Getting started with composition - please help me

[thesixthsensemusic]

Hello everyone.

I did this piece of piano music in FL studio once, about 4 years ago.

Any suggestions are really appreciated. I find it too good simply to do nothing with it.... but unfortunately I have ZERO theoretical knowledge on writing classical music. The only thing I have is a gut feeling about chord progressions and melodies, and experience in playing the piano myself.

Before you start telling me, I am aware half way through there's a transition with a cadenza-like chromatic run down that should have been a melodic transition, but my inspiration failed me there. I am not happy with it but that's just too bad.

I wonder what you think of it, and, if possible, how I should handle this idea to turn it into something more substantial.

Cheers!

[awesom_o]

I can't help someone who can't help himself.

You CAN'T write classical music with ZERO theoretical knowledge on writing classical music.

This is like if I were to go to an aircraft engineer's forum and say loudly "I want to build a plane. I know nothing about how to build planes or about how aircraft work in general. The only thing I have is a gut feeling about wings and propellers.  How can I turn this piece of wood I carved into something more substantial?"


Would you have been able to compose this same music with just pen and paper, without FL Studio?

 

[thesixthsensemusic]

Listen, I am not looking for people trying to be funny, even though you probably are right if this is your way of telling me I am clueless.

Rather, I am looking for things like advice on music theory literature to check out, and feedback on the thing I posted.

I have ideas for melodies, and I know how to put chords beneath them that work.

But composing classical music is, unlike for example writing a pop song with a simple verse-chorus structure, way more demanding than just that. Once I try to progress this basic idea into for example a complete sonata exposition, I get stuck because after penning down melodic material and adding harmonies, my lack of knowledge prevents me from making any meaningful progress.

[awesom_o]

Oh I'm not trying to be funny. I'm trying to be a good composer. In fact, I'm trying to be a great composer, but at this point, I'll settle for being just a good composer (beggars can't be choosers).


The so-called 'music theory literature'  you are looking for is actually the 20 years that I have just spent learning to be a proficient pianist. I've been trying my hand at composition for at least 10 of those 20 years, and yet it is only my work from the past six months that I hold a high enough opinion of that am willing to play in public.

In that time, a student is expected to learn all the levels of music theory that are widely available at local conservatoire. Usually this means spending a solid couple of years on rudiments alone, before branching off into the more advanced disciplines of counterpoint, harmony, and history.  Each of these branches requires a thorough study-easily a year or two on each one, a person could spend, and still have only rudimentary knowledge of these matters.

By the time a student as 'completed' these levels of theoretical knowledge, they are typically playing concert-level repertoire and giving public performances regularly.

This is the age when a promising music student can begin to focus his or her efforts on the study of composition. At this point, the student will have played HUNDREDS of pieces from the great repertoire, and he or she will have a vast amount of musical experience to draw upon when composing.


People these days seem to think that they can just buy some notation software, have piano lessons for a year or two, read a book about theory, and become the next Beethoven.

Who is the one joking around here, trying to be funny? You, or me?

[thesixthsensemusic]

Why would you assume I am someone who 'buys a piece of recording software and has had piano lessons for 2 years and can become the next Beethoven by reading some books'?

For starters, I am aware learning to compose will take years and will defo NOT be easy. But one has to start somewhere, right?

Secondly, I've been playing the piano since 1996, and had lessons until 2004, earning all music school diplomas. I am not a pro but I can play well enough to learn stuff like the first 3 Chopin Ballades (the 2nd of which I recorded and posted here a few days ago).

I have been using FL Studio for about 10 years now, have released a couple of records, and I know the programme inside out, to me it's way easier than spending hours behind the piano with a few papers and a pencil and eraser.

Since it has MIDI support, converting any work to sheet music is easy, as long as you take care to pen down the bass and treble clefs in 2 separate channels. Therefore I don't see any reason to move to pen and paper.

I thought to find some encouragement here, or at least some feedback on the snippet I posted, but maybe I was wrong.

[awesom_o]

My apologies for coming off so curmudgeonly.

I'm aware you've likely had lessons for considerably more than two years. I'm aware you posted a recording of the F major Ballade on here the other day. I did listen to a portion of it.

I'm aware one has to start somewhere. I'm just saying maybe it shouldn't be a piano sonata. I'm only just revising my own first piano sonata at the moment, and I've been doing this for quite some time.  Before trying anything that large-scale I spent a long time refining my style with smaller works.

It's a mighty form to get your head around, the sonata. Perhaps start with something a little easier?

Also, I encourage you to continue your studies with pen and paper. If such mighty works as the 9th Symphony of Beethoven were composed without the aid of the copy-and-paste function 200 years ago, I see no need for it now.

FL Studio may well be easier than spending hours behind the piano with pencil and eraser.
But I thought you were aware that learning to compose will NOT be easy, and could likely take more than several years.

Perhaps the easiest way is not the best way?

[jittqm]

I liked it.  Attacking the piano at the beginning and some nice fingering along the way.  I too love to compose music but cant read a note and never took a lesson so just feeling my way along.  I think with your lessons etc that these should start to pay off with a little more work. Now lets hear the 70%.

[thesixthsensemusic]

My apologies for coming off so curmudgeonly.

I'm aware you've likely had lessons for considerably more than two years. I'm aware you posted a recording of the F major Ballade on here the other day. I did listen to a portion of it.

I'm aware one has to start somewhere. I'm just saying maybe it shouldn't be a piano sonata. I'm only just revising my own first piano sonata at the moment, and I've been doing this for quite some time.  Before trying anything that large-scale I spent a long time refining my style with smaller works.

It's a mighty form to get your head around, the sonata. Perhaps start with something a little easier?

Also, I encourage you to continue your studies with pen and paper. If such mighty works as the 9th Symphony of Beethoven were composed without the aid of the copy-and-paste function 200 years ago, I see no need for it now.

FL Studio may well be easier than spending hours behind the piano with pencil and eraser.
But I thought you were aware that learning to compose will NOT be easy, and could likely take more than several years.

Perhaps the easiest way is not the best way?

First of all, don't worry about your earlier comments, everyone falls victim to his or her own assumptions at one point or another. I hope you don't mind I dislike putting my entire musical biography in a topic I start LOL.

But do you actually think pen and paper beats a notation program? To me the choice of a  medium for putting my ideas into a reproduceable form is based on how short the distandce between idea and implementation is.

FL Studio works great for me. It is even possible to write complex polyphonic music with it and still being able to convert the tune to MIDI and in Sibelius or Capella to sheet music (if only you use one voice for a single instrument, or stave of a keyboard instrument's score), so to me that would beat having to learn to use pen and paper, simply because I am used to that way.

What form would you recommend I try instead? Theme + variations maybe?

BTW, I worked on this clip for ages, what I posted so far was the basics, since what I did with it was not structured IMHO. If you want to, have a listen at it. Has some nice ideas but it's not really coherent IMHO.

[thesixthsensemusic]

I liked it.  Attacking the piano at the beginning and some nice fingering along the way.  I too love to compose music but cant read a note and never took a lesson so just feeling my way along.  I think with your lessons etc that these should start to pay off with a little more work. Now lets hear the 70%.

Glad you like it. However I do suppose that what we have here is not 30% yet though