Improving Song Structure

[DarkDjinn]

In my compositions, I have many things that I would like to improve. One that has plagued me constantly, however, is my song structure. I have a very rigid way of thinking about things.

I think that part of the issue is that, after initially having interest during my middle school years in orchestral music, I got into high school and started playing guitar and writing songs with a rock/pop structure - i.e. intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus bridge, chorus - something like that. And now, that mindset that I was in for a long time has carried over into my orchestral compositions.

To be fair, I almost completely ignored orchestral music when writing for a long time. This lasted from approximately the age of 15 until 25 (I'm 27 now). Over the last 1.5-2 years, I've rekindled my interest in orchestral composition, but as mentioned, I struggle with improving the structure of my works. I feel like everything has to have "musical symmetry", if that makes sense. I use the classic ABABCB structure, and while that might work some of the time, it gets old.

One thing I do to try to open up my mind is listen to music that I've never heard before. Does anyone else face this issue, and do you have any good tips for breaking that cycle? I especially welcome those of you who are very familiar with orchestral composition to respond, although any comments are appreciated

[Dissidia]

What seems to work the best from what I've heard and in my personal experience is writing the part that the song "craves" to go to. It's difficult to say when that is though but when the next part feels right in terms of pace, energy/full/empty or meaning.

Example if you go from build up beginning into full into secondary-full into sparse into build again into build there's lots of ways you can do it.

Sawano Hiroyuki has super full parts that transition into a sparse part for a while and then builds up again or stops and explodes. Becoming familiar with the structures that appeal to you is one way to do it.

The biggest mistake to me when it comes to structure/pace to me is filler parts. If they don't add to the song, change them or remove them.

[timaeus222]

If I find myself stuck into a certain structure, I try humming what I want to happen next, so I don't end up copying and pasting so much. It tends to be a sensible direction for my musical writing. But it might not work for everyone (I sing).

Edited April 25, 2015 by timaeus222

[Nase]

my general song structure seems to be evolving into an array of subsequent intros. i dunno if that's good or bad, but ABAB it isn't.

[Cyril the Wolf]

I write ABAB but then like... make the As super different from each other if that makes sense.

Like same chord progression but different rhythm etc. In fact most orchestral music does this anyway where it's A B A C A D but like the As are like A1 B A2 C... etc. If that makes any sense?

It works for me pretty well, doing that has helped me break structure. As has through-composing.

[Nabeel Ansari]

my general song structure seems to be evolving into an array of subsequent intros.

dat foreplay

[Nase]

dat foreplay

pretty much! add a little orgasm here and there...

but atm i'm bone dry. i didn't wanna leave the impression that writing music is like sex for me.

i have little to contribute as far as structure goes. i like recognising structure in a tune after being done with it, though.

way i see it, the whole ABC thing is another play with expectations. sometimes you wanna go against them, or establish new ones for your own style.

idk, makes little sense to even 'trade' song structures. i have no trouble stealing chord structures, for example, but i wouldn't wanna copy a specific song structure. ymmv.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Nase

[Moseph]

A potentially helpful approach that I generally use:

Try coming up with some sort of emotional arc for the piece first rather than plotting material similarities. For example: Starts fast, then slows down with a darker timbre, dissolves into solo piano, strings join piano, things get fast again leading to the end. I typically give myself rough clock times and/or measure counts for the duration of each section because this helps me work out the pacing.

When working with themes and materials, try sketching out multiple versions of each musical idea -- different harmonizations, different rhythms, different amounts of embellishment in melodies, and so forth -- without being too detailed or trying to determine where in the piece each version will fall (or even if each version will be used at all). When you've sketched two or three or four versions of at least a couple of different brief passages of music, go back to your emotional arc and explore which of the sketches you've come up with seem to work best with various parts of the arc.

Once you've made rough assignments of materials to positions within the arc, think about large-scale harmonic movement. Where are the tonally stable areas? What keys? Where does it modulate? How long does it take to modulate? The purpose of this is to figure out where every section of the music is eventually going to end up tonally, because this knowledge generally makes it easier to write interesting and strongly-directed harmonic progressions and also removes some of the but-what-happens-next? anxiety that always comes with writing blind.

With the overall harmonic movement planned, start thinking about transitions between the arc's sections and what materials those transitions will be generated from. I find when writing transitions that it's generally very effective to take melodic and/or harmonic fragments from the preceding section and jumble them together a bit. If you do this, it helps to have a harmonic roadmap as discussed above because that roadmap can tell you a lot about, for example, what pitch levels to try transposing these fragments to or what accidentals to throw in. Knowing the measure count in advance can help with pacing, although I often find my transitions end up going longer than I'd initially planned. The boundaries of transitional sections such as these can be blurred a bit if necessary by adjusting how large the repeated fragments are and how much harmonic difference there is with the preceding non-transitional section. It usually feels less transitional, for example, to repeat an entire phrase several times in similar harmonic contexts than to repeat a one-measure fragment several times at different pitch levels.

Finally, start working on a full sketch. Expand your mini-sketches so that they occupy their designated time segments and are in their respective correct keys, then stitch them together with fragment-based transitions that follow their own length designations and the overall harmonic framework. If all goes well, you'll end up with something that is well-paced, uses limited materials effectively, has a coherent and interesting large-scale harmonic foundation, and generally feels at any given moment like it's moving forward instead of stagnating.