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Forums > C64 Composing > Composing music in general, techniques, hints and tips

2011-02-10 11:46

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Composing music in general, techniques, hints and tips

What I really miss is a topic about music composing in general. If I haven't found an existing topic regarding this, but if we have any, let me know about it.
(There are many topics in Composing section, thanks god there's a good seraching engine. However it would be great to have more categories inside 'Composing' for easier browsing.)

I want to start this topic about the music composition itself, which is always a mystic topic and there's no real perfect method of teaching it in schools even nowadays.
On one hand this is the beauty of composing, that it cannot be described consciously in its entire form, and one can never say he learned everything.

I want to write a book/article in the future about the logic and lexical knowledge behind music composition, as there aren't a lot of comprehensive books or webpages that give us a complete picture and directions to improve.
One good (and possibly a standard) is Arnold Schoenberg's 'Fundamentals of Musical Composition', which gives a lot of understanding to composition itself (not music theory!).

If you have knowledge and experiences which you want to share with composers all around, feel free post your replies into this topic... and at the end we will have something at CSDB which will be a guide to refresh the spirit and knowledge of musical composition.

What this topic would exclude:
-The music theory (literature about chords, staff, etc..) - many books and videos can be found all around on the net.
-The use of trackers and analog synthesis techniques of SID, which is another topic, bit related of course...and has been discussed already afaik.

I'm looking forward your contributions with tips as well as questions/replies - discussions :)

Hermit Software Hungary

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2011-02-13 13:55

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351

Quote:

We can and should continue with a different matter. But please take the point that, even more under the circumstances cited above, I really do consider it important, not just a notational formality.

Seems to me that especially piano- and keyboard players like to forget that c# isnt db - if you switch to guitar and start studying some classical pieces you will notice it right away, you must tune your guitar differently for different scales /o\

2011-02-13 14:27

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

I'm back.
(About equally tempered scales and 'enharmonic' notes: It was simplified even on keyboards, so coders of C64 trackers may have easily missed existence of distinct flat notes. BTW, as far as I remember, I've read about flat notes in a help, but don't remember which, maybe it was JCH's Editor...maybe the next step in composer tools will be some feature for 'real pitch' flat notes...who knows.)

I have a clue about the next topics, as I have a sketch already about the theme what we could cover..moment.
In the beginning of this topic I tried to start from the basic knowledge about music, now we have to go more specific. BTW, if you don't mind at least in some keywords I'll summarize what can generally be covered before going deeper in music elements (many of these has been covered already):

a. Some words about our existence, purpose of life, our associative brain and what emotions are, the target audience, the comfort/pleasure/mood what music can cause in listeners, interest as such.

b. Composer's life and will to create beauty for ourselves and others, aiming for (unreachable) perfection, unconsciousness vs consciousness, alcohol and sleep and meditation, variety/diverse/unique vs boring, creating new unique things. Intuition, listening, inspiration, talent, strong will to learn, need for notation and theory, cooperation, traditions, styles/genres, taking time for music, ear training, inner ear, polyphonic hearing, improvisation. Today's rushed world, lack of time, honesty to ourselves, objective sense of reality, form and content, forgetting and maintaining musical knowledge...

c. Trying to define what music really is, maybe language of emotions, from noise through rhythm to music, physics and physical/biological/emotional impact of sounds, dimensions in music.

d. Logical system of music, form vs content, construction and building blocks of a piece. Scale, melody, Phrase, motive, variation, sequence, theme, musical sentence. Intro, verse, bridge, riff, choir, climax, outro... Texture, instrumentation and orchestration, mixing...

As it is seen above, we have many interesting topics here that can be discussed. From this point I would go forward with the concrete ideas on how to start and continue a music. btw, any ideas from the other topics are still very welcome.
My plan is to continue discussion about creation of a melody or theme, which is very good start IMO, but usually (for me at least) is the hardest thing to do well.
As Rambones said, learning and well using scales can be a really good start for melody construction.
...coming back soon :)

2011-02-13 15:04

jssr67
Account closed

Registered: Jan 2011
Posts: 33

Quote:

maybe the next step in composer tools will be some feature for 'real pitch' flat notes

In my (non-C64) tool under development, scales are to be freely definable, and well-tempered is only default as a convenience feature.

And since I am thinking about rewriting my lost C64 music compiler, I may add the same feature.

2011-02-14 19:39

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

ok about structure, i feel that tune that are remembered well, but are not too repetitive are made like this:

intro of material, iterattion of this material (variation), intro of new matarial, combination of the 2 parts of material that was introduced, some main theme, and ending with flashbacks to key elements.

as for structure, if you can introduce a bit new material all the time, and keeping a main form, the tune wont be repetitive, and even when it has a main theme, it will still morph in a way. so it becomes a themed evolution, that reaches some logical conclusion.

in the build and build for ever style i can mention trance, psytrance etc. its all new material, neverending, and somhow logically it always peaks around at 7 minutes, whereafter you have to build down and end it, or else the listener becomes bored :D

2011-02-14 19:45

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11351

yeah thats trance... it builds up for ever and never goes anywhere =)

as for song structure, i like the classic verse/refrain/verse/refrain/bridge/verse/refrain idea - even more if there is some good old halftone scale switching involved too. somehow every good "pop" song is exactly this way :)

2011-02-14 19:47

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Soooo...Melody Construction (short melodies for phrases, motives) ---in an extra long reply :)
(Sorry guys still staying at melody construction, I just see you went to the structuring, but I wrote this long reply just now, and it may be helpful for beginners.)

Until now we have discussed many basic things which helps to think and live like a composer.

This can be a very good basic to continue with melody construction topics. First with single melodies, motives, phrases.

Phrases are the smalles structural melodic elements of music. They has a certain completeness with a punctuated end. In homophonic music, the content is concentrated into the main solo voice.

Forgive me, but my aim is to define as many procedural steps in composing as possible. This can be helpful for beginners to start composing, and for advanced composers to stabilize/improve their abilities. For example when we occasionally run out of idea, some aid can be good.

WARNING: FOLLOWING GIVEN PROCEDURES STRICTLY CAN HARM YOUR CREATIVITY!!! YOU MAY LOSE YOUR OWN IDEAS AND UNIQUITY IF YOU JUST FOLLOW ME AND DON'T PLAY AROUND A BIT! :)

A little feedback wold be good from people who read this thread, whether you like it, and would like to continue with something. Questions are welcome too.

So, let's construct a phrase/motive/theme melody:

-------------------------------------------------

When we construct a melody, we do many things in parallel. The most important thing is to keep in mind, what we want to express (a theme with feelings). Everything else must be only technical knowledge, what we have to adjust to the theme.

-The melody can not only be a solo voice, but even bass, and a pedal-tonic counterpoint (simply repeated most of times, not moving with chord progression).

-Sometimes we make conscious, logical steps, sometimes unconscious steps driven by just intuition and feel (very important). The ratio depends on composing skills and attitudes. (Listening music contributes to the unconscious part.)

If we hear a given chord progression, it's sometimes easier to invent a good melody. We can use it as an aid to get into mood.

-The melody is constructed from pitches distributed in time rhythmically. They have pitch and rhythm and dynamics (strong/mid/weak velocity/loudness). These are elements what we can play with. We'll see some examples later.

-There are many methods to start, let's see some what I collected. I gave them names:

a.'First Thought method': This is the case, when ideas just come into our mind anytime. Most often without chords in the background. If we feel them good, record them as fast and precise as possible. The good thoughts can vanish and get distorted easily otherwise. Then we use these good ideas as a supply, maybe some modifications are needed, but usually too much modifications can distort them. They are usually complete forms, our brain did the work.

In the past I mostly had a bassline as a first thought, nowadays I have more lead ideas as first thought. As soon as you have the melody, you can go forward supporting it with bass, drum, chords, etc.

b.'Sculpture' method: I named it, because it's similar to make a sculpture out of a raw material, and end up with a complete form at the end. This may be good for beginners, because the work is done gradually, complicating the melody step-by-step. I tried it once, and seemed to work...you can listen the melody constructed this way in SRA Music collection's outro.

This method should start with a chord in a given key, or a chord progression which can be a typical progression of a music style or an entirely new own progression. Then we take the solo instrument, and add just simple notes to all chords, without rhythm. Easy first step, because we only have to place notes which may be chord notes, or other notes which aren't so dissonant to the chord.

Then we can complicate the melody by adding some more notes inbetween, e.g. passing notes and auxiliary notes. At the same time be careful to always follow the theme, and don't add too much variety. We will complicate parets until we get to a comfortable and various enough melody...some extra here and there (e.g. portamento, vibrato..), and we have something...

c.'Timeline' method: Better if we start with a chord progression or a rhythmic musical base, later we can alter it to the new ideas. I used this method most often in my SID composition. Similar to the 'first thought' method, but here we have a given base. I just listen to the given musical base, and thinking around what I would hear here and there (sometimes even have ideas after stopping the base). As soon I have a good idea, I try to input the data without any mistakes.

But sometimes the random mistakes in the typing lead me new ideas, usually dissonances, which are good but need to be resolved by consonances soon. Sometimes the mistyping leads me to transposition, or sometimes to completely new feelings, mood-switching, which should be good. At these points I adjust the bassline and chords to the new idea. I noticed many times, in music changes and complete altering of directions are very good tools to keep interest.

But after such changes don't forget to come back to the basic ideas...sometimes music can be left opened, but in most cases we close songs similarly as we opened them. This method is nearly linear, we start from nothing, and increase the length of a piece.

If you have other methods, you can describe them, we may learn about each other a lot, if we tell how we usually compose. I'm sure, most of us have favourite processes to compose melodies.

All of these methods has common points: What we can do to colourize/complicate a simple melody to cause interest and beauty? Good to see/know them all time, so we have a set of tools to play with:

a. Adding basic chord notes (tonic, 3dr, 5th, octave) - always a safe point, they will sound good, not dissonant. Can be in ANY ORDER, which can increase variety. Arpeggios are good tools if they're slow enough to call them melody.

b. Adding non-chordal/nonharmonic notes:

-Every notes in a scale has a degree of 'dissonancy' - you can see tips how dissonance is measured nowadays:

http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/consdiss.htm

Dissonance needs to be resolved, otherwise it will lead to nothing and will give incomplete feel. Using it well gives variety.

-We can add even 7ths and 9ths, etc., they are in the pleasant harmonic series. But sometimes they are more dissonant to the tonic or the rest, and careful placement is required. However in bass melody adding major 7ths can be a good point if handled well.

-Pentatonic/blues/modal (monor/major) scales are easier to define for a chord, chromatic/wholetone/diminished scales have to be used carefully, with taste.

-Passing notes are usually a minor 2nd away from the tonic, and are good tools as a last note before a greater music element (phrase/progression, etc.) starts again. Passing tones can sign a change/turnover, and prepare us to a change/turnover that will come soon...

-Auxiliary notes

-etc...you can find a complete list about usage of non-chordal notes here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonchord_tone

c. techniques on all 12 notes (chromatic scale) - e.g. glissando

d. Adding intonation modifications - Vibrato and Portamento - they are very important effects to colorize a melody. They emphasize parts with pitches, unlike dynamics (emphasizes by volumes).

e. Adding rhythm: Rhythm can give a style and character to the melody, and time signature has to be in connection with dynamic. Triolas and rhythm breakings are good colorizing effects.

f. Game with dynamics: If dynamics are tweaked compared to the normal/natural form, we talk about syncopation, a good colorizer, especially in base rhythm.

g. Game with timbres: A good instrument can express the feeling some melody better. It's a whole topic called orchestration, may be covered later. But good to know, tweaking with tones/timbres (modes) of a single instrument (articulations) is a good way to express feelings, just as vibratos/dynamics.

The elements in this list are possibly enough to select from, when we want to create a good theme melody or solo. However always keep in mind to follow them in a right way, to strengthen the feeling what you want to express, and not to overuse them. For example, vibrato is something, what has the right place, and you don't have to vibrate every longer notes.

I have two plans, if people are interested, to show some practice like Rambones did... I'll try to do some melodies with the 3 methods, and release the phases of the construction. What more, we may start a contest by someone is giving up a chord progression, and we'll try to create a melody on that.

Anyway, we will need a discussion about creating chord progressions, which is a bit simpler procedure IMO, of course it may vary person-by-person...

My other plan for the future is to investigate, discuss masterworks of good composers together. Fortunately there is a homepage (http://soundcloud.com), where we can upload mp3, and people can leave notes in the different parts (times) of the music. We can put notes there for e.g. what technique was used at a given point, what makes the tune so good.

Still other good point could be to have the great C64 composers involved into this thread, and ask them about their experiences in their music composition carrier. I usually read about lives of great composers, and a lot of things can be understood by that way (E.g. John Williams had worked for U.S Air Force, and interestingly he had great success composing movie tracks with flying scenes, like E.T., Superman, etc.)

This is all for now...it's much text, but hopefully has an useful content. This is how I see music on melodic part...

If you read through it, I'm interested in your opinion or more ideas/methods of composing a basic melody (phrase/motive).

As soon as we have discuss writing basic motive melodies, we will go onto continuation to variations, motive-forms, and larger musical elements, sentences, sequences.

But first discuss basic melody creation a bit, and investigate around with given examples...

2011-02-14 19:57

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

i would call for some theory exploration, to all active sid makers.

lets try a simple thing, and upload example tunes.

lets try to make music based on intervals. ?

for example: C-D# or C-E
its just an example.

diss chords, and go 2-finger chords (intervals), and experiment and rape the ass out of it, lets get some tunes done this way.

as for target audience, i have to say, i have none.
i am exploring myself and my ideas, trying to recreate the extremely wonderful music i hear in my dreams, and which are so hard to get into the real world.
making music is self exploration to me, not fulfilling other peoples wishes.

2011-02-14 20:31

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

ok Hermit i will catch your ball.
basic melody creation.

i recommend humming some small melody, then try playing it on a kb, and developing it a bit with ideas that pop into mind.

3-5 tones are enough.

you will do an example ?
i will try also, after i get some sleep.

2011-02-14 20:34

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

@Rambones:
I'm up for a little practice of creating melody and music step-by-step, and sharing the construction phases and playing with given techniques...
Just let's negotiate, which tracker to use for this aim. I see you prefer SDI, and I prefer GT, because I don't really know SDI yet, but in case I'll hopefully be able to learn using it very soon...
Or, if it's OK to introduce our ideas with MIDI files, there won't be issues caused by different music editor systems...

Anyway. I think we shouldn't upload/release the half-made examples first onto CSDB, because it would create a mess here. We should share the ideas first just as a link to our own webpages/web-storages.
Then, when we have complete set of 'theory' lessons, we can upload them together at CSDB... no category like 'music composition examples', but hopefully won't be a problem if we upload them simply as 'C64 music'.

So, which tracker or option would you prefer?

(P.S: This English language is very interesting. Many call pitches 'notes', many call them 'tones', however 'tone' can be a synonym for 'timbre'...way confusing, Isn't it? :):)

Hermit Software Hungary

2011-02-14 21:35

jssr67
Account closed

Registered: Jan 2011
Posts: 33

To hermits long post:
Quote:

A little feedback wold be good from people who read this thread, whether you like it, and would like to continue with something. Questions are welcome too.

OK, I'll give it a try... a bit late but I have to work again this week, so time is limited.

Quote:

When we construct a melody, we do many things in parallel. The most important thing is to keep in mind, what we want to express (a theme with feelings). Everything else must be only technical knowledge, what we have to adjust to the theme.

No objection.

Quote:

sometimes unconscious steps driven by just intuition and feel (very important).

true.
Quote:

(Listening music contributes to the unconscious part.)

...with the dangers I indicated earlier.

Quote:

If we hear a given chord progression, it's sometimes easier to invent a good melody. We can use it as an aid to get into mood.

Actually, I often started with chords+rhythm in mind, not melody. Just because as you said, these tend to give a basis for the transported mood.

Quote:

-The melody is constructed from pitches distributed in time rhythmically. They have pitch and rhythm and dynamics (strong/mid/weak velocity/loudness). These are elements what we can play with. We'll see some examples later.

...and not to forget, depending on the instrument (especially if it is voice), sound "colour" (spectral aspects). This factor is often neglected but indeed sometimes an important factor.
Quote:

a....
b....
c....

I would not say this is a "EOR" situation. Usually these things combine through evolvement of a new piece of music.
Quote:

a. Adding basic chord notes (tonic, 3dr, 5th, octave) - always a safe point, they will sound good, not dissonant. Can be in ANY ORDER, which can increase variety. Arpeggios are good tools if
...
Dissonance needs to be resolved, otherwise it will lead to nothing and will give incomplete feel. Using it well gives variety.

Basic element of many rules, but nevertheless in its absolute way untrue. Many good pieces of music live from special effects of unresolved dissonance or "pseudo-(dis)harmonics". It is more difficult to exploit though, than to be on the safe side you indicate...
Quote:

-We can add even 7ths and 9ths, etc., they are in the pleasant harmonic series. But sometimes they are more dissonant to the tonic or the rest, and careful placement is required. However in bass melody adding major 7ths can be a good point if handled well.

In my earlier times I even liked to exploit "9-" and "4+"-interval sounds. Or "3-"-cascades. It needs some experiment to find out when it is appropriate to use these "harmonics rules violations" though. It should not be overused, that is certainly true. It also is a matter of genre, possibly. What I described is more to be found in expressionism, progressive rock/- metal or jazz, than in baroque or pop.

Quote:

e. Adding rhythm: Rhythm can give a style and character to the melody, and time signature has to be in connection with dynamic. Triolas and rhythm breakings are good colorizing effects.

OK, as a "progressivist" I'm out here. For me, breaking rhythm is more the rule than the exception, and rhythm is so essential that I cannot "add it later" :-)
Quote:

g. Game with timbres: A good instrument can express the feeling some melody better. It's a whole topic called orchestration, may be covered later. But good to know, tweaking with tones/timbres (modes) of a single instrument (articulations) is a good way to express feelings, just as vibratos/dynamics.

Here you have it, but I considered it more important so I pushed it up. Consonant-richness, Diphtong play... (which is what you indicate here, for the instrument "voice") add so much to the nature of a song that starting to think about it when you're here is a bit late.
Quote:

Anyway, we will need a discussion about creating chord progressions, which is a bit simpler procedure IMO, of course it may vary person-by-person...
My other plan for the future is to investigate, discuss masterworks of good composers together. Fortunately there is a homepage (http://soundcloud.com), where we can upload mp3, and people can leave notes in the different parts (times) of the music. We can put notes there for e.g. what technique was used at a given point, what makes the tune so good.

OK from my side. I really like to learn what others find makes up musical gems.

Edit: If I shall give C64 examples at any time, it will take me some time. I never was used to another music software than my own, and that is 23+ years ago and no longer available. I want to rewrite it, but surely not within days, as it had quite some features.
My player routine is still available in one SID that survived because I sent it in with a small contribution to a contest, but the high level music language compiler that created the data parts is vanished completely :-( ... which in total means, I would either have to wait weeks/months with my examples, compose in a tool that I don't know the details of, or hand out the editing to someone who is faster in one of the existing tools.

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