Composing Specific Emotions

Hi, I wanted to ask, how does one create a certain mood or emotion? For example, if you want to make an extremely sad, dark piece, there's more to it that just putting in a minor key. You need to work on orchestration, themes, etc. But how do you go about this? Any advice and/or suggestions?

One must also consider tempo. The cliche is of course is that 'sad' pieces are slow and 'happy' pieces are faster. As for specific notes, in my own piano compositions I often find myself writing 'sad' melodies with more stepwise movement as well using a lot of passing tones and chromatic ornamention. If you analyzed my 'happy' melodies you would find they contain more leaps than steps and play around a lot with arpeggios and rolls up and down the keyboard. I also find I'm more inclined to use dotted rhythms when I'm writing cheerful pieces. The emphasis can also be put on dynamics to set the tone of the piece. Just some of my thoughts.

I think is everything, Tempo, Tonality, Harmony, Orchestration, everything...

If you feel it, (sad, happy etc) it won't be difficult to you, if you want to build it on purpose, will be a little difficult (let's say you fell happy but you want to create something sad,...) it won't work very much, unless you have a very good library of resourses, (things you have used before to express that, or things you have heard on other pieces ...etc)

I think you can find a lot of great ideas for many emotions by listening to the music of Stephen Sondheim. If you focus on his orchestrations, you'll hear that he expertly captures so many different emotions. Some good examples of his for dark music are the musicals 'Assassins' and 'Sweeney Todd'.

That is a good and very interesting question.

I would say first and perhaps foremost, listen to the work of many composers to see how they handle orchestration, tempo, melodic lines and harmony, etc...

Some composers who made cottage industries out of creating certain moods/feelings:

Bartok and his night music: fear-- creepy, creepy real fear. Portomento, glissandos, percussive effects, disssonance, disjointed, non-intuitive melodic lines...

Haydn: happy, happy, happy: simple direct melodies, humorous invention playing off of listener expectations, major key and non-step wise, 'dancing' melodies. Hadyn was the Erasure of classical music (no offense intended, either way).

Franck, Debussy/ impressionists: dreamy, contemplative, atmospheric...I think the key here is to avoid pronounced cadential phrasing/diatonic work, and focus on tonal coloring, instrumentation, and a thoughtful consideration of what it is you want to convey: images, feelings, an idea.

Probably a quick way to gain insight is to listen to film scores!!! This is what these folks get paid to do--conjure/augment emotions conveyed on the screen, and they do it quickly and often with some stock methods--borrowed from the greats.

its just experience in my taste, composer who was asked to create something sad and made it can recreate it again, it can apply to any mood.

i cant tell which way to start, you could go about composing when you're happy and see what happens. but you could go about saying i want to create an action theme, and imagine what sounds would come for you in an action scene. i think its very important to actually act the piece before turning it to notes.

Probably a quick way to gain insight is to listen to film scores!!! This is what these folks get paid to do--conjure/augment emotions conveyed on the screen, and they do it quickly and often with some stock methods--borrowed from the greats.

Yep, this is a good idea! Watch some films with good scores, but pay particular attention to the music and how it reflects/reacts to the ongoing action.

Personally, I find the best way to write 'emotionally' or at least to purposefully write a piece to a convey specific mood is to develop your own very clear 'emotional understanding' of music. You need to find music instrinsically emotional, that is to say that each note in every piece must convey or imply an emotional stance. I'm not really sure how a person develops such a vivid relationship between music and emotion but once you find yourself in this position, conveying particular 'themes' will become instinctive. Bear in mind however, that not all music is written with emotional authority; the emotional impact is often coincidental and doesn't materialize until a piece is listened to or at least after the notes are conceived.

Your own understanding will be personal to yourself, but if you want to convey a particular emotion to a large audience I suppose you need to empathise with traditional musical gestures. Listening and watching a great deal of film scores - taking note of emotional clich

Rach -

Depends highly on your compositional technique. Can you harmonize a preset melody in two or three different styles? Can you write an Invention - both old and contemporary? How well can you orchestrate? That is, if I were to give you a John Adams section from Phrygian gates, one of bartok's shorts dances for piano, a short piano work by Schubert and say an Errol garner piano improv would you be able to do at least two of these? Note I am not saying you do all of these and create masterpieces just you do them well.

These are just some things but in short it takes a lifetime to capture an emotion musically - I don't even think you can (there have been a ton of threads about this topic and I urge you or anybody else NOT to go into it). I think you SHOULD but just be ready for an audience member to come up to you and say oh that was such a dark eerie piece when you intended it to be just quiet and meditative.

One psychological trick to do is to give a descriptive title describing the piece. But even this may not come across culturally - some music from China Thailand and japan may sound quite bright and in a majorish "happy" mode to Western ears but the intent is to communicate anger/sadness etc.