How pros compose

I once read that Sting sometimes sets the sentences in his morning newspaper to music. This has the added benefit of suggesting possible lyrics once an adequate melody has materialized.

One article was saying that people who have composing careers tend to start with the big picture and work down toward the details. Amateurs do the opposite. Pros are able to conceive of and write several parts simultaneously taking into account how they interrelate.

Amateurs write one bar at a time.

Another point about complexity is instrumentation. Perhaps the reason pop music has only 5 or 6 parts is due to the "not enough instruments=boring, too many instruments=chaos" dichotomy. Pop music has the happy medium.

I was reading a scholarly article about complexity that basically said successfully creative people have personalities that love complexity, so they're able to crank out all this different stuff. However, complexity is not the same as popularity. The Beatles, it mentioned, got less and less popular, the more complex they're music became. The most popular music, they said, tends to have a moderate amount of complexity, not more or less. I read a related article on music perception/psychology which mentioned that well formed rhythms (what people expect to hear) have 2-6 events per 5 seconds (that must be the parameters for a moderate amount of complexity in that musical dimension). The tempo 100 beats per minute is in the center of the perceptual field (moderate complexity?). Scales also have well-formedness. They usually have 5 or 7 notes, not 4 or 6. 5 is a bit simple, the chromatic is a bit complex so, we mostly like 7 even if some of the notes are microtonal but most people are having none of this 31 divisions of the octave stuff etc... that computer music programmers are spewing out.

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In Berklees book on melody writing it says the Chorus often starts on a "consonant" sounding place e.g. the downbeat. And ends in a position that feels final. Thats different for a 2 measure phrase than it is for a 4 measure phrase.

In a 2 measure phrase, (if I remember correctly) thats the third beat of the second measure.

In a 4 measure phrase thats the first beat of the 4th measure. I'll check my the book later to be certain.

Of course there are different places where you can end or start a chorus for sure and they all have different feelings of how much rhythmic "consonance" or finality there is.

The second most restful place for a 2 measure phrase to end is the first beat of the second measure etc..

Another point they brought up is that its often important to contrast starting and ending points between the sections. If the chorus starts on the downbeat then the verse shouldn't unless you have a reason for starting on the downbeat again such as its dance music or groove music or your mitigating that with a change of instrumentation or whatever.

You can also contrast melodic rhythms between sections or phrases. Long held notes on the chorus and shorter note values for the verse.

Or contrast phrase lengths within or between sections.

4bar phrase in the chorus 2 bar phrase in the verse or two 2bar phrases followed by a 4 bar phrase in the verse.

These are NOT the only possibilities.

Further, the consequent phrase within a section often reaches a greater height, has a wider leap, gives a greater dynamic or, or, or, etc...

Of course I'm sure you're aware of contrasting melodic outline between sections as well.

If you've got an upward curve in the verse then perhaps the chorus is a flatline or a descending line.

Varying your starting note is another tool. Does the chorus star on 1? Then the verse might start on a less stable note such as 2, 4, 6, 7, b2, #4, b6, b7. This is also affected by what chord is playing in the chorus.

These hints have helped me make better melodies.

In fact another one of my article reads said that pro musicians had a rhythmic concept behind their melody writing and amateurs didn't and only thought about a string of notes. scraggy, most music just walks up and down the scale by neighbor notes. That aspect is hardly important most of the time for pop and rock music.

Another observation about classical music which surely applies to pop as well; An article on computer based music composition said that, after analyzing 1000s of classical compositions, the nostrum about hitting the climax only once was an old wives tale. That rule was broken so often that it could hardly be called a rule. The other old wives tale was reversing direction after a leap. Once I tried to follow that rule on everything I wrote and it was all crap. Lesson; don't believe everything your told.

Last thing; one technique is that the climax is approached by walking up the scale by step, the climax is a held or a repeated note and then leaps down or visa versa e.g. it leaps up then walks down. an example of the second is the foreign language part of "All Night Long" by Lionel Richie;

Jumbolitae Setemoya. Yeah Jambo Jambo. Way to Party Oh we goin, Oh Jambola. Jambolitae Setemoya (leap up)Yeah Jambo Jambo (Held) Yeah TEXT. All Night Long etc...

Scales also have well-formedness. They usually have 5 or 7 notes, not 4 or 6. 5 is a bit simple, the chromatic is a bit complex so, we mostly like 7 even if some of the notes are microtonal but most people are having none of this 31 divisions of the octave stuff etc... that computer music programmers are spewing out.

Yes I have to comment, being the resident microtonalist. The well-formedness has less to do with the number of notes and more the relations of the notes...I brought this up somewhere else but can't find it. The great thing about 31 or any large-cardinality scale is that it doesn't mandate complexity. You are free to pick and choose small sets of notes from the large, leading to an overall more complex experience but locally one just as simple as is possible with 12.

I think the reason for the staggering prevalence of the 7-note diatonic in popular music is due to its monopoly in the music theory that everyone is forced to learn. Many pop composers are fine with what seems to have worked before; trying something new would be a waste of time and money.

I agree that the fact that diatonic theory is the norm in music education appears partly responsible for the prevalence of diatonic music, especially popular, but scales/modes of about 5 to 7 notes are also the norm in the music traditions of cultures around the world, which can be traced back to ancient times. Humans naturally enjoy music composed with these sorts of scales. Use of microtones has much potential, and I've just begun to explore the possibilities myself, beginning with learning about their use in Indian classical music, an ancient tradition which has an enormous amount to teach. This music very commonly uses microtones, dividing the octave into, as far as I remember, about 22 tones. The scales used however, range from about 4 tones at the very least, to about 9 at the very most, 7 being the average, and commonly have a different number of tones ascending than descending.There are literally thousands of different ragas, many which use exactly the same notes but which express different moods, and have different rules of use, such as the vadi and samvadi: the notes of 1st & 2nd importance respectively. There is much more to it of course, but what I'm trying to say is that there are such treasures in non-Western music, which have been severely, arrogantly dismissed, underestimated, and ignored, that we would be at a real loss if we didn't learn from, for ex. in use of microtones. To experiment with microtones, tonality, atonality, etc. may of course be beneficial, but I think it wise to first really learn about what has already been achieved in music which has attained real artistic greatness, so we don't waste our efforts in re-inventing the wheel badly, as so much of recent Western experimental music does. If we find the Western major/minor system too limiting, have we thoroughly explored other established systems?

The prevalence of 5 to 7-tone scales in the world's music, from as far back in history as we can see, (as well as modern popular music worldwide) indicates that these scales (especially diatonic and pentatonic) are what humans most naturally express themselves with musically, and most enjoy listening to.

It may be possible, by repeated open-mided listening, for people to get used to and even enjoy music which uses more than 7 tones, but this requires people to make the effort to thus condition themselves to music which otherwise wouldn't naturally appeal to them. It can be compared to the temperature ranges people are comfortable with; some may enjoy a warm bath, others prefer a hot bath. Some enjoy bathing in moderately cold water. But it's all within a limited temperature range. Beyond that, some may condition themselves to bathing in freezing cold or boiling hot water, and learn to enjoy these.

To experiment with microtones, tonality, atonality, etc. may of course be beneficial, but I think it wise to first really learn about what has already been achieved in music which has attained real artistic greatness, so we don't waste our efforts in re-inventing the wheel badly, as so much of recent Western experimental music does. If we find the Western major/minor system too limiting, have we thoroughly explored other established systems?

Could you give some examples of other established systems? Harmonically speaking, the Western major/minor system is the big one, and most other musical traditions fixate on rich melody.

Can you give an example of re-inventing the wheel badly also? One thing to note is that those responsible for "great achievements" in music usually are not the ones who engineered the musical system. Not to say that these systems were engineered at all, and maybe that's the problem with experiment, but maybe it isn't. Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Tcherepnin, etc. were able to discover/invent new scales hiding inside the old ones! And I dare say they have a lot of mileage in them!

Can I invent a musical scale and use it without being guilty of relying on novelty and artifice? Perhaps not. But isn't art inescapably artifice?

In Bali Indonesia the Slendro scale divides the octave roughly into five equal tones as is the Kora music of central Africa. The Pelog scale in Java Indonesia is divided into nine equal divisions. The scale in Thailand is divided into 7 equal divisions.

Middle Eastern music divides the octave into 24 or more subdivisions. Notes inflected are usually flat. The classical music of India divides the octave into 22 unequal divisions. Usually the notes ascending to the octave can be played slightly sharp.

As far as reinventing the wheel badly. Think of Edison, thousands of lightbulbs that didn't work. Composers too. The most prolific composers produce the best and a large body of crap that trails behind them to go along with the good stuff. Moral of the story: Write a LOT of music. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Gongchime

You sound really clued up on Classical music Gongchime, could you recommend any good books to teach me how to write classical. I have just recently become really interested but dont have any ideas at all about composing.

thanks............Craig

Actually, my classical composing chops suck donkey. I just know a lot. But I do have something I could post which would point you in the right direction classically. I'll have to dig it up. I'm sure others on this forum would be better to fill in any of the missing pieces however. I'm an expert on world music not classical music.

Gongchime