Learning the Fundamentals. Technical Skills.

Hi,

I'm a wanna-be composer and I'm looking to improve my basic harmony/counter-point skills.

I'm a classically trained pianist for 15 years, and up to now, composing has so far comprised of creating nice melodies on the piano. But I find my technical skills are really limiting me.

For those people that have obtained a solid foundation. Would you please recommend some ways for me to develop it as well? I'm attempting to study famous classical pieces, but i'm unsure how to "study". Is a good teacher important to have?

Thanks for all your help.

-Cuppo

I think having a teacher to encourage and inspire you is a good idea. I was lucky enough to be taught by a great composer who has taught me so much about music. Although composing is a unique individual skill, it can be taught through study of orchestration, music theory, to help you understand the role of harmony and melody, how to modulate etc. It is true that in order to break the rules, you should learn them first and I have seen so many posts here with people breaking the rules of traditional harmony and clearly not ever having been taught the rules they were breaking!

I would teach you myself if you were in my home city, but I'm not sure where you live?

I agree completely.

First the rules must be learned. Then they can be broken.

I've taken a few composition courses before and they've never emphasized the fundamentals enough. "Composition can't be taught, just be creative!".

I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Awesome country!

So as a general guideline. How much of learning to compose depends on the teacher and how much on blood,sweat,and tears?

-Cuppo

This is a hard question to answer because you'll find that, especially among composers, the opinions on the matter vary widely.

Studying scores of classical pieces will basically give you a good grounding in the kind of theory and structure that was used back then. You don't need a teacher for that, and you don't really need that to learn to compose.

In my own personal opinion based on my own experience, a teacher is much more useful if they motivate you to discover your own voice through work of your own rather than bog you down with the study of random little nit-picky details of classical scores. The more you study other pieces, the more you can lose focus in your own writing. That's why I think that the most important thing is to be moderate about things and temper your study of classical structures and theory with exploration of your own music; whether or not it conforms to those classical rules.

Music is an artform, after all, and as such there is no real way to write "wrong" music. As a classically trained pianist with 15 years of experience, I'm fairly confident in saying that you've had more than enough exposure to classical music to give you a strong foundation for composition.

In the end, it depends on what you want. If your intent is to write music that mimics the sound of the classics, then studying them in depth and really understanding their fundamental construction is a good idea. If, however, you've got music of your own that's bubbling away in your head and needs to get out, then forget the classics and just learn whatever basic theory you need to be able to get that music out on paper or into notation software.

If you just happen to be a musical person who's decided they'd like to compose, then a teacher can be helpful because a teacher can help you to unlock your inner musical voice so that you can start to feel that drive to write music and thereby justify any learning required to get it from brain to paper.

I started writing music because I felt a sort of inner need to express myself through music, I suppose, and I never had any formal training in composition or anything, much less study of classical pieces. That didn't stop me or in any way hinder me though, as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, while others I've heard were busy writing for small ensembles endlessly to practise basic composition techniques (as is classically suggested), I jumped right in to the full orchestra setting because I figured it was the best way to learn - after all, to write successfully for a full orchestra, you need to understand its parts.

And so of course, being the contrary being I am, I worked backwards; instead of learning the parts and putting them together into a structured whole, I started with the whole, did terribly, got much better much faster, and then gained a deeper understanding of the interactions between instrumental groups and the mechanics of orchestration because I was used to working with the full thing right from the get-go.

I feel that my method has brought me a more personal style of orchestration, one that is less derivative than if I had done things the "proper" way. More than that, now I am able to look at any piece and immediately be able to understand the orchestration style and mimic it - an important skill in my field of incidental music :).

Anyway, that's my take on things. I wish you luck, however you decide to proceed :)

P.S. I'm not in Calgary, but I'm not too far - just near Toronto :D Go Canada!