Music Composition/Songwriting How To 8

Let's talk about the 75% "rule." In western art, architecture and music the golden mean is considered to be one of the most beautiful proportions. It's calculated using the Fibonacci series. It's found in nature within the windings of the chambered nautilus among other places and in Greek temples.

The climax of melodies often effectively falls at a point corresponding to the golden mean which is just about 75% of the way through a phrase, section or entire composition.

Bach, Mozart and Beethoven all have used it successfully. If it's good enough for them, maybe it's good enough for us too.

Notice we're just penciling in the melodic silhouette and haven't started talking about the exact notes to use in the melodies and in what order. That's because they are of secondary importance to rhythmic considerations.

This is something that beginners miss. They focus on notes instead of on rhythms.

Actually, the form, overall length, section lengths, phrase lengths etc... are just larger rhythms. They are periodicities that occur fairly infrequently compared with individual notes and rhythms.

Next up, composing rhythms.

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Where do we expect to find symmetry in music. Actually, it seems that the primary place it is located is in the scale and often its tuning. There really aren't that many examples of reversible rhythms except at large levels of the rhythmic structure or melodies except with Bach and such, whose music is definitely for the mathematically inclined and not really the general fare even among Classical or Baroque composers.

Arabic scales known as Maqams and the gamalen's colotomic structure produce very symmetrical scales and rhythms. Two very beautiful musical traditions.

It becomes very obvious that every scale you can play also has a rhythm associated with it when you look at it constructed on a circle with the unison and the octave at the top in the same location. It’s manifestly apparent that some of the Arabic scales have notes which are half-flat or quarter tones for reasons of visual symmetry. It seemed to me unusual that the starting note for many maqams was not the one on the axis of symmetry.

Usually, it places the 1/4 flat on the 6th and/or 7th. That was interesting to me because the seventh degree is the one played microtonally flat or “blue” in Blues, Jazz, Rock and African as well, since that’s where Blues and Jazz comes from primarily. The seventh is often microtonally inflected in the Classical music of India also.


The form of a piece of music is another place where we often find a little symmetry. Beethoven and others were of the opinion that if you are writing a long piece then the beginning goes nowhere fast so you are alerted to the fact it's going to be a longer composition and likewise the ending needed to match the beginning in size somewhat and also relate to the scope of the entire piece.


Jazz tunes play the head, improvise and then return to the head. If the head is short, they play the head twice and the ending twice. This is a kind of symmetry without going to the extent of playing the theme backwards at the end which we don't expect in our tradition.

Symmetry is actually rare in nature except in the faces and bodies of animals. Trees, lakes, rivers, mountains etc. are not symmetrical. Music which does not have the symmetrical elements previously presented has the aesthetic of the nomad not seeing many faces or symmetrical buildings who often lives alone closer to nature and derives his aesthetic from that.

Contemporary composers could write more inter locking rhythms because it creates a smooth rhythmic surface without leaving any holes, just like a beautiful face

Some aestheticians say the reason we are all so concerned with beauty in art and music is because we don't live close enough to nature. We yearn for it and try to create it. I tentatively add that we may be trying to create it in our own image.

Perhaps a reason to use self retrograding rhythmic structures similar to palinromes in literature such as "A man, a plan, a canal. Panama." is not because of a need for symmetry. It's because the retrograde implies a desire to go backwad in time perhaps to a golden age. This is a little regressive however.

Another interpretation is that its a bit revolutionary. Anagrams/permutations imply an even more revolutionary philosophical standpoint.

Then there are philosophical considerations. In the Heterotopia where we actually live, we have to honor the interests and aptitudes of the composer, the performer and the audience. We cannot mirror a utopia in which we do not believe.

One based on elitism, ageism, classism, sexism and all. In my case, I'm a composer whose interests and aptitudes cluster around symbols. As such, when made aware of the fact the very notes themselves have symbollic meaning, these symbols are of interest to me.

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The latest events in contemporary music history the way I see it are atonality (innovation away from traditional harmony), serialism (innovation away from traditional melody and tonality.), minimalism (innovation away from preconceptions about instrumentation and form, ambient (innovations away from the traditional purpose of music) and the postmodernism of John Scoffield, Pat Methany etc (innovations away from traditional voicings, progressions and rhythmic approaches).

The serialists thought they were composing the music of the future. Bach knew he was composing the music of his present which is what I believe we need to be doing.

Postmodern art and literature leans decidedly toward an ugliness which I would not want to replicate in music. Its based on a false assumption that in rightfully reacting to the suffocating constraints of traditional forms etc that we should swing toward complete formlessness.

The cut up technique in literature, more often than not, leads to gobbledygook. Nailing a toilet on the wall and calling it art is also nonsense. The postmodern dilemma is how to publish the denial of publishing and mean the absence of meaning. John Cage summed it up well, "I have nothing to say and I'm saying it." The performance of his piece for piano in which the pianist never plays is the height of this wrongheaded philosophy.

My idea is that we don't want ugly formlessness. We want a flexible form. We want enough flexibility for artistic freedom and enough form to have a place to exist.

There is room in the music for a place where, like in abstract art, the motif only has meaning to the composer and whatever meaning the audience derives from it is O.K. and not wrong also, but it can't be the whole thing because art really isn't self expression in a vacuum. Its a dialogue with an audience and other musicians.

Also, when art doesn't have a frame, this can lead to non-art but it can also lead to an art that is not complete without audience participation which can be a good thing. This is one direction which I think music can profitably go now and in the future.

Another idea is using non-traditional media. The expanded definition of what constitutes a musical instrument or music lets a cool breeze into a stuffy room but we still need the room. We shouldn't say that anything is music.

We can use techniques like cut up to suggest new directions without being a robotic slave to the technique, allowing it to make every artistic decision for us. If so, then we are not musicians, artists or writers but dispensable automatons.

The movement away from traditional tonality can free up the strangle hold tonality has had on melody. Utilizing harmony in service of the melody is the challenge of the day. Indian and middle eastern melody far outpaces western melodic practice by leaps and bounds precisely because its making up for the lack of harmony. Modal jazz and free jazz artists were going there but took a left turn at the last minute and free jazz was having too much of the undesirable open ended formlessness. It would be nice to hear more inclusion of Indian embellishments in western music.