I once read that Sting sometimes sets the sentences in his morning newspaper to music. This has the added benefit of suggesting possible lyrics once an adequate melody has materialized.
One article was saying that people who have composing careers tend to start with the big picture and work down toward the details. Amateurs do the opposite. Pros are able to conceive of and write several parts simultaneously taking into account how they interrelate.
Amateurs write one bar at a time.
Another point about complexity is instrumentation. Perhaps the reason pop music has only 5 or 6 parts is due to the "not enough instruments=boring, too many instruments=chaos" dichotomy. Pop music has the happy medium.
I was reading a scholarly article about complexity that basically said successfully creative people have personalities that love complexity, so they're able to crank out all this different stuff. However, complexity is not the same as popularity. The Beatles, it mentioned, got less and less popular, the more complex they're music became.
The most popular music, they said, tends to have a moderate amount of complexity, not more or less. I read a related article on music perception/psychology which mentioned that well formed rhythms (what people expect to hear) have 2-6 events per 5 seconds (that must be the parameters for a moderate amount of complexity in that musical dimension). The tempo 100 beats per minute is in the center of the perceptual field (moderate complexity?).
แสดงบทความที่มีป้ายกำกับ songwritng แสดงบทความทั้งหมด
แสดงบทความที่มีป้ายกำกับ songwritng แสดงบทความทั้งหมด
วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 9 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2552
The Big Picture
It’s a good idea to take the big picture into account and plan in advance how each song on an album is going to be different. You can always change things later if they don't work out, but having variety planned in from the beginning will probably benefit most people.
Tempo
Studies were done on the qualities of popular tempos and the results said that the "existence" region of tempos for musical compositions is between 40 and 300 beats per minute (bpm). The “reasonable” range is between 35 and 130 bpm for a human percussionist.
The "optimum" range for listeners and performers is between 81 and 162 bpm which corresponds with the range of different people's walking speeds. 2/3ds of all music is in this range. More specifically, over 120 bpm is the "preferred" range for most listeners and performers. Songs over and around 120 bpm are more often performed and listened to. The absolute “peak of preference” is 125 beats per minute.
Radio
The data says for music on the radio, the mean is 116.4 bpm. The median is 117.9 bpm. The mode is 123 bpm. And 81% of music on the radio is between 81 and 162bpm. This is good information to have if you shooting for airplay of your music.
When planning an album make each tune have a different tempo
88
94
106
112
120
122
124
126
128
140
154
162
Also, if an instrument is featured in the A section then in the next 10 songs it won't be there again. So, if one tune goes; wooden xylophone, flute, zither then the next tune might go piano, zither, flute
Another thing to do is vary the compositional technique between sections.
If the A section is using the wooden xylophone’s idiomatic compositional technique whether or not a wooden xylophone is actually playing it, then the A section won't feature that on the next tune. It will use something else.
For arguments sake, you could define the parameters of your next album by saying the first tune will be in C major, the second tune will be in Db dorian, the third tune will be in D mixolydian, the fourth tune will be in Eb aeolian and the fifth tune will be in E minor pentatonic etc...
Then decide on variations in the form. For example, IVCVCBCO, IVCVCBCO, IVRCVRCBRCO, IVCVRCBRCO, IVCVCBRCO, IVCTVCTBCO, IVCVCTBCO, IVCTVCBCO, I=intro, V-verse, C-chorus, R-rise, B-bridge, T-transition, O-outro
Then make a chart and plan variations in each section of the music, perhaps the first tune can have two 4 measure phrases in both the verse and chorus, then don't do that again on the rest of the album. Have an 8 measure phrase followed by another 8 measure phrase, have an 8 measure phrase followed by a 4 measure phrase, have a four measure phrase followed by 2 two measure phrase in one section and two four measure phrases in the second one, or a four measure phrase followed by a 3 measure phrase or a 5 measure phrase even. If something doesn't work then just fall back on the tried and true 8 or 16 bar sections divided in half.
If you're running out of ideas is when you might want to start both the verse and chorus on the same pitch in one song and start the verse and chorus on the same rhythmic position in another song. (I don't recommend doing both but it might work for a special song.) Or switch things up by having the verse start on the downbeat
Anything is possible really but like my art teacher used to say, it's better to know what the "rules" are so you can know why you're breaking them. (Variety is a good reason I think)
Another thing to try is plan to start on a different chord in each song's chorus. If, as an example, all of your songs are in C Major then start the chorus in the first song on a D minor chord, in the second song on an E minor chord, in the third song on a G Major chord, in the fourth song on an A minor chord and the fifth song on a C Major chord. Even if you don't keep any of these ideas, it gives something to shoot for and starts people composing, which may lead to new and better ideas.
The last chord of the verse sections should normally have subdominant function. Taking the example of a verse starting in C Major then its last chord could be F Major but other chords can serve as substitutes for subdominant function. The second chord D minor also has subdominant function although somewhat weaker but will work anyway.
You just don't want to end on the I chord or the V chord in the verse unless you know how to treat them, such as placing the IM7 chord in 3rd inversion weakening its tonic function. Now you have the first and the last chords of the verse and the first chord of the chorus. Often the chorus ends on the I chord but you can also use another chord that can substitute for the tonic function such as the iii chord. Following these "rules" for harmony will help avoid wandering chord progressions.
In the audio version of this course is my song Ruky’s Dream which illustrates the verse melody starting before the down beat and the chorus melody starting on the downbeat. It also illustrates the use of chords with subdominant function in the endings of the verse and the endings of the bridge. However, the tune is in a minor key not in a major key.
One of the issues is that melodies don't exist in a vacuum. The melodies from one phrase or section need to cooperate with other melodies from another area of the tune. The Beatles were experts at this. They would say if the chorus doesn't have any chromaticism then the verse will: either in the melody or in the chord progression or both. Another way to do that is if there is chromaticism in the verse’s melody then there won't be chromaticism in the chorus' melody but can be in the chorus' harmony in order to change things up. This is particularly good advice for Heavy Metal and alternative rock artists.
The same idea applies to the melodic rhythm. One section can have some syncopation, while the other is more flat footed. Or if the melody is flat footed then the accompaniment is syncopated and vice versa.
Also the first phrase within a section can be syncopated while the second phrase is flat footed. Cuban and African music even take it down to the level of one or two measures, where the first measure of the Clave is syncopated and the second measure is on the beat.
Some Thoughts
If you’re trying to emulate a certain artist or group, it's definitely a good idea to listen to them closely and try to hear what they're doing concerning all of these points. The musical elements are just like Tinker Toys or Legos. There's an infinite number of ways to fit the pieces together. The basic song forms help us a lot to narrow down the possibilities into a manageable quantity but still leave room for creativity and originality.
Tempo
Studies were done on the qualities of popular tempos and the results said that the "existence" region of tempos for musical compositions is between 40 and 300 beats per minute (bpm). The “reasonable” range is between 35 and 130 bpm for a human percussionist.
The "optimum" range for listeners and performers is between 81 and 162 bpm which corresponds with the range of different people's walking speeds. 2/3ds of all music is in this range. More specifically, over 120 bpm is the "preferred" range for most listeners and performers. Songs over and around 120 bpm are more often performed and listened to. The absolute “peak of preference” is 125 beats per minute.
Radio
The data says for music on the radio, the mean is 116.4 bpm. The median is 117.9 bpm. The mode is 123 bpm. And 81% of music on the radio is between 81 and 162bpm. This is good information to have if you shooting for airplay of your music.
When planning an album make each tune have a different tempo
88
94
106
112
120
122
124
126
128
140
154
162
Also, if an instrument is featured in the A section then in the next 10 songs it won't be there again. So, if one tune goes; wooden xylophone, flute, zither then the next tune might go piano, zither, flute
Another thing to do is vary the compositional technique between sections.
If the A section is using the wooden xylophone’s idiomatic compositional technique whether or not a wooden xylophone is actually playing it, then the A section won't feature that on the next tune. It will use something else.
For arguments sake, you could define the parameters of your next album by saying the first tune will be in C major, the second tune will be in Db dorian, the third tune will be in D mixolydian, the fourth tune will be in Eb aeolian and the fifth tune will be in E minor pentatonic etc...
Then decide on variations in the form. For example, IVCVCBCO, IVCVCBCO, IVRCVRCBRCO, IVCVRCBRCO, IVCVCBRCO, IVCTVCTBCO, IVCVCTBCO, IVCTVCBCO, I=intro, V-verse, C-chorus, R-rise, B-bridge, T-transition, O-outro
Then make a chart and plan variations in each section of the music, perhaps the first tune can have two 4 measure phrases in both the verse and chorus, then don't do that again on the rest of the album. Have an 8 measure phrase followed by another 8 measure phrase, have an 8 measure phrase followed by a 4 measure phrase, have a four measure phrase followed by 2 two measure phrase in one section and two four measure phrases in the second one, or a four measure phrase followed by a 3 measure phrase or a 5 measure phrase even. If something doesn't work then just fall back on the tried and true 8 or 16 bar sections divided in half.
If you're running out of ideas is when you might want to start both the verse and chorus on the same pitch in one song and start the verse and chorus on the same rhythmic position in another song. (I don't recommend doing both but it might work for a special song.) Or switch things up by having the verse start on the downbeat
Anything is possible really but like my art teacher used to say, it's better to know what the "rules" are so you can know why you're breaking them. (Variety is a good reason I think)
Another thing to try is plan to start on a different chord in each song's chorus. If, as an example, all of your songs are in C Major then start the chorus in the first song on a D minor chord, in the second song on an E minor chord, in the third song on a G Major chord, in the fourth song on an A minor chord and the fifth song on a C Major chord. Even if you don't keep any of these ideas, it gives something to shoot for and starts people composing, which may lead to new and better ideas.
The last chord of the verse sections should normally have subdominant function. Taking the example of a verse starting in C Major then its last chord could be F Major but other chords can serve as substitutes for subdominant function. The second chord D minor also has subdominant function although somewhat weaker but will work anyway.
You just don't want to end on the I chord or the V chord in the verse unless you know how to treat them, such as placing the IM7 chord in 3rd inversion weakening its tonic function. Now you have the first and the last chords of the verse and the first chord of the chorus. Often the chorus ends on the I chord but you can also use another chord that can substitute for the tonic function such as the iii chord. Following these "rules" for harmony will help avoid wandering chord progressions.
In the audio version of this course is my song Ruky’s Dream which illustrates the verse melody starting before the down beat and the chorus melody starting on the downbeat. It also illustrates the use of chords with subdominant function in the endings of the verse and the endings of the bridge. However, the tune is in a minor key not in a major key.
One of the issues is that melodies don't exist in a vacuum. The melodies from one phrase or section need to cooperate with other melodies from another area of the tune. The Beatles were experts at this. They would say if the chorus doesn't have any chromaticism then the verse will: either in the melody or in the chord progression or both. Another way to do that is if there is chromaticism in the verse’s melody then there won't be chromaticism in the chorus' melody but can be in the chorus' harmony in order to change things up. This is particularly good advice for Heavy Metal and alternative rock artists.
The same idea applies to the melodic rhythm. One section can have some syncopation, while the other is more flat footed. Or if the melody is flat footed then the accompaniment is syncopated and vice versa.
Also the first phrase within a section can be syncopated while the second phrase is flat footed. Cuban and African music even take it down to the level of one or two measures, where the first measure of the Clave is syncopated and the second measure is on the beat.
Some Thoughts
If you’re trying to emulate a certain artist or group, it's definitely a good idea to listen to them closely and try to hear what they're doing concerning all of these points. The musical elements are just like Tinker Toys or Legos. There's an infinite number of ways to fit the pieces together. The basic song forms help us a lot to narrow down the possibilities into a manageable quantity but still leave room for creativity and originality.
Expert Systems and Effective Melodic Solutions
Dear friend, please meet our new teachers; on the right are several Expert System software programmers and on the left are their computer programs running on their computers. Shake hands and say hello. Is it possible to do the same thing with actual humans? Make the process more effective, faster and cheaper? Of course, the answer is definitely yes or I wouldn’t have created this course. I’ll admit it’s a bit strange having a computer study from an expert and then having the computer’s programmer be our teacher but, hey, if it works why not?
I’d like to answer the most important questions; what problems do you commonly face as a songwriter/composer and what are the key characteristics of effective solutions. One of the most important if not THE most important question that needs to be answered is how to come up with melodic material.
The qualities that the most effective solutions have to the problems you face as a composer are the same qualities that effective solutions have to any problem you might encounter. The solutions need to have a balance between being effective, abundant, fast, easy and cheap.
I've experimented with a lot of different things and had success coming up with melodies using different approaches such as; turning phone numbers, street addresses and names into melodies and rhythms, as well as rolling dice for one or both aspects, narrowing down the kinds of things the dice can choose such as rhythms, melodic sequences or interval motion thought to be probable, building motifs from auto-morphs or digital patterns such as 1234, 2345, 3456 or basing them on complex mathematical patterns and fractals etc...
Some of these solutions are fast and easy but not effective. Others are somewhat effective but not fast or easy. As you may have guessed by now, my favorite all time “technique” for coming up with new material is through the transformation of existing music which fulfills all of the criteria. It’s effective, abundant, fast, easy and cheap.
It's obvious to me that we can't be spending an inordinate amount of time agonizing over how to turn one melodic cell we've created into a phrase and then have no idea how we're going to create the following phrase. Then there is the question of where is the melodic material for the next section coming from?
Either we have to be able to come up with the answers to those questions fast or we have to stop thinking note to note and start thinking in broad strokes; at least as broad as a whole phrase and maybe even as broad as the entire album.
A master animator just puts in the important scenes and lets the grunts paint in all the rest. If you’re not already a professional composer then without the right teacher plus the time and money to invest, the conscious transformation of existing music is truly the next best thing. We have to be more like the master animator. We must have the big picture and be able to work from the top down. If you can't do this, yes, you can still write songs but its slow going and often doesn’t sound as good.
Luckily there is a huge pool of songs you already like which you can use as source material that you can transform into new music. And you can do it in big chunks such as entire phrases, sections and even whole songs.
It’s not possible for them to be boring. You already like them. And the level of ease with which transforming a melody can be done is the same level of ease you have drawing the silhouette of a carrot (>) backwards (<) or of drawing the silhouette of a mountain (^) upside-down (v).
If you can’t read or write music, it’s O.K. You’re covered. First, there are a lot of midi songs available on the internet. Find ones that you like and click on the guitar solo or the vocal part to see what it looks like on a grid. The ability to read traditional music notation is not required. There is no need to learn guitar tablature either, although if you already know how to read that, then you can use your favorite songs presented that way as the pool of music you’re going to morph into your next album. Second, you can just notate a song you already know onto paper with lines for a graph. And if you have sound editing software such as Wavelab, you can record your favorite music and play it back slower so you can transcribe it onto the graph paper. Wavelab can even play the music backwards for you and can start the music on any note you want.
One pro said to me that what I‘m recommending is not what professional composers do. There are no professional composers of popular styles of music that he knows who are using the backwards and upside-down version of phrases as new phrases. Well, to start, lots of classical composers are using these techniques and not just in twelve-tone or serialist music. In standard practice these transformations are applied all the time but at the smaller level of the motif. The serialists and the twelve-tonalists are applying it at the level of entire compositions. Jazz improvisation instruction books often tell you to practice all of the ideas both upside-down, backwards, and rhythmically displaced. For melodic material, rhythmic displacement in particular is a common stylistic element of jazz. And even the pros creating popular music are occasionally applying these transformations unconsciously. The professional who said no one is using these techniques has in fact used these techniques himself more than just a few times, albeit on a smaller scale than what I’m recommending here. He just didn’t know CONSCIOUSLY that his subconscious had already been using them. These are tried and true methods known to serious composers and we’ve ALL heard them before. If you don’t tell the people who listen to your music that you made it using these methods, they’ll never know the difference. Your music will cause their jaws to drop regardless. They’ll want to know how you got so good so fast and that’s all that matters. Then, your only problem will be how to record thousands of ideas fast enough. The fact of the matter is that there are many paths that all lead to the same location. My composition professor at Keimyung university in South Korea told me of a student who entered a music writing competition with a piece of music he created by taking one of Beethoven’s works, writing the whole thing backwards, and then performing it with an orchestra. He took second place. This stuff works. Period. I already did it, classical musicians did it, bebop musicians did it and pop musicians are doing it. If we can do it, you can do it too. Before you can start applying the transformations, you need to be able to either get your hands on a song book, midi versions of your favorite songs, or be able to transcribe.
Individually, each transformation is simplistic and I had originally rejected them for popular music, thinking they only had value to classical dodecaphonist and serial composers etc... I had tried them and wasn’t impressed. But then I discovered that simultaneously applying the backwards version of the melody (which is known as the retrograde) with moving all the notes of this new backwards version up or down by a certain interval (which is known as transposition) and moving all the notes backwards or forwards a certain number of beats (which is called rhythmic displacement) solves a lot of problems at once. It solves the problems of
1) creating variety in a subsequent section by changing the rhythmic location of the first rhythmic event,
2) varying the starting pitch,
3) creating the benefit of having a different melodic contour,
4) creating a different melodic rhythm,
5) making one section reach a higher note than the other,
6) having a different ending note, and
7) having a different rhythmic ending position.
That’s powerful. Talk about economy of means. Just this grouping of only three transformations (backwards, transposed and displaced), consistently works. They’re what allowed me to take a short melody and extend it into a complete composition. Even if you don't like my CD's chords or lack thereof, or my instrumentation or my textures, MELODICALLY, this method is quite a success.
You do need to sing or play through the melodies you arrive at to make sure they are what you want to hear. Sometimes it happens that they’re not. But frequently all they need is a single note tweaked or to be transposed or displaced to a different position. Very occasionally it happens that you just can’t find what you’re looking for. There are still other transformations you can try.
I’d like to answer the most important questions; what problems do you commonly face as a songwriter/composer and what are the key characteristics of effective solutions. One of the most important if not THE most important question that needs to be answered is how to come up with melodic material.
The qualities that the most effective solutions have to the problems you face as a composer are the same qualities that effective solutions have to any problem you might encounter. The solutions need to have a balance between being effective, abundant, fast, easy and cheap.
I've experimented with a lot of different things and had success coming up with melodies using different approaches such as; turning phone numbers, street addresses and names into melodies and rhythms, as well as rolling dice for one or both aspects, narrowing down the kinds of things the dice can choose such as rhythms, melodic sequences or interval motion thought to be probable, building motifs from auto-morphs or digital patterns such as 1234, 2345, 3456 or basing them on complex mathematical patterns and fractals etc...
Some of these solutions are fast and easy but not effective. Others are somewhat effective but not fast or easy. As you may have guessed by now, my favorite all time “technique” for coming up with new material is through the transformation of existing music which fulfills all of the criteria. It’s effective, abundant, fast, easy and cheap.
It's obvious to me that we can't be spending an inordinate amount of time agonizing over how to turn one melodic cell we've created into a phrase and then have no idea how we're going to create the following phrase. Then there is the question of where is the melodic material for the next section coming from?
Either we have to be able to come up with the answers to those questions fast or we have to stop thinking note to note and start thinking in broad strokes; at least as broad as a whole phrase and maybe even as broad as the entire album.
A master animator just puts in the important scenes and lets the grunts paint in all the rest. If you’re not already a professional composer then without the right teacher plus the time and money to invest, the conscious transformation of existing music is truly the next best thing. We have to be more like the master animator. We must have the big picture and be able to work from the top down. If you can't do this, yes, you can still write songs but its slow going and often doesn’t sound as good.
Luckily there is a huge pool of songs you already like which you can use as source material that you can transform into new music. And you can do it in big chunks such as entire phrases, sections and even whole songs.
It’s not possible for them to be boring. You already like them. And the level of ease with which transforming a melody can be done is the same level of ease you have drawing the silhouette of a carrot (>) backwards (<) or of drawing the silhouette of a mountain (^) upside-down (v).
If you can’t read or write music, it’s O.K. You’re covered. First, there are a lot of midi songs available on the internet. Find ones that you like and click on the guitar solo or the vocal part to see what it looks like on a grid. The ability to read traditional music notation is not required. There is no need to learn guitar tablature either, although if you already know how to read that, then you can use your favorite songs presented that way as the pool of music you’re going to morph into your next album. Second, you can just notate a song you already know onto paper with lines for a graph. And if you have sound editing software such as Wavelab, you can record your favorite music and play it back slower so you can transcribe it onto the graph paper. Wavelab can even play the music backwards for you and can start the music on any note you want.
One pro said to me that what I‘m recommending is not what professional composers do. There are no professional composers of popular styles of music that he knows who are using the backwards and upside-down version of phrases as new phrases. Well, to start, lots of classical composers are using these techniques and not just in twelve-tone or serialist music. In standard practice these transformations are applied all the time but at the smaller level of the motif. The serialists and the twelve-tonalists are applying it at the level of entire compositions. Jazz improvisation instruction books often tell you to practice all of the ideas both upside-down, backwards, and rhythmically displaced. For melodic material, rhythmic displacement in particular is a common stylistic element of jazz. And even the pros creating popular music are occasionally applying these transformations unconsciously. The professional who said no one is using these techniques has in fact used these techniques himself more than just a few times, albeit on a smaller scale than what I’m recommending here. He just didn’t know CONSCIOUSLY that his subconscious had already been using them. These are tried and true methods known to serious composers and we’ve ALL heard them before. If you don’t tell the people who listen to your music that you made it using these methods, they’ll never know the difference. Your music will cause their jaws to drop regardless. They’ll want to know how you got so good so fast and that’s all that matters. Then, your only problem will be how to record thousands of ideas fast enough. The fact of the matter is that there are many paths that all lead to the same location. My composition professor at Keimyung university in South Korea told me of a student who entered a music writing competition with a piece of music he created by taking one of Beethoven’s works, writing the whole thing backwards, and then performing it with an orchestra. He took second place. This stuff works. Period. I already did it, classical musicians did it, bebop musicians did it and pop musicians are doing it. If we can do it, you can do it too. Before you can start applying the transformations, you need to be able to either get your hands on a song book, midi versions of your favorite songs, or be able to transcribe.
Individually, each transformation is simplistic and I had originally rejected them for popular music, thinking they only had value to classical dodecaphonist and serial composers etc... I had tried them and wasn’t impressed. But then I discovered that simultaneously applying the backwards version of the melody (which is known as the retrograde) with moving all the notes of this new backwards version up or down by a certain interval (which is known as transposition) and moving all the notes backwards or forwards a certain number of beats (which is called rhythmic displacement) solves a lot of problems at once. It solves the problems of
1) creating variety in a subsequent section by changing the rhythmic location of the first rhythmic event,
2) varying the starting pitch,
3) creating the benefit of having a different melodic contour,
4) creating a different melodic rhythm,
5) making one section reach a higher note than the other,
6) having a different ending note, and
7) having a different rhythmic ending position.
That’s powerful. Talk about economy of means. Just this grouping of only three transformations (backwards, transposed and displaced), consistently works. They’re what allowed me to take a short melody and extend it into a complete composition. Even if you don't like my CD's chords or lack thereof, or my instrumentation or my textures, MELODICALLY, this method is quite a success.
You do need to sing or play through the melodies you arrive at to make sure they are what you want to hear. Sometimes it happens that they’re not. But frequently all they need is a single note tweaked or to be transposed or displaced to a different position. Very occasionally it happens that you just can’t find what you’re looking for. There are still other transformations you can try.
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