Approaching a Composition
In the last few weeks, I decided to enter a competition set by Ryan Leach. The rules of the competition were to write a piece of music up to 90 seconds for the following orchestral line up :-
The Picture Prompt. Image by Andy Walsh via ArtStation.
Single Woodwinds
2 French Horns
2 Trumpets
1 Trombone
1 Bass Trombone
1 Percussionist (including Timpani)
1 Harp
Small String Section.
The piece had to relate to a picture prompt. Unlike most competitions your entry had to include a score, and there was a restriction on what kind of audio would be listened to by the judges. It had to be audio directly from notation software using NotePerformer. So, no high quality mock-ups! However, for this blog I decided to create a higher quality version with better instruments.
Here is my entry:
The process of writing this piece led me to think about my approach for writing music. One of the trickiest parts of any composition is when you open up your DAW or Notation Software and see a bunch of empty bars. So, I thought I would write a post looking into some of the steps I take to conquer the blank page!
1) Inspirational Pictures
Now this competition forced me to use this method with the picture above, but it’s actually a really good approach for any composition. What I love about music is how you can use it to tell stories. An evocative picture can bring up an emotion that can inspire you to create.
Unsplash home page
It is easy to find pictures on the internet. Here are some websites that can help: Unsplash, Pinterest, DeviantArt, ArtStation. Once I’ve found a picture I like, I’ll spend some time studying it, and simply noting any words that come to mind. For example, the picture for this composition brought up words like :- dark, twisted, lonely, cold, eerie. You can use these words to keep your composition on track further along in the process.
Another thing I like to do is to create a story from the picture. Something that often happens when people dive into compositions is that the music becomes aimless. The listener isn’t able to decipher where the music is going, or where they are within the piece. This can leave them disengaged and likely to switch off. A story can give direction to your music. What is great about music is that the story can be as specific or as loose as you like, so long as there is some form of development. You should aim to give the listener a sense of a beginning, a middle and an end. Perhaps you want to convey an emotion, then look to write a piece of music that builds on this emotion, or contrasts with it. You can be as abstract as you like. Alternatively, like I have done with this piece, you can be more specific. My story has an unfortunate rider ambushed along a dark lonely path. Whatever approach you choose, make sure your piece is saying something!
2) Listen to Music!
This is an often neglected part of composition preparation. It is easy, at least in my experience, to become impatient and want to skip this step in order to get notes on a page. Now if you have some specific ideas, definitely write them down, but don’t underestimate how important this part of the process is here. There is always something you can learn from other’s music.
Ryan Leach has a great video on how to approach this that you can find here. In this video he talks about taking 3 main things from a piece. This approach works well because often when you look through a score or a big piece of music, it can be daunting initially as there’s so much to take in! Limiting yourself to 3 things allows you to focus in on elements of a piece that really interest you. What I do with this approach is use the key words and story from the above step, and choose a few pieces that convey these ideas effectively. Then I create a list of elements that stand out to me. For example, it could be a certain orchestration technique, a use of texture, a harmonic device, or simply a doubling of two instruments you’d never thought about putting together.
Another approach that’s worth looking into, particularly for Classical or Film Scores, is Brad Frey’s method which you can find here. Despite his self-deprecation throughout most of the video he has some really interesting methods of boiling down a huge orchestral score into more bitesize chunks. I wouldn’t necessarily do the score reduction, but the highlighting of the different parts of the orchestra (in the video from 2:36-6:42) is immensely helpful. By spotting patterns in the music, and seeing what instruments are doubling with each other, you’ll usually find that there are only around 3 different things happening at once at any given time. What you are looking for are ways that the composer writes for these different elements. Who’s playing the melody? Who’s playing the accompaniment? How is the accompaniment formed? How do the different groups work together? These can all give you ideas for your own orchestral piece of music. This approach works best when studying a small part of music, at most 1 or 2 pages from a score that interests you.
Brad Frey's Youtube Channel Page
What both these approaches have in common is a need for access to scores. Although this isn’t always possible and sometimes you have to use your ear, you’ll get a lot more out of this by being able to follow along with a score. IMSLP is a fantastic resource for all music that is out of copyright. It has a huge amount of free Classical scores for you to look through and is a good starting point. Film scores however are a lot more expensive. Omnimusic, and Chris Siddall music, both have access to a range of scores which have been edited and notated very well. However, be warned that you are looking at spending around £75/$85 + shipping per score. Hal Leonard sells the John Williams music which ranges hugely in price. So, a better option might be YouTube, with people like Brad Frey and David McCaulley who have loads of score reductions for you to study.
3) Structure
The next step is to write a structure out. Often when diving into a composition too quickly it is easy to get stuck in an 8 bar loop, you come up with a tune and a few patterns but then what? A well thought out plan can keep this from happening. Bolstered by your research so far from your listening, key words, and story, you should be able to come up with a rough structure for where you want the piece to go. Within your structure feel free to bullet point any plans or hopes you have for that section. Note down anything that comes into your head. It will be easy enough to delete if you decide against it later. This comes back to a point I made in my previous blog on step 5, about making sure you have a notepad nearby at all times. Lots of thoughts will come at you through the process of writing, and there is no way of knowing when these ideas will occur. Unfortunately, these thoughts tend to leave your head as quickly as they enter, so write them down!
Here is the structure I came up with before writing my piece, along with some notes:
Ominous intro - 0:00
start low down
exploit low register
Solo instrument bring in the theme - 0:10
probably Trombone?
Theme A properly starts with Orchestra backing - 0:15
arguably we can extend to 8 bars here
Pull back - 0:30
not sure about this
Pause - 0:58
very brief
Intensity begins - 1:00
predominantly strings
modulation?
Theme A in all its glory - 1:10
still needs energy though
Climax point - 1:20
chordal texture here?
Final Solo - 1:25
Oboe or Flute?
End - 1:30
Timestamps are optional. I included them this time because I knew I had a maximum of 90 seconds, so wanted to make sure each section had space. Notice how the timings don’t match up very well to my final version, but most of the sections listed made it into the piece. The notes I made are very loose at this point, but display what was going through my mind at the time. In this case I was thinking instrumentation, but notice how I also mentioned texture and register at certain points. I also planned a modulation – modulations are a useful tool, and if done correctly can give your piece a lot of forward momentum. They are also helpful storytelling devices.
What I like to do is write an initial structure save it, and then duplicate it, so I have one version that I keep adding to, and one that was the original. This helps me remember how I was feeling at the beginning of the process.
If you struggle coming up with a structure, take a few pieces you like and see what they do. You’ll find that a lot of pieces have actually quite basic structures, which helps the listener know where they are. Also remember that anything you do here isn’t locked in. For example, the pull back from my initial structure disappeared, and the pause ended up in a different place. The purpose of doing this is to help give you forward momentum when you are writing.
4) Themes and Ideas
Once everything is in place, it’s time to start putting down some ideas. At this point you should know roughly how many themes you want to write. A mistake that can easily be made here is to just go for the first idea that comes in your head. The problem is further down the line, that idea might not be as flexible or as great as you initially thought it was.
For my piece I knew I would need to have a really solid theme, and that theme was going to have to carry a lot of the piece. So, I went to my Piano and started playing around with ideas. When I do this, I use my phone to record what I’m doing. Perhaps an easier way of doing this would be to open your DAW of choice and improvise directly into the computer, but for me I find using a real instrument a lot more inspiring. After some experimentation I decided I wanted two elements to this theme, one side that conveyed the action and intensity, and another side that played with the creepier side to the story.
1st half of melody
For the first element I started with a melody. After shaping it, I tested it out with different harmonisations. You can hear this theme first at 0:10. What I particularly loved about it was the way it interacted with the minor and major b6 chord. I would strongly recommend when you develop a melody, that you look to play around with it and develop several versions of it. The more options you have, the more flexibility you’ll have going forward.
2nd half of melody
For the second half of the theme, I initially only had a chord sequence, which relied heavily on chromatic mediants. I knew this conveyed the feeling I wanted, and I also had a clear picture of the instrumentation - harp, and woodwinds. So, I decided to use this as a springboard for inspiration further down the line. At 0:23 and 0:48 you can hear the eventual melody that arose from these chords.
Notice how I didn’t try and finalise everything at this stage. There needs to be wriggle room for creativity and inspiration to strike.
And that’s about it for this post! Let me know if you have any other techniques for planning your compositions. I think it is a vital and often neglected part of the compositional process!
Daniel
