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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

2011-02-10 17:41

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

The very basic question should be IMO what musical knowledge is needed for people to compose masterpieces. Let's consider it as an opening topic.

My point of view was for long time that the theoristic approach to composition can lead someone to compose more conscious rather than moody pieces. That's why I tried to use as few lexical/theoristical knowledge (e.g. chords) as possible.
That was a mistake, I was wrong, because there is very slow improvement if there is any, when someone just wants to use own inner intuition. At least a lot of impressive music must be listened in that case, to hear some idea inside when it's time for composing.

After a while I found out that gathering as many information about music (as a 'science') is very important to get into picture about how things work, in shorter time, say some years. (And of course this knowledge should be used in practice, not only in theory, hopefully we can agree on it.)
Music Theory is something that has logical part, what we should understand after all, and usually learning basic literature (the lexical part) can lead to the better understanding of logic, not the other way around.
The problem with that is, many many reading and listening is required (depending on different people's talent) to get into a state where we can say most of the relations are understood.

Therefore I started thinking about writing a book which collects the logic (such as Schoenberg's) and then gives some lexical examples in the other half, which can be investigated for occurences of logical elements.
Composers' discussion can lead to have a knowledge base here, which can discuss music composition logic from different views.

The beautiful thing about this is, that our brain starts to solve problems at composition time fairly unconsciously, what means we don't have to follow procedural points one-by-one to compose. In other words, we learn many things, and then we have to forget all of them when it's time of creation...we will build them into our work without extensively thinking about them all time. We can concentrate on the art and our brain will find the good solution when times of decisions come.

So, the first question is: Do you as a composer have opinion which of music theory or composing logic or intuitions/feelings contribute stronger for masterpieces?
(And if not only one aspect is the most important in itself, which are important too and why?....)

In any way the most important overall aspect might be to take our time (either by reading, listening, practising, meditating, whatever) when we want to become a good composer, if we really want that from vein.
(I'd say that composition skill -including one's set of own ideas and tools- is also something that can diminish over time without practice, and should be maintained and expanded regularly to be kept in shape.)

2011-02-11 01:50

The Phantom

Registered: Jan 2004
Posts: 360

Great subject BTW..

Close to 4 years ago, I learned how to play an electric guitar. The guy that sold me the guitar, gave me a free 30 minute "lesson". He was also a music teacher, so perhaps it was his method of teaching that made me understand how the guitar works.

In this 30 minute lesson, I learned how to read music, write music and play.

Over the last 2 years, I've grown more into my acoustic guitar. I've flipped through various books on how to play, researched the tabs I wanted to play, even downloaded videos on how to play better. Months went by and I started playing a bit more, learning my own chords and finally coming into some sounds that sounded sweet. I went with it and composed a couple songs that I would really love to bring to the c64.

My issue is I have no clue where to begin. Is it even possible to translate acoustic guitar on c64? Will the sound still be there? Are the notes the same in whatever editor I choose to use?

For the last year, I've wanted to put these songs in my head into another medium, such as the c64, but again, without EVER composing on c64, I have no idea where to start or even if it's possible.

So good questions for me would be where to start, how to translate, what is the best editor to use and what editors to stay away from. What about things to NOT do when working in an editor? Is it as simple as putting in the notes I have written down, or do I have to learn a whole new music system?

Those are the things that have kept me from even attempting, it's not that it scares me, it's just not knowing where to start.

2011-02-11 07:13

Radiant

Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 639

The Phantom: Notes are notes; they're always called the same (more or less). Composing on/for the C64 has more in common with playing on a keyboard than guitar though, but the differences are quite small (I taught myself how to play the piano helpfully in less than a month just by tinkering, after having played guitar for a year). You don't even need to know how to play to compose, it just helps to have an understanding of how the notes are laid out.

2011-02-11 07:37

Radiant

Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 639

When I write music I sometimes have a mathematical idea that I want to put into practice, like "what if I keep going down four half tones" which quickly became Cloud Castles, and other times I just sit down and start experimenting with rhythms (Iron Forge). In my opinion if you want to expand your understanding of rhythm and composition and how to go beyond the standard four by four formula, the best way to do so is to listen to a lot of progressive music - artists like King Crimson, Meshuggah, The Mars Volta, Tool... you get the idea, and start imitating sections of their music.

With all the tunes I do that people actually like I always have a vision, either already when I start or after I've done the first few seconds - a kind of picture I want to paint in the listener's mind, if you like. This vision is often reflected in my song titles, and dictates the feeling that guides me when I'm composing the rest of the tune. Once that vision is in place the tune often "writes itself" in my head as I go along, something which I can only attribute to having listened to lots and lots of different kinds of music throughout the years.

Edit: Bottom line; listen to music. Lots of music, from different genres, and listen actively and analyze what they're doing.

2011-02-11 10:10

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

It's great to see replies, that means it's not an off-topic topic at CSDB :)

This guy, who sold the guitar must have had to be really aware about what he's doing, as he could teach many things in 30 minutes :)

The main question was here that where to start, and what directions to take, after we started, and still have the interest to continue.

There seem to be many approaches for music composition, one is using an instrument as an aid, and then expanding the arrangement.
However, until a certain professionalism, when one writes music on an instrument, it will resemble that instrument in the composition, because our hand will conduct our thoughts back and forth.
I prefer keyboard when I compose, as there are less restrictions for notes, and it's possible to think more universally than on other, harder instruments, like guitar. And the other good thing is that most music notation and editor tools work with keyboard-like piano roll. Of course, guitar compositions has a good character.
On C64 the trackers are very good to compose for 2 reasons. One is the keyboard-like notation, the tweakable sounds and the flexible/independent orderlists for all the channels.
The other good thing is from composer's view is the limitation of the channels. As JT said in an interview, it restricts someone to pay much attention for the composition in order to keep interest, C64 tunes wouldn't be so various without good melodies and techniques.
I follow the 'few channels' rule in all music editors, because it is the content what contributes to the interesting music, not the amount of tracks...and people can get easily into accumulating tracks into a crowded musical outcome, which at the end doesn't contain a real theme, just some moods here and there.

The book (from Schönberg) which I proposed before, contains a good statement about how people might compose generally. One can find a good idea (motive), which one can take as the basis of the complete piece in the beginning.
But no more, it is probably not possible for an average person to be able to keep a whole composition in mind...rumors say e.g. Mozart could keep a whole artwork in mind and it is said and experienced that we hear complete pieces inside when we dream or meditate.
That's why, we have to use logic, and have to make many things consciously, after we have a basic idea. And what Radiantx said, it's very important to have a theme in mind, what we would like to express throughout the tune from different views.
Without that the music would go nowhere, not telling anything to the listener.
(In my opinion the easiest start for a composer, where to start, is a theme of a game or movie. You don't have to be a poet or a writer in the case, when a game/film company tells you what to write music fo.r That sets you in the mood, what is very important, if you can get into it easily.)
And that expansion of basic idea can be accomplished with the aid of written staff/tabs/chords or midi notes, or orderlists/patterns, whatever storage.

There are many other approaches of ideas for compositions to start with, for example a nice timbre on the synthesizer, a good melodical idea, a good chord-progression or cadence, an interesting base-rhythm, etc., and I think one of them may become dominant for a composer after a while.
Usually that can be seen on the complete composition what components gave it the power. My preferred and most important approach is melodical approach, which idea seems to be reflected by many others...because an average listener can hear and remember only the rhythm and the main melody, and the other stuffs are all just icing on the cake to emphasize the well defined/invented foreground melody even better.

If you're interested, I can write down shortly what I understood from Schoenberg's book about melodical composition until now, how melodies are likely to be structured throughout the composition. (However this book may worth reading through, it's very interesting, and possibly applies to every genre, not just classical.)

Hermit Software Hungary

2011-02-11 14:01

Hate Bush

Registered: Jul 2002
Posts: 465

radiantx wrote: "listen to music. Lots of music, from different genres, and listen actively and analyze what they're doing"

couldn't agree more.
although i would recommend a very different set of 'mind-opening' music.

2011-02-11 14:11

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386

one thing that pushed me a lot further regarding musik: change the style of music you are listening to on a daily basis regulary, and radically. if you were listening to d'n'b before, try some norwegian black metal. if you are into folk music, try contemporary pop. and dont give up after only a few songs because "it sucks". get a feeling for even the crap you dont like, try to see how it "works", and eventually even manage to seperate good and bad music from genres that are not your favourites.

and then for own songs, steal whatever good stuff you can. its the whole trick really =)

2011-02-11 14:41

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

Yes, Listening and Listening is a very good point, if not the most important to get inspiration.
If you know Jamey Aebersold's Jazz-improvization books, it's one thing that they emphasize over and over again. Listen, listen, listen. Develop our inner ears, to hear ideas inside first, before ideas get distorted by any interface like e.g. instruments or music editors.
It's really a stealth in some ways, but after we listen enough and different types of music (regurarly), they all build into our brain and at the end we come to a mix, what doesn't really imitation of other people, but our own mixture of the musical language elements.
I can say I'm lucky, because I cannot really name any music genre which I don't like. Every style has it's point, and any music in any genre can be a masterpiece or a fault. Even some tunes get favoured after listening twice or more, and there is big difference among people in 'who likes what'. Although there are some 'secure' points in music, which are appreciated by most of the human beings.

Nowadays (some weeks ago) I changed my daily life so that I go home after work, and being tired, just take the time for listening music for 1 hour or so (usually an album). I lay down and just listen and enjoy the music, and get used to different techiques in my head, rather than listening music as a background filler to other activities. I believe that our brain can concentrate on only one thing at maximal performance, so if we want to learn, it's a good time to learn from masters, and not just listen, but hear, what is going on.
After listening to a complete album I collect the best tracks of it and copy them into a 'favourites' folder, so repeating of listening will be more effective later. Tracks that don't impress me at all are enough to be listened once.

BTW if we use an instrument to make music, it's unavoidable to get familiar with some conceptual fundamental theory material. If we don't specialize to instruments, and don't want to theorize too much, a very good way is ear-training, especially computer aided ear training with software, like Solfege (linux) or Functional Ear Trainer (win).
The musical ears are essential to hear what happens in a music, so you can name elements what you like, later you can remember them, and apply them to your own composition, even you're able to share the knowledge with others in the musical language (developed over hundreds of years). But if we don't know the names of different techniques, we are less able to HEAR/understand (and not just listen to) a good music and wonder, how they did this or that good part.
I claim that listening masterworks is a top prioroty activity for composers, but ability to capture the ideas must be improved by the other activities supporting music composition, like learning musical words/phrases and excercising on instruments, etc..
One good example of benefitting from learning is voice-leading and contrapuntal composition of supporting melodies (middleground and background material). They are hardly accessible perfectly without knowing what chords can be built onto different scale degrees. Other good example is the harmony based composition, where you must know and hear the different effects of basic cadences of tonic, dominant, subdominant, etc.)

Actively investigating music while listening can be another very good practice to improve. I mean sitting in front of a keyboard for example, and interpret/melt the heard techniques into our knowledge will improve us for sure, even on the given instrument. As most composers has a favoured instrument, many compositions can easily be captured on that instrument, sometimes a particular trick is surprisingly simple on an instrument compared to what we may think at listening time.

Concretely, I like to listen film-music very much (e.g. John Williams Superman, etc.), and melodic jazzy music (Diana Krall, Hearbie Hancock, Mezzoforte), SID tunes, sophisticated rock music, some electronic music maybe...(bit rarely folk, country and reaggae...)...sometimes even progressive rock and improvised jazz..

-----------------------------
I think I described my opinion about listening more or less.
There's another very important aspect of what makes a composer.
Very very important (Aebersold book emphasizes this too) to practice creation/improvisation of own ideas, motives, themes regularly.
I could compare this to the linguistical learning. We can get better in speech only by practicing. Not enough just to read and listen to speech, but we always have to practice composing our own sentences...otherwise the learned words don't get on our tongue in time. (Written form is a bit easier.)
The music is a kind of language too, where we form sentences to express ourselves. Therefore it's evident we have to practice creating new forms with our literature collected from listening. In this respect written language resembles to written music and improvization resembles to spoken word...
This may be the object of our next discussion...you may have some ideas about this to share...

2011-02-11 18:59

Hein

Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 954

I believe it's about telling a story, it touches the soul and suprises the brain. Ofcourse, technical practice and study is very important, the bigger your knowledge of music, the larger your palet will be.

I've had a period that I just poked in stuff without thinking too much and was only going with the flow (if available) using my ears. Eventually I started to study music theory a bit, which helped me do better (structured) compositions and use scales that are bound to certain rules. These rules define the music, make it tighter and easier to work with.

Listening to and more important, hearing, (well said Hermit) masterpieces will help anybody. Personally I think all classical pieces are masterpieces compared to my simplistic musical know-how. If I can capture one or two small bits of those masterpieces and use that as base for my own tune, I'm satisfied.

2011-02-11 19:25

abaddon
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 28

Obligatory Youtube clip...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHE6hZU72A4

That's all I need to know.

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