Music Composition/Songwriting How To 7

Another point is section length. Tunes will tend to run on the short side if you have verses and choruses back to back with only 8 measures each. So one or both of them should be 16 measures.

F.Y.I. A vast majority of western music is built in blocks of 2,4,8 or 16 measures. Also, you can contrast phrase lengths not only between sections but within sections as well.

If the first phrase is 8 measures long then the second phrase could be 4 measures long or you could have two 4 measure phrases for balance at another even 8.

Other possibilities include a four measure phrase followed by two 2 measure phrases etc...

So, go get your notebook. Make some schemes for the song form, decide how long each section will be and which key, then how long each phrase will be and write in the starting and ending pitches of each verse and chorus.

Don't agonize over these decisions. Just plop them in. If you catch yourself spending too much time on this process go get some dice and let them decide.

Then decide the starting and ending notes for the phrases within each section for the positions that are still left undecided. That would be the ending of the first phrase and the beginning of the second phrase.

Isn't planning for variety fun? This is the method that I have used a lot and recommend to beginners. Not everyone needs to do it. They have heard and played so much music that the right moves come out unconsciously.

Much of the time it falls nearly exactly like I'm talking about here.

Another consideration is that the chorus should most often reach a higher note than the verse.

Your tunes are starting to take shape and have ceased being an amorphous impossible anything and everything.

We can also talk about melodic shape. If one phrase rises and falls and the next one rises and falls, even if it uses different notes and uses a higher pitch, they still have the same overall shape and that can be boring. Not really if it happens in only one song but if it happens in every song then it WILL be boring without a doubt.

Although many good melodies have both an upper and a lower curve it's possible to write effective melodies that primarily rise or primarily fall or are primarily a flat line, even a single note.

In your notebook plug in some melodic shapes for each phrase in your big plans. Again don't agonize too much. Just dump them in.

You can always change stuff later that's not working or that could work better and you'll have a baseline with which to evaluate them.

I make charts for all this stuff to help me keep track of what strategies I've already used.

Music Composition/Songwriting How To 4

So, what is the popular song form and why is the popular song form popular? It goes; Intro Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Chorus Out .This Doesn't tax people too much. They don't have to work too hard to "get it".

This also has to do with song length. If, as we're told most normal people have attention spans of 15 minutes then a song 15 minutes long won't bring in people with shorter attention spans. Teachers will probably scream and point "Junior High School Students".

If you want to include them then you better cut that figure in half. A tune seven minutes long can go on the album but it will never make it to radio unless you're Pink Floyd etc... Radio format is about 3.5 minutes. Not much longer or shorter.

Initially, shoot for around 100 measures of music at a moderate tempo and you'll be in the ball park for the airwaves.

I'm all for looking at the big picture so let's say you're composing music for an entire album of music and not just one tune. This is a good idea so you can plan to incorporate enough variety between pieces of music on the cd.

People want to feel like they're getting they're money's worth and so the complexity rule doesn't apply so much to the number of songs on a cd.

Music Composition/Songwriting How To 2

Try to come up with as many ideas as you can about how to accomplish your compositional goal. I'll help you if I can.

This brings up the point of instrumentation. What instruments will you need to use to create the mood you're shooting for. There are certain paramaters about how many parts you will need. This leads to the issue of complexity.

There's a concept in musicology about well-formedness that applies to rhythms, scales, song forms, and instrumentation. Pop music for example usually has 5 instruments at one time. The reason for this is because of music psychology.

People's brains are wired to expect a certain amount of complexity and if the music doesn't satisfy that because it doesn't have enough "voices" for just one "for instance",

then a general concencus will be arrived at by random samplings of the population that the music is too boring.

Also, if there are too many voices then a majority of normal people will be put off by the higher level of complexity. An example of why a singer and a guitarist is O.K.