8 TIPS for Composers (with issues)

[Music] hello my name is david bruce so whatever kind of genre you're into as a composer whether it's songwriting writing for film or theater making tracks in a door or like me composing old school directly onto a stave there are a bunch of issues that seem to crop up for almost everyone but these aren't just problems that beginners face they're issues that we all face at different times and some of them i'm still tackling myself now [Music] so we'll look at eight of the most common issues composers have and well the nearest i've come to finding solutions to them issue number one i don't have any ideas and when i do have ideas they are always rubbish now i made this number one for a reason it's amazing how often i've heard it's said by even very experienced composers i've forgotten how to compose and part of the psychological battle of being an artist is learning how to deal with that common initial state with all the incredible music out there it's way too easy to feel intimidated particularly when you come up with that first idea and it's just obviously no good fourth beat of the first measure on c strings in unison ostinato and my solution is simple allow your first ideas to be rubbish unless your mozart in amadeus it's very rare for a brilliant piece of music to just arrive fully formed for a first idea to be really that good first measure three downward notes e d c [Music] then move it up a third yes yes yes now add a little dance yes i understand yes yes and that's all no no now for the real fire [Music] and it really helps to take the pressure off your creativity if you stop expecting that first idea to be a work of genius and actually expect it to be garbage the process of turning it into something better will be gradual you'll go back and rework and rework it maybe you'll add some new layer to it that will just bring it alive or maybe you'll cut some holes in it bring a bit of air into it john schwarzwell the one of the most acclaimed and elusive writers from the simpsons said it like this since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun i always write my scripts all the way through as fast as i can the first day if possible putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue then the next day when i get up the script's been written it's lousy but it's a script the hard part is done it's like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me all i have to do from that point on is fix it so i've taken a very hard job writing and turned it into an easy one rewriting overnight i never said that never issue number two i've got an idea but i don't know how to take it further maybe your problem isn't that you don't like your first idea maybe you've actually got an idea that you really like it's just you don't know what to do with it this is actually one of the most common issues i hear about from composers i think a large part of this comes from an anxiety that a piece ought to be composed in the order we hear it it's again the feeling that to be a real composer the piece should just flow out of us somehow my first idea came naturally but i just can't figure out where it should flow to next i must be a bad composer but musical continuity is an illusion you impose on a piece rather than a reality this believe me is something i really do know with certainty countless pieces i've written have been stitched and botched and bandaged together from the most unlikely fragments and yet i think they do indeed end up sounding just like one of those flows of real music i'm unreal so to help with this you should probably learn to accept what might be called non-linear composing put your good idea aside completely and write something else maybe several things and at some stage you'll probably find that one of them just clicks together with your original idea and you can do this over the long term i've heard of composers who refuse to throw any ideas away because they know there may come a time when that little idea will be just what they need but if you really want to continue with this particular idea well still put it to one side don't look at it and firstly just try to write it again now you could try literally doing that hopefully it's not something you'll remember exactly because that would be a bit pointless but you may find in the process of attempting to recreate it you find something new some new way to continue if that doesn't work you could try recreating the same feeling the thing that you really like about the idea try doing it again just in a slightly different way or you could try using some aspects of the material from the original idea use the same rhythm but change the harmony or the same chords over a different rhythm again don't at this stage try to connect it with the first idea just write something but the great advantage is now your material is already connected by a common thread so if you do end up using both ideas in your piece it will have an inbuilt sense of coherence this also helps with issue number three issue number three my pieces end up a bit of a jumble of different ideas they lack coherence if you've got plenty of ideas but you find the overall piece doesn't sound as focused as you would like try to find ways of limiting yourself so that you keep what you do within tighter boundaries the old adage that restrictions set you free really does have something to it it's one of those cliches that does actually mean something and does actually work but try to pin down specifically what the essence of what you're trying to do is and focus on ideas that really achieve that or on restrictions that help bring that about you've got lots of good ideas jacob just one one is enough the idea of focusing in on one idea for a much longer period is something i think popular music currently does a lot better than a lot of classical composers for contemporary classical composers there's some kind of pressure to be impressive to be always moving forwards cramming a piece full of ideas but very often simplicity stillness a lack of change will create some of the most powerful moments i experienced this myself at the end of the first part of my clarinet quintet gumboots i wanted to create this kind of still repetitive texture so there's an ongoing idea in the viola [Music] and i just used two chords rocking back and forth with nothing else happening for some time and it took me a lot of courage to put nothing else in there for so long i'd never written anything quite so sparse as that before but it's a real moment that i always enjoy wallowing in when i hear it it's having the courage to give the audience time to think for themselves and not feeling you always have to force feed them with information but if you still find this kind of reduction and simplicity too terrifying don't fret about it too much jacob collier who we saw a moment ago is someone who has found himself with an overabundance of ideas but as he himself wisely says coming to terms with the idea that less is more can simply be something that takes time and experience is that interesting thing of less is more because less is only more when you know what more is you know and then you can make a conscious decision to step back from that issue number four why does my piece sound a bit muddy a bit lackluster a bit lacking in life the answer to this one comes down surprisingly often to register a limited range when it comes to using register is one of the easiest ways to spot a less well developed composition i've lost count of the number of student compositions that start you know with both hands either side of middle c and just noodle around in the same register maybe just moving up or down a little bit this is actually one of the easiest issues to correct and one of the most effective so it's well worth thinking about middle register pieces are a bit like a room with no windows the air is heavy and after a while it becomes quite oppressive and so the most obvious thing to do is to let some air in if you think in terms of there being three registers the middle the low and the high then there are three ways that you can let that air in the most powerful is in the base if you leave the base out for a while then when you bring it back in it makes a huge impact this is pretty famous in electronic music the idea of the drop but it's also used by classical composers all the time leaving out the middle register is more unusual but still very effective [Music] it's quite a distinctive sound to have very high and very low pitched sounds and then again it makes the return of the middle register when it happens just feel so satisfying to leave out the higher register in my experience you really need to leave out most of the middle too to make it really noticeable a nice passage where everything is below middle c will be effective and then aside from just leaving parts of the register out there are ways that you can make the listener more aware of space so you know that trick that painters do where one of the figures you know points their hand straight towards you the viewer so that we're aware of that 3d space between us and the person in the picture so think of the equivalent ways that you could do that with music for example what about a grand moment where you fill the entire range from high to low it can feel quite spectacular like some huge mountain if you're writing for an instrument like the solo piano where this isn't possible you can at least navigate the entire space quickly arpeggios or or chords that move through a large range in a short time and give us a sense of the entire registral space and the same can be done at a more local scale so say we've left out the base for a while instead of just bringing it back in just once and permanently what about say an arpeggio that just runs up and down through the bass register outlining that bass space this still gives us some of that airy open window feeling but allows the effect to continue beyond a single trick moment and become part of the actual composition issue number five i've got ideas but what form should i use i've really got no idea how to handle form so yes there are lots of different forms and all of them potentially useful song form sonata form variation form but ask yourself what really is form for me form is really a question of how things return and how we recognize them in our memory over the course of a piece so the first step is to try to judge your material on its memorability and that goes as much for writing a pop hook as it does a symphonic theme broadly speaking the more striking an idea the more its return will become a big event and the more you can potentially just hint at it to give some sense of it returning there's no right or wrong in terms of how memorable your idea should be that's really a matter of taste but being aware of that memorability factor will help you judge how to lay out the form and don't forget that we're not just talking about melodic motives here there are all sorts of ways that memory can work a texture for example can be very memorable and returning to a texture can give you a sense of coming home of return without even using any melodic theme try also to think of form as a feeling keep an ear on the feeling that the repetition gives you sometimes a return might feel cheesy and pointless if it's unmotivated other times it will hit the spot just in the way you need it to i love the way in a recent video adam neely talked about the storytelling in a celine dion key change he beautifully explained this process where you're still listening to just a repeat of the main melody but because of the way the harmony changes underneath it the emotional feeling has changed 180 degrees from loneliness to defiance when we get to the chorus before the modulation the lyric comes across more as like the narrator is demanding to not be by herself anymore and as we cross the threshold from g major to c flat major the e flat becomes a major third a point of triumphant resolution and so we feel like the narrator will in fact not be by herself anymore and i think it's these kind of things that you need to watch out for when you're thinking about how your material returns in a form even if all the notes are the same a repetition never carries exactly the same emotional connotation as the initial statement the act of repetition itself changes it and even small adjustments like a key change or say emitting some of the accompaniment can have a huge emotional impact so whilst the standard forms like aba or rondo form are kind of archetypal and describe the basic outline of a lot of pieces they don't really give you the full picture of what's going on or how that piece works as a form i talked in a recent video to my patrons on patreon about how when it comes to form i tend to focus my attention on the flow of momentum over the course of a piece it seems to me that the main places forms tend to fail are where the music no longer convinces the listener in the metaphorical journey it's taking them on so making sure it's a smooth ride with just the right amount of interest and surprise along the way is crucial and this is another area where it's possible to significantly up your game by moving away from the most obvious middle ground solutions music has this fascinating ability to suggest multiple senses of movement at once so for example think about whether you could convey a sense of speed without using lots of notes or the opposite a lot of notes but a sense of stasis issue number six i just tried transitions really really hard my favorite little saying about form is that for a form to be successful all you really need is a bunch of good bits strung together in a way that doesn't sound bad if you think about an album structure in popular music this fits this definition if you have a lot of songs that are brilliant in their own right and one song follows another in a way that doesn't drain you of energy or get too tiresome in one particular direction the album will work if you're writing a piece that's longer than just a single track the key thing then is transitions so if you're established within one section of a piece and you know that's working within itself the question is how do you get onto the next section in a way that makes sense there are of course a range of options here a transition might just be a couple of chords or it might be you know almost the length of a whole piece there's some pieces of music that seem to be nothing but transition the key to this i think is to think about how the piece starts and what that start implies for a transition to work successfully it needs to somehow emerge from the properties of the rest of the piece so let's say you're struggling with harmony in your transition you've established a sense of home but now you want to move away this is a version of my piano piece undulate the one that i didn't write where the harmony just goes round and round and the longer this goes on the harder it would be to convincingly move away so instead i built in a small harmonic shift at the end of the phrase so this sense of movement becomes built into the dna of the piece so now having already moved in the opening phrase it's far easier for the piece to transition to other harmonic areas later on so the point is a transition shouldn't feel like something you've bolted on just to get from point a to point b it's far better if there's something about the nature of the material you're working with that allows you to transition more naturally so if you're struggling to make a transition it may be the material itself that needs looking at issue number seven why doesn't my piece seem well written to the instrument well one part of this unfortunately is just knowledge getting to know all of the instruments as well as you possibly can and that's true as much for electronic composers as it is for acoustic composers so let's say you're using a hammond organ patch you need to get to appreciate all the different ways it can work the different degrees of swell and vibrato and how they're often used and that also means being aware of the cultural implications of the instrument each instrument and again i'm including electronics in this has a big culture and history that will resonate through your piece whether you want it to or not so with the hammond again there'll always be a hint of gospel music in there if it's a french horn you might get a hint of anything from old hunting horns to a john williams school if you put your baseline on a tuber it will just resonate with new orleans street bands and so on and you can use these hints quite directly or you can leave them right in the background but they will always be there so it's really good to be aware of them and then there's what you might call the dramatic implications which are more relevant in acoustic music i talk about this in my video on composing hacks so which instrument out of the lineup really is screaming to be the soloist which instruments group together to form a bit of a gang which is the cheeky kid heckling at the back and so on and make sure your ideas match the scale of your ensemble so don't try and write an orchestral piece for a string quartet try to take into account the implications of the lineup you're writing for before you actually start writing finally and bringing us a bit of a full circle issue number eight issue number eight those other people are obviously geniuses and i'm obviously not should i just give so you finished your piece but now the anxiety that you felt when you were searching for your first idea kicks in again it's just obviously not as good as those other pieces everyone else is just so much more talented than me so there are a couple of things to say about this firstly that feeling that the piece has room for improvement is actually your talent speaking if you know it's not as good as it could be that means your critical faculties are working and you can start to address some of the issues far worse to have written something dreadful and not even realize it secondly comparison never does anyone any favors it's absolutely the best way to just beat yourself up so try not to do it it can be hard particularly when you see someone who you feel isn't very talented getting undeserved success but my advice is to ruthlessly banish such thoughts from your head they don't help and they just make you bitter and angry you can say that again no stop it bye and finally yes i do think you should give up on the concept of your being a genius if your motivation is to prove to yourself or to someone else that you're a genius that's just the wrong way to go about it the thing you should focus on is the thing that drives your passion there'll be something in there maybe even something that feels slightly embarrassing or contradicts some of the ideas you kind of think you have but that thing will be what really makes you go crazy about music that's the thing you should put all of your energy into uncovering and then bringing out of yourself whatever the genre that you're writing in composing is really a long-term journey i mean sure there are techniques and theories that you'll want to learn but you also have to learn how to handle yourself how to draw the best out of yourself how to keep in the best creative state which usually involves fairly boring things like sleeping well not drinking too much and eating well but also how to battle your own inner demons and how to think about an audience that you simultaneously need to ignore and crave a response from your goal to use another well-worn but truthful phrase is not to try to be a genius but to try to be the truest most honest version of yourself that you can so i hope that was helpful to you if anyone's wondering i don't currently do direct teaching but i do have a very limited number of spaces on the top tier of my patreon page where i'll give you a short written critique on a piece once a month so if that's something you're interested in do grab a space while there's a couple still available or the lower tiers on patreon i'll try to answer any shorter questions you might have thank you so much as ever to all my patrons and thank you to you for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: David Bruce Composer

Views: 69,033

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Id: FzIltQyZLOQ

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021