This is where a composer should start.
- First, you need to have an idea. In simple terms, this is a concept, just a rough outline in your head. Scientifically, it all begins with an extra-musical stimulus. You need to “seize the moment,” find an idea, hear a new motif. Just like that, walking down the street, minding your own business, it’s very rare that a “light bulb” can turn on in your musical head. For this, you simply need musical experience. To develop this, you need to absorb music from different artists, hear sounds in nature, in your surroundings, listen to people, intonations, timbres…
Only after an indefinite amount of time will your unique compositional taste and creative mood (from the word “mood”) begin to develop. Then motifs, sounds, and suitable timbres will seemingly emerge automatically. Simply live with music, and it will bestow unprecedented inspiration.
- The second stage of meaningful music composition is choosing a genre.
Art genres exist not for the perceiver, but for the creator.
In simple terms, composers use genres to determine the direction of thought in the desired direction. With each stage of selection and selection, the author approaches the best possible means of conveying their idea. It’s as if he deliberately limits himself, going deeper and deeper, focusing on a narrow topic. No composer has ever created the music they had in their head solely by choosing the means they knew.
For example, if an author has created a motif and wants to develop it in time through variations (horizontal), they will choose a variable form in which the theme develops through variation.
If an author intends to write technical exercises, they will inevitably have to write music in the format of an étude or something similar.
There are classes of musical genres. And each has its own specific features and potential. You and I all know the difference between an opera and a rock concert, or country music and reggae. The more complex question for musicians about the different structures of a sonata, symphony, and minuet is also resolved by the impossibility of comparison. Nevertheless, the composer decides on the form of a musical work, guided by the previously heard example of a particular genre.
- The third step is choosing a form—a song. What structure will the song have? There are different forms of song:
verse
intro-verse
verse-chorus
and each form performs specific functions. With each step, the composer eliminates all unnecessary elements and arrives at a structure of the musical work that best suits their intentions.
- The fourth step is to create a motif or phrase.
Armed with all the theoretical knowledge of notational writing and the practical skills to do so, the composer creates a short melody on paper, which will subsequently become the main support for the entire work. The melody will help him with focusing and thematics. Every time a creative person gets carried away, the presence of this very melody will encourage the spontaneous, restless, and sometimes constantly changing musician to stick to the direction they chose at the beginning.
- When choosing a mode, you also have to consider the chosen genre. After all, when creating a blues solo, using the full major-minor scale won’t be enough. These genres have their own recognizable modes and scales. The same applies to rhythm and harmony.
IN ORDER TO WRITE IN A CERTAIN GENRE, YOU NEED TO STUDY IT WITH EXAMPLES.
Understand the lyrics, rhythm, melody, harmony, commonly used meter, the correct metre, etc. Then, as soon as you have an idea, you can formulate it into the form of a previously studied style.
The composition goes both “top down” and vice versa. As you scale up, a plan of content is created (from small structures to large ones). As you scale down, a plan of expression is created (from large forms to small ones). More on this later. Thanks for reading, I hope you’ve gained a general understanding of music creation!
Live by music and it… well, you know the rest)
