composition

[mickomoo]

How do I improve my composition skills. Like when you first started either making original music or improvisations did you memorize scales and musical techniques a ton before hand? Essentially I've just been playing around and improving, but it's only gotten me so far. I was wondering if there were any formal techniques that need to be learned and if I should learn an exhaustive list of scales?

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Composition is a deep subject. Learn all that you can about music theory. In a super-basic breakdown: the best place to start is learning what it means to be "in key". Once you've got a firm grasp on that, I'd start learning all the different kinds of chords. Chords are the most basic form of harmony. Then learn melody. Melodies are usually created using notes from the scale that the chords in the songs are created with. There is a lot of theory behind writing a strong melody but honestly it's just not possible to discuss it all here on OCR.

The way I look at is you can write great music if you have at least a basic understanding of rhythm, harmony and melody. Like I said though, there is a lot to the subject of composition to learn.

As for improving your skills. The only way is too keep writing music! Buy mountains of books on theory, keep refining your techniques on the instruments you play, study other compositions you like, and listen to every musical genre under the sun and figure out what makes them tick. Then, take every new thing you learn and try apply it to your next song.

I'd say that if you work very hard at it, in around 2-3 years time, you can be writing some real awesome stuff.

[Moseph]

Find yourself a composition teacher.

And it doesn't by any means have to be part of a formal program of study. If there are colleges with music departments that have composition programs close by, email a composition professor and ask if there are any students in the program who give or would be interested in giving private lessons. If you can hook up with a college student who studies composition, s/he gets some teaching experience and you get lessons probably for fairly cheap. Everyone wins.

[Rozovian]

You stand more to gain from listening and trying to redo stuff than from reading, but they're both important. Try to learn something new every day, write something new every day. Musical modes, time signatures, syncopation, characteristics of different genres... whatever. And every now and then I find I still fall short in some way or another. Like drum writing and mixing.

Anyway, when it comes to scales, any series of notes is a scale. Unless you go screwing with the instruments/project's tuning settings, you're likely to just have the usual 12 to work with... which just makes it easier, as most other tunings will probably sound out of tune to unaccustomed ears. Don't start thinking about microtonal scales and that stuff, just make up your own scales with the notes you can do, and see what you can learn from that. Some of the time you'll just make another mode of the same old scale(s), some of the time you'll create an arabian/egyptian-flavored scale, some of the time you might have something more blues/jazz-y, and some of the time it'll sound terrible. When you're more used to thinking about scales (and modes), look them up on wikipedia and recreate the ones you find there, see what you recognize.

The most important things, like pacing and dynamics, are more difficult to put into words. Try to feel the music, sketch out how different songs move dynamically, look them up in an audio editor to see where it's loud and where it's soft... study them. What's good about them is good for a reason, try to figure out what that is.

What I did during my most creative times, the ones where I was making two or three new tracks every day and made up loads and loads of cool melodies that I still have difficulty surpassing with my more recently acquired production skills, was to just write stuff. Not care so much about the sound, just make a cool melody with whatever sounds I had back then... which all sounded like newby crap tbh, but the melodies were pretty good.

So my advice is to write stuff, then try to read something about what you wrote.

[ectogemia]

So my advice is to write stuff, then try to read something about what you wrote.

If you have decent fundamentals, I agree with this. Books are no fun; writing music is much fun. Do what is motivating. Copy others who DO know their fundamentals and beyond, and try to understand what they're doing as you transcribe and try to imitate their instruments/synths. You'll learn more from a "do first, ask questions later" method than from reading out of a book first without ever having formed any concept of what you're reading. Music is a little unique in that regard because it's so incredibly abstract.

If you play an instrument, do on the fly composition: improvise.

Improvisation took me from 0 musical ability to like... some musical ability, and it didn't take too long.

[Malcos]

If you have decent fundamentals, I agree with this. Books are no fun; writing music is much fun. Do what is motivating. Copy others who DO know their fundamentals and beyond, and try to understand what they're doing as you transcribe and try to imitate their instruments/synths. You'll learn more from a "do first, ask questions later" method than from reading out of a book first without ever having formed any concept of what you're reading. Music is a little unique in that regard because it's so incredibly abstract.

If you play an instrument, do on the fly composition: improvise.

Improvisation took me from 0 musical ability to like... some musical ability, and it didn't take too long.

Yes I agree. Create music as you learn, try to make copies of songs you really like, it will help you break down the style and instruments used to see why it works. It's also very dependant on what type of music you want to make, as a lot of contemporary styles don't require much theoretical knowledge!