How do I learn how to be a better song writer/composer?
November 4, 2011 11:32 AM Subscribe
I want to spend the next year getting better at writing and composing music -- how do I do it?
I've read a bunch of stuff on music theory, so I know the vocabulary and the basic ideas behind how music works. I've dj'd for years. I can knock out a melody pretty quickly, but it's not very sophisticated. I don't want to learn to play an instrument. What I mainly want to get better at is harmonies, polyphony, arranging and structure -- how to take a musical idea and turn it into a complete song.
What can I do to get better at this?
I've read a bunch of stuff on music theory, so I know the vocabulary and the basic ideas behind how music works. I've dj'd for years. I can knock out a melody pretty quickly, but it's not very sophisticated. I don't want to learn to play an instrument. What I mainly want to get better at is harmonies, polyphony, arranging and structure -- how to take a musical idea and turn it into a complete song.
What can I do to get better at this?
Response by poster: I've seen that (and many things like it), but I don't want a broad overview, I'm talking about practical, nitty-gritty details.
posted by empath at 11:41 AM on November 4, 2011
posted by empath at 11:41 AM on November 4, 2011
Especially seeing as you've already got a good grounding in theory and composition, the best way to get better is to do it more. Try forcing yourself to complete one full song every week. There are some websites that give you a little more support impetus, such as Songfight and MefiMu's challenges.
posted by The White Hat at 11:43 AM on November 4, 2011
posted by The White Hat at 11:43 AM on November 4, 2011
It might help if you'd give us an idea of the genre you're interested in. Classical composition, for example, is rather different from pop composition.
posted by Nahum Tate at 11:53 AM on November 4, 2011
posted by Nahum Tate at 11:53 AM on November 4, 2011
I've seen that (and many things like it), but I don't want a broad overview, I'm talking about practical, nitty-gritty details.
Then read Alan W. Pollack's notes on The Beatles. It's an incredibly valuable songwriting resource.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:54 AM on November 4, 2011
Then read Alan W. Pollack's notes on The Beatles. It's an incredibly valuable songwriting resource.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:54 AM on November 4, 2011
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.—Art & Fear
posted by jeb at 11:56 AM on November 4, 2011 [14 favorites]
Response by poster: It might help if you'd give us an idea of the genre you're interested in. Classical composition, for example, is rather different from pop composition.
electronica of all kinds, but more on the melodic end of things... uplifting and/or melancholy stuff... anything from PVD to trentmoller -- or like the tron soundtrack. But I think mentioning that is kind of too specific -- a lot of that style is production which I'm making progress on and I have a friend helping me with that.
Where I feel like I'm not really getting better is melodies and elaborating on a musical idea and just kind of knowing when the song is done, which i think is kind of more universal than a specific genre.
posted by empath at 12:15 PM on November 4, 2011
electronica of all kinds, but more on the melodic end of things... uplifting and/or melancholy stuff... anything from PVD to trentmoller -- or like the tron soundtrack. But I think mentioning that is kind of too specific -- a lot of that style is production which I'm making progress on and I have a friend helping me with that.
Where I feel like I'm not really getting better is melodies and elaborating on a musical idea and just kind of knowing when the song is done, which i think is kind of more universal than a specific genre.
posted by empath at 12:15 PM on November 4, 2011
Best answer: If we're talking about pop-oriented stuff, I really like Dave Stewart's Inside the Music (the second one -- never read the first). Some of the MIDI stuff is a bit hokey, but it's otherwise really accessible and pretty directly addresses your goals.
posted by substars at 12:16 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by substars at 12:16 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: The SuperCollider users list recommended this book, although it does request that you play your compositions on a non-keyboard instrument.
posted by mkb at 12:51 PM on November 4, 2011
posted by mkb at 12:51 PM on November 4, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks, those books were exactly the kind of thing I was looking for :) (aside from practicing and just making songs, which I'm doing)
posted by empath at 12:59 PM on November 4, 2011
posted by empath at 12:59 PM on November 4, 2011
As far as structure, harmony, and even melody I don't think it gets any better than Hindemith's two books on composition. Read them and do the exercises. They're classic for a reason (and Hindemith, apart from being on of the great composers of the 20th century, was also a very prominent music educator, which is a rare combination).
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:04 PM on November 4, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:04 PM on November 4, 2011 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Nothing beats transcription. Theory manages, curiously, to be both over-specific and under-specific, in that some of its prescriptions are frequently broken in practice and that theoretical guidelines allow for constructions that you never really see. Even if you can find scores for the things that you want to take apart, I'd recommend just using your ear to learn what's going on and then notating it yourself for further study if you're comfortable with that. Theory is of course useful in this process because you can often clearly see some of the structures it talks about at work, e.g. secondary dominants, and the feeling of having that theoretical knowledge integrated with an instance you found of its application is really exciting.
To be honest, I kind of hated that Russo book for all of the reasons that people seem to like it. I ended up not getting through much of it, but the part I did get to gets into exercises that involve composing with tone rows pretty early, and other exercises involve things like "compose a Phrygian melody that evokes a waterfall," which to me is more of a writing prompt than an exercise because it doesn't impose any challenging limitations. In general my problem with it is that it treats musical materials as entirely abstract, with no reference to any existing stylistic practice, which I think makes it hard to learn to make music that means anything to yourself or other people. I had a much better time with this book, which has interesting exercises and relevant examples. Still, I think that type of exercise should be undertaken alongside a steady transcription regimen.
posted by invitapriore at 1:13 PM on November 4, 2011
To be honest, I kind of hated that Russo book for all of the reasons that people seem to like it. I ended up not getting through much of it, but the part I did get to gets into exercises that involve composing with tone rows pretty early, and other exercises involve things like "compose a Phrygian melody that evokes a waterfall," which to me is more of a writing prompt than an exercise because it doesn't impose any challenging limitations. In general my problem with it is that it treats musical materials as entirely abstract, with no reference to any existing stylistic practice, which I think makes it hard to learn to make music that means anything to yourself or other people. I had a much better time with this book, which has interesting exercises and relevant examples. Still, I think that type of exercise should be undertaken alongside a steady transcription regimen.
posted by invitapriore at 1:13 PM on November 4, 2011
I once knew a guy who studied composition by correspondence with a teacher he respected. Maybe you could find a tutor -- if so, I bet this would really help.
posted by amtho at 1:36 PM on November 4, 2011
posted by amtho at 1:36 PM on November 4, 2011
Best answer: Play with your audience's expectations. All the time.
Humans like to hear things repeated. So, each time you repeat something in a song (verse, chorus, melody, whatever) is an opportunity to either reinforce or destroy the expectations you created with the first instance of a given element.
If you have a chorus you know is good and will stick in the minds of the listeners, you generally (but not as a rule, of course) will make it happen again. Your audience knows this, and expects it again. We have been trained by many many years of pop music to expect it again. And that provides you an opportunity to surprise us by doing it a different way.
Say you come up with a chorus melody line you like. Before plugging it into the song and setting it in stone, think of three (or more) different ways you can program the accompaniment. Maybe once with a minimal drumbeat and softly, once brazen and loud and in the enharmonic or relative minor key, and once doubletime with a breakbeat and slap bass. Etc.
Then you have three different versions of the same chrous line. So if you have three choruses in the song, each one (if you like) can be done a totally different way, but remain recognizable due to the chorus melody the audience learned in the first chorus.
Each time subsequent choruses are approached, the listener prepares to hear the chorus as they learned it earlier in the song. And that is your moment to manipulate their expectations. You can:
Not give them what they expect at all (introduce a new part of the song)
Give them what they expect, but arranged differently (this time the chorus is in a reggae style!)
Give them exactly what they expect, when they expect it (a perfectly good idea in some cases)
Give them what they expect, but make them wait for it. Build up and then dawdle coyly and then SLAM 'em (tantric songwriting)
Give them what they expect when they're least suspecting it
And more. The parts of songs you repeat are usually the parts that will grab the audience. When you repeat AND make the repetitions unique in their own right, you will grab the audience and keep them because it is what they recognize AND it is something new. It's like making kids eat vegetables by hiding them in a hamburger or casserole---they wouldn't normally take the time to learn or appreciate something new, but when you stick it together with that chorus they liked so much, well they might just eat it up. And as a bonus to you, your songs will be immune from becoming stale because you are continually 'freshening up' the elements of your song.
And this is much speedier than coming up with completely new parts to fill space. Too many disparate sections can make it hard to tie the song together.
tl;dr: Theme and variation, FTW.
Also see:
Dimunition: Playing a phrase twice as quickly as before (by halving the lengths of all the notes in the phrase, so that the full phrase plays in half the time it did before)
Augmentation: The opposite, stretching a phrase over twice the length of time in which it is normally played
Inversion: Playing the phrase 'upside down'--all leaps in pitch become falls in pitch. This is most easily achieved with written music, naturally.
Retrograde: Playing the notes in the phrase backward.
Counterpoint: Two melody lines of equal importance
Imitation: Repeating a phrase with a different voice/instrument than at first.
These are super simple ideas that don't require you to write new material, just rearrange the material you have. The results can not only be pleasing, but they can help inspire new ideas for the arrangement or the song structure as a whole.
posted by TheRedArmy at 1:55 PM on November 4, 2011 [4 favorites]
Humans like to hear things repeated. So, each time you repeat something in a song (verse, chorus, melody, whatever) is an opportunity to either reinforce or destroy the expectations you created with the first instance of a given element.
If you have a chorus you know is good and will stick in the minds of the listeners, you generally (but not as a rule, of course) will make it happen again. Your audience knows this, and expects it again. We have been trained by many many years of pop music to expect it again. And that provides you an opportunity to surprise us by doing it a different way.
Say you come up with a chorus melody line you like. Before plugging it into the song and setting it in stone, think of three (or more) different ways you can program the accompaniment. Maybe once with a minimal drumbeat and softly, once brazen and loud and in the enharmonic or relative minor key, and once doubletime with a breakbeat and slap bass. Etc.
Then you have three different versions of the same chrous line. So if you have three choruses in the song, each one (if you like) can be done a totally different way, but remain recognizable due to the chorus melody the audience learned in the first chorus.
Each time subsequent choruses are approached, the listener prepares to hear the chorus as they learned it earlier in the song. And that is your moment to manipulate their expectations. You can:
Not give them what they expect at all (introduce a new part of the song)
Give them what they expect, but arranged differently (this time the chorus is in a reggae style!)
Give them exactly what they expect, when they expect it (a perfectly good idea in some cases)
Give them what they expect, but make them wait for it. Build up and then dawdle coyly and then SLAM 'em (tantric songwriting)
Give them what they expect when they're least suspecting it
And more. The parts of songs you repeat are usually the parts that will grab the audience. When you repeat AND make the repetitions unique in their own right, you will grab the audience and keep them because it is what they recognize AND it is something new. It's like making kids eat vegetables by hiding them in a hamburger or casserole---they wouldn't normally take the time to learn or appreciate something new, but when you stick it together with that chorus they liked so much, well they might just eat it up. And as a bonus to you, your songs will be immune from becoming stale because you are continually 'freshening up' the elements of your song.
And this is much speedier than coming up with completely new parts to fill space. Too many disparate sections can make it hard to tie the song together.
tl;dr: Theme and variation, FTW.
Also see:
Dimunition: Playing a phrase twice as quickly as before (by halving the lengths of all the notes in the phrase, so that the full phrase plays in half the time it did before)
Augmentation: The opposite, stretching a phrase over twice the length of time in which it is normally played
Inversion: Playing the phrase 'upside down'--all leaps in pitch become falls in pitch. This is most easily achieved with written music, naturally.
Retrograde: Playing the notes in the phrase backward.
Counterpoint: Two melody lines of equal importance
Imitation: Repeating a phrase with a different voice/instrument than at first.
These are super simple ideas that don't require you to write new material, just rearrange the material you have. The results can not only be pleasing, but they can help inspire new ideas for the arrangement or the song structure as a whole.
posted by TheRedArmy at 1:55 PM on November 4, 2011 [4 favorites]
Doleful Creature's Super-Quick Guide to Writing Music, Like, More Better and Stuff
(on preview, nthing TheRedArmy's comment, especially the theme and variation bit)
1. Listen to everything and ask WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?! over and over and over and never stop.
2. Your voice is your most important instrument for discovering new melodies. Doesn't matter if you are a crap singer or whatever, your voice is more connected to your brain than any instrument you'll ever learn. It's unfettered by the constraints of muscle memory. Hum or sing to yourself CONSTANTLY.
Also, for the more readings: the Fix Your Mix blog has some pretty smart articles that I think will really open your mind. Check out these sections:
Songwriting Tips
Compositional Analysis
Theory Lessons
ProTip: Limitation is your friend. Remember how the original Star Wars movies were so awesome and everyone was like "Whoaaa" and then we heard that George Lucas had piles of money and the best CGI team in the universe and we just KNEW that Phantom Menace was going to be awesome and then everyone saw and even your grandma was like "aw shit". Remember that? There's a lesson there. Stick to a creative budget. You say you know the theory and stuff, that's great, now just pick some ideas from that and make them your framework, see how much you can do within those arbitrary bounds. For example: only write songs with I-V-IV-I progressions but change everything else, all the time (phrasing,
rhythm, instrumentation, etc).
The single best quotes that I think about all the time when I'm trying to write? EVERYTHING IS A REMIX, and ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE. This is the zen of creativity.
posted by Doleful Creature at 2:58 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
(on preview, nthing TheRedArmy's comment, especially the theme and variation bit)
1. Listen to everything and ask WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?! over and over and over and never stop.
2. Your voice is your most important instrument for discovering new melodies. Doesn't matter if you are a crap singer or whatever, your voice is more connected to your brain than any instrument you'll ever learn. It's unfettered by the constraints of muscle memory. Hum or sing to yourself CONSTANTLY.
Also, for the more readings: the Fix Your Mix blog has some pretty smart articles that I think will really open your mind. Check out these sections:
Songwriting Tips
Compositional Analysis
Theory Lessons
ProTip: Limitation is your friend. Remember how the original Star Wars movies were so awesome and everyone was like "Whoaaa" and then we heard that George Lucas had piles of money and the best CGI team in the universe and we just KNEW that Phantom Menace was going to be awesome and then everyone saw and even your grandma was like "aw shit". Remember that? There's a lesson there. Stick to a creative budget. You say you know the theory and stuff, that's great, now just pick some ideas from that and make them your framework, see how much you can do within those arbitrary bounds. For example: only write songs with I-V-IV-I progressions but change everything else, all the time (phrasing,
rhythm, instrumentation, etc).
The single best quotes that I think about all the time when I'm trying to write? EVERYTHING IS A REMIX, and ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE. This is the zen of creativity.
posted by Doleful Creature at 2:58 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Brian Eno is of course a giant in the electronica/ambient/production world. This may seem a, well, oblique recommendation, but I would highly recommend Oblique Strategies. Not so much just for the cards themselves, but for the idea behind them. Trying to implement use scenarios in composition forces you to think through what you are doing and experiment - the cards are just a trigger. It's what happens when you try to use them that's extremely valuable. Paradoxically, far from being abstruse and theoretical, it is actually very practical advice. Also, it costs nothing, and can be used endlessly.
posted by VikingSword at 2:59 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by VikingSword at 2:59 PM on November 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Yea, all of that. But get it out to people, doesn't matter how simple or even lame it is on paper, if it sends an audience, hey!
posted by sammyo at 6:56 PM on November 4, 2011
posted by sammyo at 6:56 PM on November 4, 2011
Study your heroes. You can learn an infinite amount from the masters.
My old music teacher used to say, "the best painters are the ones you run into in art galleries". Study is the most important part of artistic progression.
posted by tcobretti at 7:37 PM on November 4, 2011
My old music teacher used to say, "the best painters are the ones you run into in art galleries". Study is the most important part of artistic progression.
posted by tcobretti at 7:37 PM on November 4, 2011
...and just kind of knowing when the song is done
I always try to keep in mind Stephin Merritt's philosophy: "Or, it's done."
You could add another part or another melody line or an intro or outro or more effects or more instruments...or, it's done.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 2:49 AM on November 5, 2011
I always try to keep in mind Stephin Merritt's philosophy: "Or, it's done."
You could add another part or another melody line or an intro or outro or more effects or more instruments...or, it's done.
Stephin had a pet phrase he'd say whenever he got to a certain point with a song, as a reminder to himself not to overdo it: "Or, it's done."
Beghtol, LD. 69 Love Songs. New York: Continuum, 2007.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 2:49 AM on November 5, 2011
Best thing I've ever learned about harmonization: you can get a ton of mileage out of adding a third or sixth above or below your harmony line (most of the time, with discretion). Good luck, empath.
posted by vverse23 at 8:36 PM on December 1, 2011
posted by vverse23 at 8:36 PM on December 1, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Conductor71 at 11:38 AM on November 4, 2011