INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND A FIRST PAIR OF LISTENINGS
A thought about visual art...
...a Van Gogh self portrait, and although we'd be unlikely to easily paint anything as effective as that particular self-portrait, we all do have a concept of what a self portrait is, and how (on our own skill levels) we might begin making the choices to construct our own self portraits, if we wanted to (in our choice of media, perhaps in acrylics or watercolors? or on the back of today's handout page, in pencil!). In fact, an interesting musical assignment might be to compose something in the nature of a "musical self portrait." We would all have some idea of what that might mean, even if we weren't sure how to approach the realization of the idea.
A thought about literary arts...
...the idea of haiku, and if we wanted we could all write our own haiku. In fact, we could use a haiku poem to inspire either a visual-art response (a painting or drawing of some kind?), or to inspire a very small spare evocative "musical miniature" composition. (Meanwhile, it is worth noting that language is acquired first by immersion in speech, and only later is the written language acquired, whereas in music, typically, the young student is confronted with musical notation at the very first piano lesson...)
A thought about music...
...it's a classical-style piece for just a lttle string orchestra with a couple oboes and horns and a violin and a viola - let's all write two or three like this before next class meeting! Mozart has translated it from his mind into score, and if we could see the entire score we would see that it's a fairsized BOOK, from which each of the player's individual parts is "extracted" so as to fit on a music stand. Well, not only is it likely that for most people the score in and of itself has no meaning, but even if you ARE someone who can read score, its bulk and complexity, in the case of a multi-movement ensemble work like this, means that even though it has already been translated by Mozart from mind to paper, STILL, it requires further translation, from score to audible outcome, requiring a group of people of a particular skill level on specific instruments with time and a place to rehearse, plus the two more-virtuoso soloists, plus the conductor. These are some fairly daunting requirements!
SO LET'S CONSIDER JUST A SOLO PIANO, INSTEAD...
Listen to the opening minute or two of each of these obscure piano solos, and see what responses you might have as you isten:Musical composition is a craft, it can be analyzed, it can be "spoken" in improvisation, its more formal methods can be practiced, and even though there may remain "something" ineffable about composing, I propose that there's plenty to try, and plenty to think about, before you bump into that point of the ineffable...
A word about "modern tools" - computer software for composers...
Watch this video from Sibelius (click on the "Watch Movie" button in the blue part of the page)
This may also be of interest: Finale's free Notepad overview page
Music assembled from "loops": an example of music for choreography compiled in SONY ACID by a student choreographer... Sony Acid is oone of the many softwares available now that lets you select copyright-free "loops" to assemble as the basis of a score, in a sort of "collage" approach that can be accomplished by anyone, even a complete non-musician, with no notation of the music, just the convenient sgraphic representation of the accummulating loop tracks.
Nowadays, new Apple computers naturally arrive with GarageBand all ready to use, straight out of the box. GarageBand is similar to Sony Acid in some ways, able to record, mix, edit, and upload music, either from actual musical instruments OR from the (included) loops. Dozens of other companies now offer similar sorts of software, for both MACs and PCs.
Prior to these computer-days (as I'm sure you know, but it bears repeating, for the discussion of "What IS composing?"), synthesizers offered fresh sounds, and (when combined with multi-track mixers) enabled a solo composer/performer to create an ensemble effect. Here's an example of mine from the late eighties, with many "instruments" and "voices" but all just me with synthesizer, microphone, and little portable mixer. No notation was involved.
If you are not computer-oriented and do not care to learn computer notation or use computer-generated sounds or loops, don't despair, hand-written scores and unwritten forms of music are certainly still in use, and people still play "real" acoustic instruments! Computers do offer certain advantages though. Just another aspect of "musical composition" to think about...
What IS musical composition? Googling "music composition" or "musical composition" yields a combined total of nearly 3 million hits, so if you just wanted to explore other peoples' answers to this question, you could stay busy visiting sites for a long time!
Who is "a composer"?
Do improvisations "count" as composition? How would you know if something you were hearing was or was not being made up on the spot?
Does music need to be notated to be "composed"? (Here is an example of mine in which the cello part was notated, but the piano part never was, since I knew I would be playing it myself)
How can "originality" occur, if the notes and scales and chords have all been used and re-used millions of times already? How would you know if things were or were not "original," unless obviously duplicating something quite famous? Where are the lines between "general vocabulary and general style" vs. plagiarism?
Does composing require some particular level of musically "competent" organization? Is some level of virtuosity required from the performer(s)? Some particular "scope" or "length" before we'd call it a composition? Some special character of "genius" before we'd call it a composition?
Does new musical composition have to be "better than" what we already have, somehow? Better than Mozart or Beethoven? Better than Stephen Sondheim? Better than John Lennon? Better than... who, and why?
Is Mozart (Beethoven, Sondheim, whoever) MORE of a composer than "other composers," and if so, how so?
Are "composers" some special breed apart, inherently heroic? What exactly does a "great" composer do, that other musicians can't do?
What do you suppose constitutes "being a composer" in OTHER cultures? In other times? Are there things that characterize "composing" across cultures and across the centuries?
What if you asked those same questions about "writers" or "visual artists"...? (We may feel we KNOW more about "what writing is" and "what visual art is" because at some point in school we actually tried our own hand at writing and at art, and these things are therefore not such a "foreign language" as music may seem to be. But there actually WAS a time in european history when those who were taught to read and write words were normally taught to read and write musical notation as well!).
If you had all the time in the world and the finest writing skills, what would you want to write? (poetry? a play or screenplay? the great American novel? philosophical essays?)
If you had all the time in the world and the finest painting skills, what would you want to paint? (landscapes? abstracts? portraits? huge murals?)
If you had all the time in the world and the finest skills in musical composition, what would you want to compose? (a symphony? a film score? a song for a friend's wedding? a choral masterpiece for your choir? a beautiful solo piano piece you could play for your friends?)
...Similarities and differences in doodles/conversation vs. careful drawings/writings of love letters or philosophical emals to friends vs. great exhibited works of art/great published works of literature. Small sketches vs. the Sistine Chapel, haiku vs. the Russian novel. Relation to music. How do you categorize these things, how do you envision the continuum from "casual" to "high art" or from "miniature" to "monumental," and where do your own interests fall?)
A link to the fabulous Bloomingdale (NYC) "A Beginner's Guide To Composing" page
A link to Dr Fields' How-To pages, which include very creative audio examples of the points he makes
Alan Belkin's "Practical Guide to Composing" is a fairly advanced but thought-provoking site
A cheerful cooking analogy: "A cooking analogy can help you remember to add some things to make your song better. Start with boiling water and some hearty stock to nail down the main flavor, and add your meat. Next add in all the different main ingredients. Finally, add the spices and flavorings, just enough to kick it up a notch, but not enough to drown out the main flavor." (from http://www.wikihow.com/Compose-Music)
An art student would never even be accepted as a potential college art major if they had never once made an original artwork. If they spent their entire student career becoming better and better at re-painting Van Gogh's Starry Night, they would never be granted a degree. But in music, most music majors arrive to college never having composed a single measure of their own music, and they can certainly receive even their graduate degrees purely on the basis of their RE-creation of other composers' works. We will spend the next few weeks pondering this, and other, curiosities.
Obviously, in the very few hours of this course, no one is going to leap from "never having composed a thing" to "writing an orchestral work we'll hear premiered by the Asheville Symphony!" But we can all BEGIN exploring the various aspects of why, and how, people compose...
(a few quotes from the book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks)
(a few quotes from the book The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak About the Creative Process by Ann McCutchan, available in the UNCA library)
Must you necessarily be a good performer on an instrument, yourself, first?
Must you necessarily be fluent in the written notation of music, and in the theoretical analysis of music?
Must you necessarily be fluent in the modern computer softwares and/or electronic musical instruments and processes?
Must you necessarily be situated in a music conservatory or professional situation that gives you access to trained players and a concert venue?
...Because, these are the core assumptions of undergraduate and graduate programs which accept music composition students. Piano proficiency is also assumed (even if you're a trombonist, a violinist, a singer), as is an excellent ability to deeply hear even the most complex music and to be able to notate what you hear. How would you compare these requirements to the requirements for art majors or creative writing majors?
Unlike a literary work - which the writer might create in isolation but which is then completely accessible to any literate person as soon as it is committed to paper... and unlike a painting - which might be painted in solitude but is then accessible for anyone to see, as soon as it is done... music, when conceived on a large scale, requires considerable time and effort on the part of numerous strangers, to even begin to translate from score to actual audible performance (since, in "score form," the work does NOT "sound, as music" to any but the very few, most-astute musicians).
And in the end, the composer is out of control, completely at the mercy of the quality of the performance.
So those are some of the extreme DETERRENTS to the idea of composing.
Not to mention the fact that very very few composers actually make their living at it, nowadays
(most - not all, but most, nowadays - hold full-time teaching positions at academic institutions).
But there are also recent ADVANTAGES offered by the internet (especially the replayable instructional performances on YouTube, such as this remarkable lesson on "tension and release" in melodies), and by computer software as mentioned above, and by the ease of audio and video recording nowadays to help save one's musical ideas quickly and without notation, and by the easy availability of every sort of recorded music to listen to. These recent developments open possibilities for compositional ideas and activities even to those who will never set foot inside a music conservatory.
(And this is a good time to note that until roughly a hundred years ago the only way to experience music at all was to be IN THE ROOM with it as it was being performed live - our access to recorded, replayable music is a very recent phenomenon. On the other hand, households and public spaces used to be full of live performance of music, and not just by "professionals," so we have also lost a sense of being surrounded by live music, which not so long ago may have been the norm...)
But if one concedes that a huge symphonic work is not the ONLY "real" possibility, for composing, then there are ways to begin. There are ways to limit the resources required, to focus on just one or two instruments and brief haiku-like forms, thereby practicing at least the very basic processes of smaller-scale composing. Even on the smallest of scales, the compositional PROCESS - the process of "choosing and choosing and choosing" along each of the many accessible elements of music - can be practiced.
These are the things that can be named and decided, considered and edited, until you've arrived at your own distinctive and satisfying choice, in every case, on every level.
Category One: Overall aesthetic and pragmatic considerations
Most composers, of all but the purest most personal improvisations, deal with some of these opening questions:
- What KIND of music do you want to compose? Why?
- Do you have a goal or a vision, is there something you are hoping it will "do" for you and/or for others when it is done? Who is your audience, what is your venue?
- What do you envision as the overall scope and length of the piece? What players will it require besides yourself? What instrumentation? Do you know the limits for the range and character of each instrument involved? What level of virtuosity is required of the player(s)?
- Do you expect to notate it traditionally? Or in some non-traditional way? By hand? By computer? Can it be performed without having been notated? Would you be comfortable with it being improvised? Might it involve "guided" improvisation? Could it be electronic?
BOTTOM LINE: The first wave of thinking about your composition might need to answer: What is it that you have in mind, and how will you get it from your mind to someone's ear?
- On a more sophisticated level, if it involves anyone besides yourself: who? and how will you engage them? and what rehearsal time will be required? If it involves text or other copyrighted materials and you intend for it to have performances beyond your home, should you pursue Permissions? If it is "for a particular event" or otherwise has a deadline, can you plan it such that you feel absolutely confident about completing it (including rehearsals etc) on time?
Category Two: General Musical Style
Most composers, of all but the most purposefully chaotic or "chance" music, deal with some of these questions:
- Is the general vocabulary of the piece traditional common practice? or traditional folk or pop/rock? or the unresolving dissonant sense of some atonal or some world vocabularies? or the vocabulary of jazz and if so from which era? If there were "dictionaries" for all the different possible musical styles, which dictionary could you use for this piece?
- How would you characterize the basic style of the piece? (pop song in the style of Madonna? orchestral work in the style of early Stravinsky? piano solo in the style of a Chopin noctourne? "New Age" piano piece in the style of Liz Story? choral work with religious text in a hymn-like style? playful off-the-wall thing in memory of John Cage? haunting electronic in the style of some Stockhausen? a choral work incorporating eastern european song traditions? looped hip-hop in the style of current radio rap? the possibilities are obviously infinite, but it helps to articulate enough about your chosen style to narrow down the equally-infinite more specific pitch and rhythm choices yet to come!)
- On a more sophisticated level, if you have actual sections of extant works which could influence this work, listen to them repeatedly (with score, if available and you can read score) and attempt to pinpoint stylistic effects (Copland's stacked fifths would be an example of this, Debussy's use of whole tone scale perhaps, Chopin's inceasingly decorated melodic lines, Brahm's use of duple against triple rhythms, Enya's use of breathy voices multi-layered over shimmeringly static beds of chords and clusters, Dave Brubeck's use of that nice five-beat rhythm, whatever it is, listen afresh and take what lessons you can from "what it is that captivates your ear"...)
Category Three: Formal Design Aspects
Some compositions follow pre-conceived designs:
- Are you following any set form such as verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus, or sonata form, or ABA form, or theme and variations, etc.? If you are setting text, can you picture the basic divisions of the text for the singer(s)? Can you sketch the basic design of the whole thing, and of each of the sections within?
- If there's no set form, can you still envision approximately where/ when/ how musical climaxes will be achieved? Or do you want it to just bubble along evenly with no apparent divisions or climaxes? Are there strong motifs beginning to form in your mind? Can you picture all the general aspects mentioned in Alan Belkin's link above (here it is again http://www.musique.umontreal.ca/personnel/Belkin/bk/index.html) such as Flow, Articulation, Momentum, etc.? Will there be balance between the phrases, the periods, the larger sections?
Category Four: Actual Choices of Rhythms and Pitches: HigherLowerFasterSlower
Nearly all compositions involve choices of rhythms, pitches, or both, and in fact this is often considered the essence of musical composition.
- Meter? Specific rhythms within that meter? Non-measured, and if so then how to notate? "Breath" rhythms? "Successional" events?
- Clear patterns of repeated rhythms? Rhythmic motifs? Rhythms' relation to pitches as well?
- Specified tempo? Shifts in tempo?
- Shifting rhythmic organization, shifting meters, accelerandos, rubatos?
- Incidents of polyrhythms?
- Rhythms not only of individual events but of the underlying frequency and suddenness of melodic and harmonic and orchestrational changes if any?
- Silences, rests?
- Range of pitches: general sense of movement within that range, higher, lower, comfortable or not?
- General organization of pitches: "in a key"? major? minor? modal? other organization? atonal rows? frequently shifting? modulating in common-practice formal ways?
- Specific shaping of melody (pitches sounding in succession): Leaps vs stepwise movement? Derived from scale or mode vs "chromatic" or non-scalar? Octave displacements? Straightforward vs ornamented, and if ornamented then notated vs improvised? Repeating melodic fragments? Pitch choices' relation to rhythm as well?
- Specific choices regarding chords and clusters (pitches sounding together): common practice conventions, including all the conventions of voice-leading, of spacings, and of inversions? 20th century or jazz conventions with non-triadic or extended-triadic chord vocabularies? world music conventions? Intensity, and frequency-of-change, of the chords or clusters? Background-foreground balance?
- Specific choices regarding texture/density: Are there times when only unpitched rhythms are heard, with no pitches as either chord or melody? Times when only unison melody is heard? Times when near-unison but subtly differentiated melodies occur (less common in western concert music, but very common in mideastern/folk/jazz music, called heterophonic texture)? Times when equally-important but distinct melodies are intertwining (polyphonic texture)? Times when straightforward chords simply accompany clearly-separate melody, or else when there is no dominating sense of melody and yet chords are progressing (homophonic textures)? Times when overlapping dissonant clusters create an "opaque" very dense sensation (common in 20th century music)? Times when fragments of delicate sound occur so sporadically, or layers of sound occur in such widely separated ranges, as to create a very "transparent" sensation?
Category Five: Orchestration and Timbre (Tone Color)
In all but solo works, orchestration is an issue. Even in solo works, timbre is a central feature of musical composition.
- Even non-musicians can tell the difference between human voice, flute, and trumpet all playing the exact same pitch at the exact same volume, thanks to subtle differences in each instrument's acoustic properties and the predominance of specific "overtones" in each different instrument. Composers can take advantage of this.
- Specific choices regarding which instruments play what when. On a basic level, it just means keeping in mind that in any piece which is not a solo, the composer is responsible for consciously divvying out who does what when. In the case, for example, of voice and piano, the roles will be distinct and not at all interchangeable, with the writing for the piano needing to follow entirely different conventions from the writing for the voice. In small chamber groups such as string quartet or wind quintet, a composer would study the specific instruments and take everything about their range and timbre into account. In the case of an instrument such as orchestral pedal harp, unless you have studied harp you are facing a true challenge as a composer, to write idiomatically for a one-of-a-kind instrument. On a sophisticated full-orchestral level, composing involves a deep understanding of every orchestral instrument in all its ranges and at all dynamics in realtion to - and in all possible combinations with - every other instrument of the orchestra. Few composers, in all of western music history, have really been genius at this, although many have been pretty good despite the enormous amount of study and understanding required.
The recent availability of Rimsky-Korsakov's entire "Principles of Orchestration" online with audio examples is a boon, and can give an inkling of just how complex orchestration can be.
Category Six: Articulation and Dynamics
- How loud and soft, for every instrument, at every instant throughout the entire piece, including any crescendos and decrescendos.
- Pedal markings for piano. Bowing markings, and any effects such as pizzicato, for strings. Etc.
- Any unorthodox moments such as flutter-tongue, mutes, etc.
- Accents, slurs, firmatas, etc. for every instrument, at every instant throughout the entire piece.
1) Ancient chants often use only the slightest variations in pitch. To be a composer in the Middle Ages, all you really needed to choose was a mode and then a succession of pitches expressing that mode (no elaborate rhythms yet). We can collectively compose a bit of "Gregorian-style" chant in the Dorian mode in mere minutes! A drone can be added to intensify the sensation of leaving from, and returning to, the base of the mode.
2) Pitch relationships are all about PATTERNS, which can be learned. Examples:
- pattern of major scale C (whole)D (whole)E (half)F (whole)G (whole)A (whole)B (half)C
- pattern of dorian mode C (whole)D (half)Eb (whole)F (whole)G (whole)A (half)Bb (whole)C
- pattern of major triads in root position "take one, skip one, take one, skip one, take one"
- inversion of traids
- spacing of triads
3) Our sense of "wrong notes" stems from unintended dissonance. In a series of pitches such as the "pentatonic" scales, every pitch is always at least a whole note away from every other note and it all sounds good in any combination.
Try it with just the black notes (Db Eb Gb Ab Bb)
4) Other scales, and combinations of fragments of scales, can certainly be invented.
Try things like C D E F G A Bb C D E F# G.
Listen to a fragment like C Db F G and its ethnic implications.
Know that physics shows strong relationships between pitches based on clear-cut "overtones" - which is why the great majority of the world's scales and modes feature "octave", "fifth", and "fourth" - with increasing variations in the nature of the OTHER (less-strongly physics-driven) notes of the scale or mode.
5) Our system of notation tends to "dumb down" rhythms, but our speech is rich with complex rhythmic patternings. We can use "The Tabloid Headlines Game" to experience these rich rhythms, hear their inter-relationships, look at the logic of notation, and dabble in "orchestration."