- Hi, in this film we're
just going to consider one way of going about composition. And we're going to
think about how to start from a given chord scheme. Because one way of going
about the job of composing, whatever style you want to write in, is to come up with a melody, and then to think about what the chords might be that fit it. But another way of doing things is to start the other way around, come up with the chord scheme that works and then work out what you're going to do with the chord scheme. So just as a straight
forward example of this, I've got a chord scheme on the board. We'll work in C major for
the time being, as well, just because it's the
easiest key to think in. But of course you could transfer this to any other major key, or to any other minor key. So, chord I followed by chord VI, followed by chord IV, followed by chord V, followed by chord I. Or to put that another way, a chord of C, followed
by a chord of A minor, followed by a chord of F, followed by a chord of G, followed by a chord of C. And you'll notice that, in
the light of the earlier films on this topic, we've
got three chords on here that are primary chords. I, IV, V, I. They're quite strong chords. VI is one of our secondary chords, because in a major key, VI
is one of those minor chords. You'll remember that in a major key, I, IV, and V are major chords, but chords II and III
and VI are minor chords. Hence this is an A minor chord. So you might just want to begin by just having a think
about what these chords are. I've purposely chosen this chord scheme because it's one that some
people might be familiar with if you've ever done something like this. And so on, because that
is this chord scheme. So here's chord I, a chord of C, so that's C, E, and G. Here's chord VI, the A minor chord, so that's A, C, and E. Here's chord IV, the F chord, F, A, and C. Here's chord V, the G chord, G, B, and D. And then back to chord I again, C, E, and G. Now having found these basic chords, of course you can do
anything you like with them. So let's have a look at
this chord I for a moment. There's the chord I, the C chord. Now obviously you could
strum this chord on a guitar, that's fine, if you're
doing it on a keyboard you could think, well
there's my basic triad, and I can turn that into a chord as long as I'm using those three notes. So I can have a chord
I that goes like this. Now you notice this time I've
got four notes on the go. But all these notes are C, E, or G. In other words, they're all notes that belong to chord I. So at the bottom I've got a C, then I've got a G, then I've got an E, and then I've got another C at the top. But I could just as easily
organise the chord like this. So now I've got a C at the bottom, then another C, and then an E, and then a G at the top. Or I could organise it like this. So I've got a C at the bottom, then a G, then a C, then an E. And it doesn't have to
be a four-part chord. I could have a mch bigger chord like this. Lots of notes on the go there, but you notice they're all
C, E, G, C, E, G, C, E. So they're all built from
the notes of this chord. So once you've got the notes C, E, G for that first chord, you can have three notes,
four notes, seven notes. You could spread them out. You could do anything you like with them, as long as you're using those notes. If you use other notes, then of course they will
clash with that chord, and then the music takes
on a much more dissonant kind of characteristic. When you want to move
on to the next chord, you do just the same. So here's chord VI, A, C, and E, or a chord of A minor, and as long as you're using those notes, A, C, E, you could have
that chord arranged any way you like. Here's different examples. And you can hear as those chords
are used in different ways, they create a slightly
different musical effect, so you have to decide what
kind of effect you want to do. Now in the example that we started with, all I was doing there was using
these chords as my baseline. So I had C, A, F, G, C. And that's what we're going
to do for the time being, because obviously those are the bottom notes of those chords. Now when I played this. All I was doing was taking the chord, the basic triad, in my right hand. So there's I, VI, IV, V, back to I. Or C, A minor, F, G, C. And I could just present that in its absolutely basic form like this. Here's the C chord, the A minor chord, the F chord, the G chord, the C chord. Now what makes that piece
that we've started with slightly more interesting is
that the right hand chords are broken up and they're
given just a bit of rhythm. So instead of just having plain chords, I break up the right hand chords. Makes it sound slightly more
interesting, doesn't it? Just to break up the chords and to have that slightly dotted rhythm. And then, of course, if
you ever did play this at school maybe, you
might have done something slightly different with
it the next time around, changed the rhythm but to
have the kind of chords in there neat form. And so on. And then of course, somebody
might have improvised a melody over the top of those chords. And so on. So it's possible, isn't
it, to use the chords in their straight form, it's possible to spread
them into four parts or seven parts, to have the chord high, to have the chord low, to
put some rhythm into it, to break up the chord,
to improvise a melody that goes over the top of that chord. You see this is the basic business of how we work from a given chord scheme. And of course you can create
any kind of mood you want to, or write in any kind of
style that you want to. So for example, if you
wanted to use that scheme and you wanted to write
something that maybe sounded like an earlier piece, maybe from Baroque times or something, you could use this baseline and have this sort of chord outline, and maybe have a melody in the right hand that's got a few twiddles and trills, ornaments and things, to make
it sound a little bit Baroque. So you could do something like this. That's using the same chord scheme, but it sounds rather different
in that style, doesn't it? You could have a system
where you have something called an Alberti bass. Now this was something
that was very common in what they call the Classical period. So composers like Mozart
and Haydn and people did this kind of thing, where you take your chord, here's your C chord, your chord I, and you break it up like this. So you go bottom, top, middle, top. Bottom, top, middle, top. And so they might have done
this by going like this. Chord I, VI, IV, V, I. And that's called an Alberti bass. So you could use something
like an Alberti bass, and then maybe come up with a melody that goes over the top of it. Now that sounds completely different to the tune we started with, but it's still using
exactly the same scheme. You could decide you're
going to use those chords, but you want to change the time signature. We've been working in four beats in a bar so far, haven't we? Well, you could organise things
with three beats in a bar, and have something that sounds
a bit more like a waltz. How about this? So that's using exactly the same scheme, and I'm kind of using block chords with a little bit of a
melody at the top there, but I've organised it
with three beats in a bar, so you've now got something
that's a bit more waltzy. You could have something
that's got a slightly more punchy rhythm in it, that would give you some basis for a more sort of upbeat
composition, you know. That would be a very different
kind of style, wouldn't it? And again, you could
float some kind of melody over the top of that. Or you could have something
that's much more relaxed, that creates a calmer
mood that maybe has got a slightly more of a
kind of ballad feel to it simply by slowing down the tempo and using the same chords. So I could do something like this. So you see you can make the music sound so completely different in its style and in its character simply
by changing the speed, by changing the metre, in other words the
number of beats in a bar, and by organising the
texture in different ways. In other words, the
way we use these chords in different formations,
either as block chords, or broken chords, or possibly Alberti,
that we've talked about, or by spreading the chords out wide across the keyboard, all things that would completely change the mood of your composition, be it an instrumental
composition or a song. But this is just explaining
the whole business of how you would work
from a given chord scheme. So if you want to compose in this way, the starting point would be the chords. So you might decide which
key you want to be in, do you want to be in a
major key or in a minor key, you might organise all
the chords for the key that you've chosen,
just have a little think about which are the primary chords, which are the secondary chords. So you're probably going to
use a few more primary chords than secondary chords, but
then you might organise some kind of scheme like
the one we've got here as the basis for something. And it won't sound like
much in the first instance, but just get used to the
progression of chords, and you'll discover that when
you kind of do this by sound, that some chords progress
to others rather better or you might particular like
a particular progression from this chord to that chord
that you want to work with. And from there, once you've
got the chord scheme, work out what you want
to do with a melody. Work out what you want
to do with the chords, whether they're block
chords, broken chords, and the sort of characteristics that we've just been thinking about. So I hope that gets you started on how to compose from a chord scheme.
