"How to Compose"?

[chopinlover01]

So, all theory aside, (I'm posting that in the music theory section), how does one truly create a piece (much less a three movement sonata) based on one melody or idea? How do you insert V7 chords in a way that make sense? How do you modulate into other keys without it sounding clunky and awkward?

[pianoguy711]

This is not an easy question to "answer"  

The process of composing is a combination of theory and art.  As you mentioned in the theory section, having a good knowledge of scales, counterpoint, cadences, harmony etc. is essential if you want to create a multidimensional work.  But the real difficulty lies in the "art" of composing--putting everything together into something meaningful.  I think becoming a well-rounded pianist helps the composition process as I think it's no coincidence that some of the greatest composers for piano and orchestral music were also fine pianists as well.

One trick to composing is to approach it like a poem.  I think poetry is music's closest artistic "cousin" (hence why Chopin was/is called "the Poet of the Piano" and numerous "tone poems" can be find in the piano/ochestra repertoire).  Before you compose, choose a form:  sonata (good luck ), nocturne, ballade, barcarole, rondo, waltz, etc. Having an idea of the form will give you a framework.  Next set the "tone" for the work: will it be tranquil, introspective, regal, eerie?  Most works move through different often contrasting tones.  This is a good technique to add depth to your work.  Finally, write a melody and work off of that.  Seems easy right?

One of the best things you can do is to analyze works by composers and see how they communicate their vision for the work.  Take Chopin's Sonata #2 movement 1.  It begins with a menacing intro and immediately enters into a dark, agitated section with a distressed, breathless quality.  There's an urgency to get somewhere, and a galloping effect like a cavalry riding in a storm.  How does Chopin achieve this?: minor key, a "short" time signature 2/4 meter, quick tempo, constantly moving left hand accompaniment, agitated melody, varied dynamics...

Hope this helped in some way.  

[mjames]

Experiment, experiment, experiment, and experiment. Improvise, improvise, and improvise.
Sit down on your keyboard and play play and play.

[hfmadopter]

You just keep working at it in faith and one day it may hit you like a blessing. I suggest starting with arranging or rearranging pieces of existing music. Maybe not classical so much or if so take some of the more basic easy arrangements and dress them up. Start there. For years and years ( actually decades) I never could come up with my own melody, the melody was the hitching point for me. I knew chords and cadences but never could get a melody going. Melody is the gift if you will, the art another poster mentioned. Then one day I was watching the New Age Piano All Stars Award program, and was inspired to try something in a triplet at my own piano. In ten minutes I had the beginning of my first piece, three days later I was playing the piece at a small bible study group who went crazy for it . Since then the pieces just keep coming. And incidentally, the old work I'm learning is just as difficult as it's always been and not memorized, these new pieces by contrast are not written ( not yet anyway). They are based on simple themes even if they take up the entire keyboard or not.

The New Age Genre of music has been a help to me because it's laced with sixths and sevenths and ninths, often arpeggiated and easy to get the feel of. The melodies are often pretty simple, the harmony is spacious. A secondary theme to the first can derail you, when I say it may come as a blessing I didn't say it comes as a completed work, you do have to finish it and that can take days or even weeks. David Nevue, a well established composer of New Age or New Age esque compositions for many years now says that he gets them overnight or in a day perhaps, but then it's 6 months down the road to finish it as a full composition sometimes. I fully understand now.

So just keep working, you may not have put in enough dues yet !

[ted]

So, all theory aside, (I'm posting that in the music theory section), how does one truly create a piece (much less a three movement sonata) based on one melody or idea? How do you insert V7 chords in a way that make sense? How do you modulate into other keys without it sounding clunky and awkward?

The creative aspects, improvisation and composition, for me, arise when certain sounds stir up something so deep in my psyche that an imperative results to preserve them in some permanent form. This form might be written notation for composition and recording for improvisation. That's all there is to it really, in the broadest sense; particular features such as harmony, melody, chords and keys are just epiphenomena of a deeper process, not absolutes in themselves.

You embark on a lifelong, habitual search for lasting beauty, and there are hundreds of ways of doing that. Try the ways people suggest and see what happens.

[awesom_o]

So, all theory aside, (I'm posting that in the music theory section), how does one truly create a piece (much less a three movement sonata) based on one melody or idea? How do you insert V7 chords in a way that make sense? How do you modulate into other keys without it sounding clunky and awkward?

You first need to have enough musical training that you can look at almost any piece of music away from the piano, and here exactly how it goes in your mind.

This is called being able to "hear with your eyes" and it takes quite a bit of practice!

[bubbamc]

You first need to have enough musical training that you can look at almost any piece of music away from the piano, and here exactly how it goes in your mind.

This is called being able to "hear with your eyes" and it takes quite a bit of practice!

Learning movable do solfege is the key to being able to do this quickly and proficiently.

[bronnestam]

Steal, steal, steal ...    Take a simple melody of someone else and try to create variations of it.
"A good composer does not imitate; he steals." /Stravinskij

I know a composer (rock star). He says that he either is trying to find the melody in a piece of text, or the lyrics in a piece of melody.

I think the most important thing is to dare to begin, and to dare to fail and create a lot of crap at first. 

[inverted]

If I'm truly stuck for ideas I find as practice you can always force some music out of yourself - it normally doesn't sound any good but it pays dividends later when you actually have some inspiration, and as Tchaikovsky said "inspiration is a guest which does not often visit the lazy".

I try to put together a 4-bar melody, and then harmonise it in whatever chords work. Then I'll maybe take a a small phrase in the melody, even just a few notes, and try to make it last on its own for a few bars, just repeating it, inverting it, moving it up and down and re-working the chords underneath. Then find another few notes in the melody to do it to. Doing that I can hammer out maybe a page, it doesn't sound particularly nice and won't show much originality but it will work and show a certain unity as a piece, due to only using the one melody as a basis for everything.

Then I'll normally try to modulate. The way I first learnt to modulate was to use the ii-V-I progression, "I" being the tonic of your target key. So if I'm in C and want to go to G, I'll go to Amin (ii in G), then to Ddom7th (sharpening the f is where the actual modulation occurs, but it won't be obvious to a listener) and then cadence perfectly to G, which gives the full impression that G is now the tonic.

Just by modulating and playing around with tiny melodic fragments using sequencing, inversion, and retrograding, you can churn out a sonatine with even the blandest, most uninspired melody you can possibly hash out at a piano.

[flashyfingers]

the V and the leading tone and all that just helps you complete phrases. Honestly, there is a way to compose organically, simply by drawing notes from a hat or what have you, drawing out counterpoint and SATB etc. However, I like to think of composing as an intuitive process that is improved upon through study of theory and a good sense of relative pitch/trained ear that understands and thirsts for harmony (and dissonance).

I think composing is very difficult, and who knows how hard it actually is or isn't. *shrugs*