Composing for New Age Piano? Why Not!

[quiescen]

This New Age pianist has been playing piano for over 15 years now. And while I'm constantly learning new things, the one thing that's helped me out - as far as composing goes - is looking at music as sections.

I'm always telling my students to work within an 8-bar framework. Why? Because it's a nice, neat time space to work in. And, more importantly, it doesn't overwhelm beginning students who feel they must come up with 100 bars at their first attempt.

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This is exactly how 'December Rain' was created. All I'm doing here is playing chord changes over an 8-bar phrase. When you master the 8-bar phrase, you learn how to complete a section of music. And you learn that the art of composition has everything to do with repetition and contrast.

There's only so many times you can repeat an 8-bar phrase before it gets stagnant. Here is where we introduce new material - a contrasting section. Perhaps another 8-bars or so.

Another thing I have students do is learn how to create a complete ABA form. This musical form is the most common one used and it's also quite easy to create. Once the first 8-bar phrase is complete (the A section) it's time for some contrast. Maybe 4-bars... perhaps 8 or more will do the trick here. Then it's back to (A) and voila ... a complete piano piece is born!

[countrymath]

Great,dude. I was looking for something like this

[quiescen]

Thanks. Glad you found it helpful.