Composition, learning, mood's, etc

[paio135]

Hello all, I've recently become more interested in the piano and the more traditional side of music... My computer that i use to produce broke not too long ago, and left me with not a fat lot to do, so i thought I'd get on with something and learn more about the theory side of things, and actually playing the keyboard better and what not.

I'm really interested in composition. I've made a fair few electronic piece's, so I'm familiar with 'composing' a piece of music. (I'm trying to avoid comparison with lé great's here...)

What book's / method's would be recommended to learn the different type's of emotion's and feeling's leant by certain scale's / progressions, ? This fascinates me and could be a great help to my own writing... 

thankyou

[solstyce]

I would be interested in some info aswell. Im actually working on a composition of my own, and if you ask me, it already sounds very Chopinish. Which is a good thing. Chopin is awesome.

[m1469]

The way that I think of the piano is as though every tone and key signature and scale (and chord within those) represent elements of an entire world, which is actually not only sound, however, listening is something like the gateway to the world.  When I was a child, every tone had it's own shade and character, and my whole way of thinking of each tone revolved entirely around middle C.  A couple of months ago I re-discovered this way of thinking, though in some respect it's always been there.  

To me, Middle C is like the center of the universe, it's like a pulsing, glowing orb, from which all light is emitted.  Within that light there are other colors/tones, and that is what a scale represents, and also what we see on the piano itself.  There is chromatic color.  C Major is the original scale, and from there you can build modes.  Everything else is like an echo, a shade, or a representation of distance from the center of the Universe.  In some sense, I think of every single piece (at least from the "greats" right now) as a story about where "it" is in the Universe and how it relates to C.  Sometimes a piece doesn't have that much to do with it, and I think that's significant.  So, in some sense, the shade or mood of a scale or a chord built on that scale has to do with musical context, though I believe there are more fundamentals behind it, too.

When I was child, I learned this by listening and of course, I didn't learn to think this way as an adult from a theory book, though somehow my sense of theory is currently helped or intertwined a bit with this way of thinking.

You can also though listen and just see what images come up for you while you are listening, and go with those.  I don't know the inside of many people's minds though, and I don't know if there are automatically images for other people or not.  Recently each key starts to have a very distinct character to me.

An interesting side note to me is that, during a time of feeling experimental and in need of a new idea in my teaching, I decided to share a very basic part of this with a number of my students.  For one individual, they *completely* opened up to me after having been with me for a couple of months as a very different student.  We spent time exploring the piano and it seemed to change his whole world.  For another, he didn't show his enjoyment of the idea in the same way at first, but about a month later came out with his own ideas regarding it, and apparently it had been brewing in there.  It was my kids who could grab onto the ideas the easiest, and yes, I tried it on a couple of teenagers, too.  These may seem like strange ideas, but I find it very interesting that it actually, in real life, literally opened these individuals up!

[paio135]

That's interesting... Although i'm not too sure how i go about acting on that advice.

I was wondering if there were any more specific source's for these kind's of things. A book or something with all typical emotion / chord / melody relation's and the like. ( Obv emotion is very subjective... but i think most people agree on the same thing's when it come's to music...)

I'm not sure whether i'm being a touch too vague with this... sorry if it seem's a bit of a wash-y question

cheers

[m1469]

cheers

Don't you DARE say cheers to me after telling me that you don't know how to act on my "advice"   .  If you ever, and I mean EVER do that again, I will immediately send the wrath of Satan and all that is evil in the Universe to descend upon you and chain you to your fate for all of eternity *thunder*  .

Okay, that was completely a joke, obviously.  But, very fun to say.

Now, I have no idea if there is a book or anything like that which details the things you are asking about.  I have heard some individuals give some kinds of more definite answers, like the key of Ab being the key of love in certain writing, and I had a vocal coach outline the keys that Mozart used in his operas for various types of characters.  Maybe somebody else (hopefully not satan  :-) will show up and give us this information .

[paio135]

ha, i dare... i dare....

Hopefully someone will step in indeed! I'm aware of term's such as counter point and harmony... I probably have a basic grasp of harmony in some sense as i've written a few track's and stuff.

But if anyone knew of a more specific route to learn these elements it'd be great to know.

cheers!

[soundthumb]

I'm sure there are many books on this subject.  I picked up "How to Write Songs on Keyboards" by Rikky Rooksby.  Have only started looking through it, but it contains things like "How to make sad chords less sad", "How to make minor chords threatening", "The 'three-stroke clincher' chorus".  Maybe you would find it interesting.  The publisher is Backbeat Books.

-SoundThumb

[solstyce]

Ive made a few compositions for an rpg game im making based out of AOEII Conquerors, but composing that sounds classical, um, little more difficult. People do like my rpg music.

[paio135]

cheers, @ Soundthumb - i'll try and route that book out... that's kind of what i meant though, so cheers for that!

It wasn't necessarily for use in classical composition, but just in order to add a greater degree of colour and direction to my own compositions.

cheers =)