"The sign of a real composer is that, if he were put in a jail, knowing he would never be let out from there, even if he could never send letters or any other information from there, he would still compose." - Einojuhani Rautavaara
previous thread: An experiment in a pen-and-paper composing general, made for all the theory autists
This differs from /prod/ in that it is more focused on the actual writing of music, not the production, and music theory. That is not to say /prod/'s electronic music is unwelcome, by all means, post here! But post with the intent on discussing composition. And remember, this is NOT /classical/. Any music, such as jazz, is acceptable
Post clyps and accompanying notation so we can accurately critique your composing from a theory perspective
Memorial edition This guy is absurdly difficult to quote edition
He has so many good quotes but they're all way too long. >There are very strong moments [in my 7th Symphony], but the logic is very clear in a classical sense—not in the sense that there’s a given form that it falls into, rather that it searches for its own form and finds it. >When I had more or less learned all those techniques, I realized that if you follow your time, you come after it. You are not leading. The only way for me was to write the kind of music that I liked. That was the only criterion possible. I wrote the kind of music I wanted to hear at the moment. For instance, I learned the classical 12-tone technique in my youth, and I wrote several such works. But there was always the problem that harmony was extremely important for me, so important that it was impossible for me to follow the path the avant-garde took in the late 1950s and 1960s. I had to keep harmony. But still, even today, I think that the twelve tempered tones are the vocabulary of the composer in this century, and it’s only the question of syntax, of the organization of that vocabulary. My solution has been to seek a synthesis of the modern and of more or less tonal harmony.
Joseph Price
Oh shit that's right /COMP/ CHALLENGE # 4
Compose a work based on the four melodic stanzas in pic related. The rule is that the stanzas MUST BE LEFT INTACT, however, I have intentionally left out time signatures and barlines so you can do whatever you want with the division of pulse as long as the note duration and sequence, essentially the melody, is left intact. You're also free to choose tempo.
You MUST use all four stanzas, however, you can elaborate upon them or use them as climax etc.
STANZA 1 - STANZA 4 - STANZA 2 - contrasting part in the form of a classical minuet lol - STANZA 3 - disco funk into fade out
Instrumentation: 1 instrument that uses treble clef as standard + 1 instrument that uses bass clef as standard.
You have few instruments to work with here, so make them count!
No longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds per entry. Alright? Pick a time signature (or several) and get to it.
Here's a clyp of the stanzas for those who don't read sheet music: clyp.it/oujcf1fh (don't let yourself be limited by the time signature, tempo and instrumentation in this example)
Jose Taylor
Poly, if you happen to pass by, have you ever considered trying to write a fugue like this?: youtube.com/watch?v=xXI6H1YodNw I'm interested what your take would be.
Adam Perez
>I wonder when this was posted >it was last Sunday Are these still weekly?
Tyler Campbell
bump
Adrian King
"Never begin working the out of a composition before the whole thing has taken definite form as an outline either on paper or in your head. When ideas come to you, go for a walk, then you will discover that the thing you thought was a complete thought, was actually only the beginning of one." -Brahms How true is this? Should I go for a walk right now to imagine this piece I'm composing in its entirety?
(please respond)
David Walker
Fuck it, going for a walk anyways
Ethan Brooks
fuck, /comp/ really is beyond dead on the weekends
Asher Cooper
alright, final bump before I go for a stroll in 100 degrees Fahrenheit
Joseph Richardson
Is it ok if I don't learn proper keyboard hand technique? I'm an electronic music producer, and I'm almost always recording each track individually. So, the chords wouldn't be played at the same time as the melody. This makes it easier for me to do weird octave stuff with the melody, and also I'm no good at doing different patterns with different hands.
My posture is ok I think, but my hand positions are basically random garbage.
William Myers
Dead on weekends unless there's a stream.
I'd maybe do a stream about reading different kinds of old notation, mostly mensural notation and figured bass, if there's anyone interested.
And I assume I could pick up enough about that chord scale system to be able to explain it to people who are completely new to that concept.
Robert Thompson
wow, that really helped actually, and I'm surprised that my noise cancelers actually seemed to hinder it somewhat. Maybe it's just because it was a breezy, aesthetically-pleasing day, and my noise cancelers seriously accumulate their own heat and sweat in this temperature.
also, >other people have posted now It's always helpful to learn to play an instrument (or a group of instruments) properly, and piano especially, considering how helpful it is. Nothing beats intimate knowledge when trying to write something idiomatic for an instrument.
Laden in keyboard technique are subtle things that familiarize the student with the concepts of contrapuntal motion (or semi-/quasi-contrapuntal anyways), proper voice leading. etc.
Matthew Ward
Yeah, we used to have a stream every Sunday until just a couple of weeks ago, I wonder what happened to that.
Jeremiah Parker
I spent the last two weeks orchestrating this piece in a picturesque cottage I feel like a composer now
I've just started making the notation
am I allowed to post just the music here and then the notation another time?
Eli Hall
Feel free to. Just make sure the notation is enharmonically correct
unfortunately I've got next to nothing of the notation to show but I'll come back when its done as well
Ethan Reyes
Seriously, I advocate everyone to go for a walk with a set of noise cancelers to imagine your composition (spend half the time wearing them and half the time not wearing them).
Nolan Jones
I did this on a beautiful quiet beach (without noise cancelers) and funnily enough, the waves started to work their wave into the music it wasn't bad tho it had that slow pulse of waves gently washing up onto shore
Nolan Ward
how do i into composition hardcore without institutional education?
Gabriel Gray
jus do it
Kevin Miller
dunno if this'll really help, most just posting because but he does mention things for beginners. Maybe it'll be a good starting point. solomonsmusic.net/brahmrls.htm
Joshua Gonzalez
mind explaining why counterpoint is considered so important?
David Howard
is it possible to have a violin section play chords consisting of 4 notes? what would that look like? If there are any references you guys can recommend, I'd be very grateful. new to composing
David Long
does any producer of electronic dance music (of all kinds, not only edm) write sheet music?
are there advantages to doing so?
Jaxson Adams
.
Alexander Walker
Hmm, that's a tough question. It's definitely not as important, per se, as it was in Brahms' and Fux's time, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't learn it, similar to how you should already know classical physics before learning Einsteinian physics. (Don't take that too literally, music theory isn't perfectly analogous to physics.)
Basically everything from the Renaissance to the Romantic period was based in various ways on counterpoint.
In the Renaissance, and to a lesser extent the Baroque period, it was a mechanism in which multiple independent and self-sufficient melodies could be stacked atop one another (the effect to someone in its early days might have been something like youtu.be/WTW9fqvZyAA), but with controlled and not-excessive dissonance. In the classical and romantic periods it was used to decorate the melody with countermelodies that breathed life into the melody without detracting or distracting.
Even in the 20th century it has a heavy influence. Most composers/theorists took a closer look at the finer details behind counterpoint, what's its function? What do you avoid by following these rules? Some composers, Debussy for example, broke these rules to see the effects caused by doing so, this technique is called parallelism and planing. Some composers like Schoenberg took the rules a step further and followed them without any regard or attention paid to harmony, this is called linear counterpoint.
One other thing, learning counterpoint gives you a starting point from which you figure out how melodic lines flow, how they separate and come together, how the shapes of different motivic figures contribute to the vertical and horizontal momentums (momenta?) of a piece (if that makes any sense), all that jazz.
Basically it's helpful.
Juan Evans
bump
Chase Jenkins
What topics have been covered in the streams so far? I only remember two about chords and melody lines and one about modes
Parker Perry
The first one was just sort of fundamentals and music intervals, I believe, and other than that you listed all of them so far.
Ayden Baker
can anyone help me on this/is there anyone with experience writing for strings?
do I really NEED music theory to write good music? or is it just a way to make the process easier? should I try to break it every once in a while?
Jayden Nguyen
Has anyone used a Komplete Kontrol keyboard? I moved to another country recently, and I'll only stay here for a while so I'm considering that for interpretation and composition.
Is it supposed to connect to your computer, and from your computer DAW, and from there to your audio? I would be using a pair of mid or high range headphones.
I don't see it having any sort of output for headphones and I'm completely retarded as far as audio equipment goes.
Zachary Walker
no amount of music theory will fix a shitty ear but there's really no reason not to learn it. it's pretty easy tbhfam
Gavin Anderson
>tfw mediocre ear It's not fair senpai!
Joseph Rogers
Yeah, there are plenty, you have first violins and second violins but they can both play doublestops or divisi.
There's plenty in this movement, and in the entire suite as a whole: youtube.com/watch?v=W4t72QQXSok Look up string suites, especially ones written for student orchestras like this one, if you want more references on this subject
Julian Green
you can train your ear to be better over time it's just that learning music theory doesn't mean you'll make good music immediately
Wyatt Lee
someone with a good ear will invariably produce a better sound than someone well educated on music theory
Dominic Jenkins
not him but that doesn't really refute his point
Evan Cruz
thank you for the help its a big relief to know its doable this is the piece I was asking about not sure whether doublestops of divisi would be better here but ill look into both as well as all the examples
Jordan Morgan
Yes you can use "divisi" writing where the players split into different parts, each one playing a different note. You can also use 2 staves each for the 1st and 2nd Violins like in pic related. With these techniques you can have the violins playing up to 16 different notes at once (4 on each stave) provided your score was very clear. 4 parts on each stave isn't advisable, but with clear voice leading, or if they're just playing chords, it can be done.
2 parts on each stave is much more manageable, and I would recommend sticking to that. So with the violins in 4 staves, you could have 8 different notes at once.
You write "div" for divisi when you want the strings to play more that 1 note (but not using double stops) and "unis" for unison when you want them to return to playing the same note all together.
Note in pic related Martinů also has the violas in divisi
Interesting piece, personally I prefer to make something more lyrical and tonal. Hindemith has his charms, but this piece is very dry and repeats some quite blocky non-lyrical lines. I've passed my disjointed atonal phase, so prefer to write lyrical and tonal with plenty of chromaticism if I desire dissonance.
I wouldn't mind doing a fugue like the opening of Bartok's music for strings percussion and celesta, but like I said, that kind of atonal writing is kind of behind me. I need my music to be beautiful and lyrical - that is my voice: the other composers call me a "romantic"
>Day job has ended >Applying for funding to complete my symphony >Attempting to be full time composer wish me luck anons, thankfully my country has a shit ton of support for the arts and there are many decent grants to apply for!
Nicholas Garcia
it's been a few days since i posted a piece, but that challenge thing really stops me from working. I find it kind of hard to make something from the stanzas that doesn't sound too simple or too bad.
Anyways, practicing some orchestration again. Maybe it's a bad idea to actually post the score along with this because it looks so huge.
>wish me luck anons, thankfully my country has a shit ton of support for the arts and there are many decent grants to apply for! Where is that? I'm stuck in a shithole where you starve with the arts.
Hunter Peterson
New Zealand. Some recent survey showed that 4/5 people value the arts and think its a vital part of our country, and people have been campaigning for good arts funding for 30 years so we're at a point where there's a LOT of funding out there, just a matter of applying for it all!
Jaxson Jenkins
Good luck and thank you very much for all the help
Jaxson Rivera
Man that sounds great. Good luck, user. Take advantage of those opportunities.
Kayden Ramirez
pls
Andrew Richardson
>Hindemith has his charms, but this piece is very dry and repeats some quite blocky non-lyrical lines Really? I guess our tastes in musical lines is just too different, but I didn't really find it like that.
Ethan Roberts
Its that repeating motif in the subject, imo a subject shouldn't have exact repetition, and should outline good harmonic changes. That hindemith fugue is very static compared to a bach fugue where the subject never repeats a part exactly and walks through different chords.
I mean, outlining good harmonic changes kind of goes out the window in Hindemith's tonal system.
I dunno, personally I think the repetition kind of centers it. Putting it in the subject is a good idea in this case - you can hear the subject and recognize it easily by its repetition, but you can focus on all the other stuff being done. In such a non-diatonic piece as this that becomes much more important, as too much variation in the different parts can lead to just chromatic white noise.
I mean I haven't written countless fugues and obsessed over them for years, so I wouldn't know but
Joseph Long
Its certainly interesting to see what 20th century composers have done with the fugue. I found Shostakovich's fugues wanting, but I should revisit them. Anton Reicha's fugues are excellent and unusual, although he isn't 20th century. I wish Lera Auerbach had written 24 fugues to go with her preludes, I'm sure she'd do a great job - straddling the line between tonality and modern dissonance and serialism.
What do you make of the fugue from Liszts piano sonata in B minor?
I think he uses the repeated ideas very well, as he has the repeated rhythm move through different chords, giving the fugue more movement. It gets a bit "shredding romantic" for my liking by the opening is pretty good.
Ligeti's kyrie from his requiem is also fugal, but its a long way from the fugues we're used to...
Charles Wright
>oh, fuck, how's he gonna end this in 30 seconds? >oh, fuck, how's he gonna end this in 10 seconds? >wait, how's he gonna end this in 5 sec- Well, at least it got me to seek another video, where I saw the second theme actually comes from the previous movement (if not also prior to that).
I thought it was quite nice, although by the 2 minute mark I'm pretty sure it had already left fugue territory.
Wish I could listen or comment more analytically, but it's freaking 3 AM here
Lucas Cox
Bump
Aaron Brown
...
Caleb Hughes
you should post a random score when you bump user
David Morgan
Can't, on phone
Hunter Martin
Which is more important to composing good music, taste or creativity?
Camden Long
What do you mean by taste?
Juan Sanchez
I'm very fluent in the chord scale system, and could do a stream if there is demand.
literally only if you were integrating live performance with live instrumentalists, and you wanted to make rehearsals smoother
good luck
both? If you're creative but have no taste how do you trim the fat of what is creative but shit? At least, vice versa, you can write music that is enjoyable and at worst could only be boring.
Hudson King
Without creativity you can't compose music at all. Taste is a personal thing. Its not quantifiable. What one person thinks is great taste, another thinks is awful taste.
Creativity on the other hand is something you can either say a person has or doesn't have, and its integral to composing music. "good" is also subjective.
I would say composing "effective" music takes a combination of creativity, knowledge, experience and hard work.
Charles Foster
Since the thread is rather quiet, I hope you all don't mind me sharing this 2015 interview with Rautavaara that I found very inspiring.
>chord scale system I'd tune in. I understand that it's about expanding chords up to 15, so it ends up with 7 notes total, that you can reorder to make a scale, and then use that scale to improvise over the chord. To me, this 3 step calculation (expand, reorder, make up lines using the scale whilst coming up with interesting rhythm as well) is not quite possible to do in real time. Also, naming the scales after building them doesn't happen instantaneously for me yet.
Therefore, I'd be happy to receive some instructions.
As for me, I could offer to cover a more basic topic like figured bass, as it helps consolidate one's understanding of chords and voicing, as well as some notations in the Roman literal analysis, assuming there's demand
Kayden Wright
Is my level of proficiency at jazz enough for a college jazz club? I'm not particularly good at it, but since they accept people with no jazz background, I wonder if I should be okay..
if they accept people with no jazz background, I'm sure they would accept you. Nice piece. I'm not too well versed in jazz but from a superficial standpoint, this improvisation seems skillful. You should be fine
Matthew Foster
That's the essence of how to build chord scales, but probably the best way to apply them towards playing is to memorize them in regards to specific chords. i.e. II-7 is dorian, III-7 is phyrigian etc. You still have a three step process but it's now analyze -> recall chord scale -> improvise, and I think that's easier. Of course, just practicing and improving your ear makes it go faster.
If they accept people with no jazz background they probably aren't playing really tough tunes anyways. You would definitely be fine. Autumn Leaves is an easy tune so I can't really say how you might handle harder tunes. Right now your main problems is rhythmic feel and some of your chord voicings, but definitely nothing that would prevent you from hangin at a college club.
Ethan Bennett
im mesmerized
Aiden Bennett
Thanks man, glad you liked it.
Yeah I don't think they are playing any tough tunes, in fact I think it's mostly old show tunes, they tend to feature vocalists prominently so I'm not expecting some sort of pure jazz trio or stuff.
By voicing, you are talking about the occasional chords I played during the solos? I feel that my biggest problem is being a pattern player, especially on runs. It's really tough to visualise different scales and shapes on a guitar compared to a piano I find, and i need to find some way to fix this.
Matthew Wilson
Not entirely sure what value they have. They say they're designed to be completely integrated in Kontakt etc, but so can any midi keyboard, it's all fucking midi. Seems like a bit of a rip off, AKAI MPK 49 is half the price.
But yes, it connects to your computer through USB, and then to audio software with drivers. You then assign it to whatever virtual software instruments you own. This thing will make no sound by itself, you need software instruments too
Tyler Watson
And what of curative composing? Working through re/arrangement, found sound, sampling even?
Jordan Baker
>memorize them
B-but there's sooo many!
Jackson Murphy
then here's a simple mnemonic: memorize them by the emotions you feel. choose from >happy, sad, excited, depressed, thirsty, explosive, cheesy, bouncy, lively, slow, bold, dangerously cheesy
Kayden Long
Hm, I'd say the main challenge is the second table with all the harmonic minor scales, as their accidentals don't translate into directly recognizable keys, and therefore produce altered modes. Then again, it's just 8 scales to learn really. That's not the world.
Austin White
What would you say, how hard is a music theory? And how much of it should composers know (obviously less than performers), equal to or less than music theorists? What's the level you would need to be at to be comfortable at producing music? How long would it take to learn a decent amount of harmony by yourself (at least college level harmony for instrumentalists)? How deep do sites like teoria go with it?
Nicholas Johnson
This is a pretty crap way to learn chord scales anyways desu senpai imo
It is way easier to learn these in relation to a function. XMaj13#11 = lydian requires way more gymnastics than IVmaj7 = lydian (of course, if you're in major). It also doesn't mention avoid notes at all, so this is really only applicable to soloing and not building voicings, and even then it skips over a pretty important part.
You could instead just look at them as alterations of other modes. "Oh it's a bVII7, usually dominant chords take mixolydian, but this guy has a #11, so i'll play mixo with a #11 (which is usually called lydian dominant for some reason)"
Mason Martinez
>And how much of it should composers know (obviously less than performers), equal to or less than music theorists? did you mix those up?
Jacob Clark
Bumpo
Juan Adams
bumping with a note, bump with yours and let's see what chord we make:
A5
Cameron Gomez
A4
Gavin Scott
every frequency between 200Hz and 4kHz at equal power
David Bell
every integer frequency or every frequency?
Ayden Thompson
rest
Luke Rodriguez
F6
William Rodriguez
B3
Kevin Davis
Well, I'm looking forward to watching that chord scale stream.
Grayson Hill
F#5
Elijah Johnson
ouch, so dissonant
Dominic Butler
Well, You could make a B7 without using the F#5, and a B+7 without using the F6
Colton Collins
Still missing the third. Goin' for minor or major?
Elijah Robinson
So we've ended up with a tetrachord of [0,1,4,6]. (F,F#,A,B) Wow, we have one of only two possible all-interval tetrachords, apparently. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-interval_tetrachord
(Between F and F# is a minor second, between A and B is a major second, between F# and A is a minor third, between F and A is a major third, between F# and B is a perfect fourth, and between F and B is a tritone. So we have one of every possible interval, not counting inverted intervals.)
Good job, /comp/
Ian James
both
Ryder Diaz
major :^)
Dylan Ross
F double flat
Jayden Kelly
D#
Gabriel Adams
well technically, it's a maj7th since it's F#5 and F6
Leo Gonzalez
hi, i'm really interested in composition, and was wondering where the pest place to start would be for a complete beginniner. the only musical background i have is playing guitar, and i am intermediate at best. any and all help would be greatly appreciated, thanks :,)
