New to Composing

Hello, everyone. I'm a high school student, and while I've played classical Horn and Jazz bass for years, I've never really gone into great study regarding Music Theory and composing. Does anyone have any recommendations of where I should start?

What would be the best Music Theory book? What should I study? Thanks in advance! And I'm willing to start very basic, so long as it's possible to advance.

It depends, really, on what style you want to learn. And, that is best way to look at others composers and see how they did it. And, emaciate their style. For books, Composing: a new approach is good place to start.

You should first start studying aggressively start studying all kinds of music. Immerse yourself in the musical languages of different styles, eras, and genres of music of all time periods. Study as many scores as you can get your hands on, preferably scores you have recordings of. You should also increase your studies into music theory to become fluent in the musical language.

A few books you might want to consider when venturing off into you compositional life is Essential Dictionary of Orchestration, Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, and Essential Dictionary of Music. All published by Alfred Publishing Co., Inc of Los Angeles.

Also just start composing. Write as much music as you can and try to get them read by you fellow musicians or at least get your pieces looked over by your music teachers. Their feedback will be invaluable to your developing compositional skills.

This will be very good if you plan on pursuing composition as a career due to the fact that a lot of colleges are now expecting in coming freshmen to have a portfolio already made.

Doing all this will give you more then a head start in your compositional career if that is what you plan to pursue.

If not composition is still a skill that can get you ahead in any music career you choose.

I think the best way to start is a class - does your school offer AP Music Theory? Without this class score study to me would have been a waste of time, as I had no idea how to organize things like chord progressions or chromaticism etc. - basically knowing the rules and seeing how my favorite composers bent or broke them led me to be able to bend and break them in my own way.

My school doesn't offer AP Music Theory, or I would've taken it in a heartbeat. I've tried to access sites online for music theory, but none of them seem to give any lessons, just "these notes make this chord."

One of the best places to start is this web site. Check out the "Lessons" sections. Several members have uploaded lessons about composing that they have developed. Poke through some of them, find one you like, and start following it.

Also, if you find there's a topic that you want to know more about, write a question. Write it here if it's very general--"Can someone explain what voice leading is?" or in the "Advice and Techniques" section if it is more specific--"How do I decide which trumpet mute to use?"

My advice is to learn theory, but simultaneously train your ear...learn solfege...at least as important. get a sight singing book and some gia ear training cds...I dont know the exact name of them, but they have cds that sing patterns in solfege over harmonies, you echo and then later they sing without solfege and you have to figure out the patterns...things like that..they also make a harmonic trainer...this is what you really need to do..if you only understand theory and not what things actually sound like, it is much more time consuming to compose. Otherwise, I recommend any book explaining traditional tonal harmony and then expanding to something like persichettis 20th century harmony and perhaps a jazz harmony book...mainly, though, learn to use your ears and be creative. If you would get the persichetti book, I recommend doing one of the example exercises on a daily basis..

My honest suggestion is to write before anything else. See what pops out.

After that, then learn the whys and wherefores. That way, you see what sounds "good" to you, and then compare it to what is "right." You might find that, like Cage, you just don't get one part of the equation, but that's no reason to not compose.

But I don't believe in appeals to tradition.

I am pretty much in the same situation as you. I've been studying piano and violin for 7+ years and am just getting into composing and getting into the nitty gritties of music.

I've found the website musictheory.net extremely use full. At least for a beginner. And it's FREE! (always a plus) It has ear trainers, lessons and the works. Explore it! I found it extremely educational and easy to understand.

I think the most important thing you must do is identify what it is that you love so much about the music you have been playing for the past few years. Then simply working at transferring that love and devotion to composing... All other things involved in getting you to that place are mere technicalitites...

-Also i think that composing sraight to manuscript will probably aid you in discovering that you already know a lot more than you're currently aware of ...