How to start composing?

[government]

Hi, everyone.
I play piano for about 8 years now and i am pretty comfortable whit playing it. Lately i have been trying to compose some things but i only get about four measures worth of notes and that's about it. My knowledge of music theory is pretty slim like, chords chord progression and so on. I know how to read sheet music and know what are flats, sharps how to play them and so on. So do you have any recommendation on books about music theory and composing? That would be very useful. Thank you

[pianoplayjl]

Start improvising first and make up a melodic idea.

[bustthewave]

Start improvising first and make up a melodic idea.

I second this statement. I've played by ear my entire life, so improvised everything. However, the past 4 months I've been studying classical composition techniques really intensely, and it has taken me really far in a short time in what I can understand.

Don't start by composing several notes together in just a few phrases (measures). Start by, as mentioned above, a melodic idea. Once you have the melody, you can THEN start adding things to it and making it more complicated.

Fortunately there is a lot of composition work you can do today thanks to modal music such as jazz that allows you to be able to compose without rigid rules. So start with a melody, and do what feels right and natural. Don't worry about how complicated it sounds or what have you, just let it flow at first.

If a melody doesn't come to you, you can also try just playing a few chords, get some chord transitions going and see if you can come up with something you like. Don't worry about notating it out just yet. Take those chords that you like, and work out a melody from there.

If you want to be able to compose more than just a good accompaniment to a pop song (which I'm not saying is bad, I'm just saying that's what modern music without proper discipline is), then here are the things you should look into-

Study classical pieces. If you haven't heard the term "counterpoint," this is where you should start. You wont be able to compose a piece like Bach or Chopin without understanding counterpoint. Lord knows I spent my whole life trying, not understanding why my music didn't sound as sophisticated.

Counterpoint means literally "point against point." It is the idea of voice independence. The fundamental idea here is that you have your primary melody, but underneath your melody are other melodies playing at the same time. When you play just about any classical piece between the periods of baroque to romantic, it's likely going to be counterpuntal in nature. Surely you have learned some classical pieces at this point. When you understand these pieces at this level, piano ceases to be "left versus right hand," but instead becomes "primary melody versus competing melodies."

Since this is what I'm learning right now, look at Chopin's prelude no. 15 (nick named "raindrop"). When I first approached this song 6 months ago, I played it purely left versus right hand... with no concept of the competing melodies. Only when I looked at the layers, did I realize how fundamental each part was. If you don't emphasize the utterly essential A flat in respect to the other melodies, the entire piece loses almost all meaning. Even though you have a repeating note, it loses importance by not being dynamic to the extent that the piece falls apart. Without that note being understood as it's own melody, you don't have a sustaining theme that carries the piece from sweet melancholy to dark, to triumphant, to dark, to sweet melancholy.

So three books that are surprisingly cheap (which I could only find on amazon.com) that I recommend to help you begin understanding counterpoint if you wanted to start learning composition at this level, is Macpherson's Melody and Harmony books 1-3.

Good luck

[starstruck5]

There is a good course on Youtube for teaching the basics of Counterpoint - but nothing useful I could find wrt to Harmony.  Most text books seem to assume you want to write Bach Chorales for some reason! I guess the Chorale method gives you the tools to analyse instrumental music.

The only advice I can give is to take simple pieces (at first) by composers you like, and construct your own piece, using their forms as a template. This is sure to give you a good grounding in how to develop themes.

Hope this helps.