expanded.
I have been asked how to compose a good tune. I could have written this article as a tutorial on what notes to use, what structure, what scales, modes and keys to compose with, but there are hundreds of pages on the internet that offer exactly that.
My firm belief is that the theory of musical structure is only a part of the equation when it comes to writing good music. More importantly, in my opinion, the composer should seek to constantly expand their understanding of the environment into which they will be delivering their music in order to fulfill their purpose and achieve their desired results.
If you want to write good music, you have to understand what “good” is, and the meaning of good depends entirely on your listener, and what you wish to achieve. |
