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#1
10-01-2007, 01:06 PM
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| Self Study on Composing? Hi All, Who can recommend me some books that will help me develop my composing skills? Is there an "Idiot's guide to music composing" ? I can read notations and understand some things about chords and harmonics. Thanks in advance for the help, Peter  |
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#2
10-01-2007, 01:55 PM
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| Generally there are not many "how to's" for composing. To me able to develop your comnposition skills, in my opinion its wise to learn about compositional techniques as indepth as you can. The 3 main ones are Orceshtration, Harmony and Counterpoint, but these can be broken down into sub categories such as figured bass, canon, fugue, invention writing, contapuntal writing. There are many books out there that can offer a helping hand. Firstly I recommend that you get a firm hold of some of the more "basic" thoery as without the basic stuff, its impossible to understand the more complicated stuff. So general music thoery is a must which includes notation (check out Music-Web's guide to notation here) and score reading skills. When reading these books and self study its important to find a book that "speaks to you" so many people have preferences. Here is a short list of some of the more popular books, many of them can be easily bought from any good online book store. Walter Pistons guides to Orchestration and Harmony and Counterpoint tend to be quite good but are too "americanized" for my tastes. William Lovelock Books (has many, I own much of the collection). He's done, harmony counterpoint and form to my knowledge. Very good clear concise books (I learnt all my harmony and counterpoint from these) but they may be difficult to get hold of out of the UK. Schoenberg has written a book on theory though I find it long winded, but others find it very usefull. Harmony in Practice by Anne Butterworth is a newer book but provides some great teachings for common practice period writing techniques. |
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#4
10-01-2007, 11:20 PM
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| There is actually an "Idiot's Guide to Music Composition" out there, part of the series, actually. I have it lol. Very good book. |
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#5
11-01-2007, 05:56 AM
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If you want to understand how to compose, the absolute best thing you can do is to immerse yourself in the style of music you wish to compose. A book can't really help you. Ok, I take that back - a book can help you. But think of it this way - you can read a book on how to play baseball, but you won't really understand how fast the ball comes at you, when to swing, or what it feels like when you hit the ball. Now, this example is probably closer to reading a book to learn to play an instrument, but composition is not far removed. There are not a lot of books I'm aware of geared towards composition (that are worth much). I think many treat it as this mystical art. But it can be learned. What most people do is use theory and harmony texts to learn how other composers did it, and then try to incorporate that into their own style. But there's no substitute for sitting down at you instrument and playing through music, and listening to music and following the score. And you can't just play or listen, you have to comprehend as you go. You have to, when you play a note, or hear a chord, tear it apart and figure out what it is, how it relates to everything else in the piece, why you think the composer chose it, etc. I think the biggest advice I can give you is not to try to run before you can walk. I see to many beginning composers posting "how do I write a string quartet". You need to start simple, emulating what you want to emulate. If you wan't to write classical music, you need to look at simple pieces like Schubert's Landler, or Schuman's Scenes from Childhood, or some of the easier Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven works. Most music is often a more complex version of a simpler skeletal framework, and unless you understand the framework, it's hard to build a building around it! That said, you might want to investigate: Harmony texts Counterpoint texts Orchestration texts And any composition texts you can find (I have actually seen "Music Theory for Dummies"! so maybe there is a composition one). Good luck on your journey, Steve |
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#6
11-01-2007, 05:59 AM
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In the other response I was saying there is a Music Theory for Dummies. I picked it up out of curiousity and you know what - it contained exactly the same material as all of my textbooks! It's already as simple as it can be. I looked at a Latin for Dummies and page one is, here are the declensions, and the nominative case, and blah blah - the same stuff that starts off unit one of any Latin text! So sometimes the subject is just basically about as easy as it's going to get - it's just a matter of how you pace yourself through it. Steve |
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#7
11-01-2007, 09:19 AM
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#8
13-01-2007, 07:09 PM
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| Understanding musical form and analysis is the biggest part of understanding composition. First get a text on Harmony and work through it slowly and methodically - develop excellent voice leading skills. Do plenty of harmonic analysis of different pieces. Then, get the amazing textbook Form in Music by Wallace Berry and buy some of the sheet music that it asks you to analyze for assignments (often you can get the Piano sheet music it wants you to analyze as a cheap used copy from a local music store, or even for free online.) |
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#9
13-01-2007, 11:02 PM
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| In response to Boneman, yes, I actually have. Although I use it more as a reference. |
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#10
23-02-2007, 10:30 PM
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| Re: Self Study on Composing? Well I find that composing is an emotional journey of your own When you get writers block, don't worry It's all part of the journey. Because it makes you HUNGRY for satisfaction.. and that hunger.. makes you.. make good music =) Music essentially revolves around several key concepts: Listening Reacting Waiting If you listen then you will find music everywhere That is where you will find the tunes that you will appreciate the most When you listen to music you will react to it emotionally Use that reaction to add flavour to your music And sometimes you just have to wait until the time is right to make music  ALSO, creating emotion in music is achieved in the same way that you achieve emotion in life. In life, emotion comes from 1. A Build Up 2. The emotion occurs 3. The emotion fades. Whenever you play good music, don't simply record the part that sounds amazing, you must think back, and think about what you was playing BEFORE that amazing section. Because that former section is what inspired the amazing section =) This is why, when people compose, they hear something good. And then when they play it again, it gradually loses it's magic. And the composer is left wondering why on earth things seem so dull whereas before they didn't. It's because those specific 'amazing' notes don't make the magic. It's the build up to those notes that does that =) |
