In our previous
article, we have seen that a music composition is
made out of one or several melodies combined harmoniously.
We have learned that a melody is a sequence of notes,
repeated or not, with melodic or rhythmic aspects.
Thus melody plays an
important role and we will take the time to examine it.
Melody has two aspects:
- The note pitches
that are played (for instance, the piano keys that
are used); we will call this the melodic
aspect
- The timing of the
notes (the time sequence, the duration, the
speed,...); we will call this the rhythmic
aspect
Any method that can be
used to explore, create and combine melodies may be useful to
compose music. Pizzicato offers you several tools for that
and we will explore them in the following articles.
But composing music is
not simply assembling nice melodies and "hope" that
they will sound well together. A music composition is based
on coherence. The various parts must hold together well and
form an organized structure, each one harmoniously combined
with the others. If coherency is missing, the result will
look like a random mixture.
So it is useful to
discover what are the elements that produce coherence, so
that they can be used to construct melodies. We will first
engage in some theoretical and practical thinking about
music. The following may seem unusual to a music or
composition course, but it is probably often a missing
element in such courses, as it concerns the very perception
of what music really is. By keeping these basic principles in
mind, the other aspects of music and composition learning may
become much more profitable, because they can then aligned to
the underlaying purposes of music. Let us start right in...
First of all, what is
the building block of music? As elementary as it may seem, music
is built with time as the primary element. If the
graphic arts can be contemplated in a relatively static way,
music can not be conceived without a time flow. Music is
basically a change. If time would stop, no music could be
heard. Even when you listen to a continuous note played by an
instrument, this note consists of hundreds of sound
vibrations per second.
The basic substance of
music being time, what makes it agreeable or not, appreciated
or not by most people? In a more general way, why is art
appreciated? Very subjective question... Observation and
personal experience of art appreciation may guide us to
discover the common elements that could help us to develop
the ability to compose music in a systematic way.
What is creating
coherence in a music composition? It is the presence
of order, the degree of organization in it.
Order can be defined
as opposed to chaos, disorder, lack of organization. To take
an extreme example, what is the main difference between a
garbage heap and an art work?
Obviously, each part
of an art work has been subtly worked, thought about,
designed, evaluated,... so as to form a whole. It is the
result of a plan and a desire to communicate an aesthetic
effect through the impression it will have on the public. It
is organized and ordered. On the contrary, the garbage heap
is formed by several parts that were thrown together in a
random way, without a global plan, with no precise order,
each part coming from different and unrelated sources, none
of which having any purpose to communicate something or to
create a global aesthetic effect. It is unordered and
disorganized.
Various theories exist
on the subject of order and chaos (do a
search with these keywords on the Internet to get an idea
about that), but as far as we are concerned, we just need to
notice that an art work is essentially based on some
order and organization. Life and man seem to be
quite interested by order and it is an essential part of
music composition.
Another theory may be
interesting in the frame of music composition: the theory
of information (use these keywords also for a search
on the Internet). It studies the quantity of information
found for instance in a material structure or in an electric
signal, in light, in sound,...
Applied to music, information
may be considered as the quantity of new music material
presented, as opposed to what could be predicted by
the auditor. For instance, if a bass drum plays the same
rhythmic note during ten minutes, it only presents something
new during the first few seconds of its playing. Then the ear
is accustomed to it and nothing new happens. The auditor can
fully predict each and every note during the next ten
minutes. No new information is given, interest decreases,
boredom and disinterest occur. It is the presence of new
information and change that keep the interest of the auditor
awakened.
Inversely, a music
composed of pure random notes, changing all the time without
any predictability nor repetition contains too much
information and changes and the auditor will not understand
it. As far as he is concerned, such a music seems to be
composed of chaos and randomness and is more comparable to
the garbage heap example. He will call this kind of music
"noise".
So what is
order? Let us take some easily observed examples and
let us see if we can draw some practical conclusions on this.
Let us take the
example of the natural tree forest and a parcel where trees
have been planted by man. In the first case, we will not
found precise distances between the trees. They will seem to
have been planted randomly. In the second case, the trees
will be aligned at equal distances and angles. If we build a
straight road through the random forest, the straight line
will add some degree of order into the forest. It is indeed
predictable as it goes exactly straight through it.
Let us consider an
apartment building where each window has different forms and
colours. Compared to a building where all windows are the
same, it will look much less ordered. But if one of its
floors has all the same windows, this fact alone will give
some degree of order to the building.
As you find other
examples similar to this, you will easily notice that the
very idea of order is opposed to the idea of randomness. But
what is randomness? In a practical way, randomness is
the inability to predict what will be seen or perceived.
How do you predict something? Simply by thinking in advance,
with some kind of a mental duplicate of what you expect to
see or perceive. If the picture you built does not correspond
to what you perceive afterwards, then one could say that you
could not predict it.
So what is the the
relation with information? If you can predict exactly the
content of a speech, then that speech does not bring to you
any new information. Otherwise you would not have been able
to predict it, do you? In the bass drum example, if after 5
minutes the rhythm suddenly changes, you would not have
expected it if you had predicted the rhythm to stay the same
all the time.
An ordered
structure also seems to contain identical, similar or
comparable elements. These common elements produce a
feeling of unity to the whole and create the impression that
its parts form a coherent whole and not just a set of
disrelated and randomly assembled parts. If you look at a
wall fragment that is painted with a repetitive pattern, you
can by extension predict the aspect of the full wall, which
is just the repetition of the same pattern.
Order is then related
to the ability to predict what you did not yet perceive,
geographically (repetitive patterns, trees in the forest,...)
or as related to time (rhythmic pattern). In other words, we
can also say that the presence of order helps an
individual to get accustomed to what he perceives, to better
understand it and appreciate it. Indeed, we are more
likely to like what we can understand. The ability to
understand and predict being quite variable from one person
to another and also according to his/her life experience, the
perception of an ordered structure inside a disordered
structure will also vary from one person to another.
Let us put together
these various observations in the form of practical
principles that can be applied to music composition:
- Music is a
structure built with time as the main material.
- Time may be
characterized by the exact moment when something
happens and the duration of what happens.
- To be
appreciated, music must contain elements that can be
understood by the auditor.
- To help the
auditor understand and appreciate some music, that
music must contain some degree of order that can be
perceived by the auditor.
- Order is obtained
by the presence of identical, similar or comparable
elements. These elements may be contained inside the
music itself or may be identical, similar or
comparable to elements that the auditor knows already
about, because of his/her life experience.
- Music must also
contain some unpredictable elements that will keep
the auditor's interest awakened. If it does not
contain enough of it, the auditor becomes bored. If
it contains too much of it, the music is no more
understandable by the auditor and suppresses any
interest he/she may have. Music must then contain
both predictable and unpredictable elements, in a
ratio that depends upon the public one is trying to
reach.
How can we apply this
to music composition? Often, a music composition starts in
with a very simple idea, coming from pure inspiration, by
singing or playing on an instrument. Some notes, a rhythmic
sequence, or some chords that we like and find interesting.
This is justified by no other reason than our very
appreciation of it. This is often the easiest part of the job
when you start to compose music.
Then... euh, well then
it becomes a more difficult problem. You do not know how to
transform this idea into a full developed music composition.
There comes the tough part of the work. Probably the four
well known notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony were found by
others at various times and locations, but only Beethoven
developed them into a renowned full orchestral symphony.
Composing music is finding
a musical idea and developing this idea into
a full musical composition.
A musical idea may be
very simple and common at the beginning, with no apparent
possibility to create something wonderful with it. However,
the bright and creative composer will take almost any simple
musical idea and transform it into a very interesting piece
of music.
May be you already
experienced having found a little melody, a rhythm and then
try to develop it with no success. You should understand that
methods exist to help you develop an idea. These methods can
be deduced from the above basic principles. But if you
already have musical ideas, then it is an important point for
music composition! You just lack some methods to help you
develop your ideas. Pizzicato and the following articles will
surely help you in that direction.
