Composing Music Tutorial

[Void]

THIS TUTORIAL IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

THIS TUTORIAL IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

THIS TUTORIAL IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!


Hello and welcome to this thorough tutorial on how you can create your own song!

The intention of this tutorial is not to dig deep into music theory because even I myself am not too well acquainted with it.

I will try to keep this tutorial brief and easy as possible.

Requirements for this tutorial:

-Your full attention.
-Trying it out yourself as we go through this step by step tutorial.
-Self control and patience with yourself, since you cannot become good in just a day or a week. 

What not to do when composing music:

-Spamming notes everywhere unless that's your intention.
-Adding too many instruments at once. (Unnecessary in most cases.)
-OPTIONAL: Try to make your song or musical piece as playable as possible. Ask yourself: Can a person in real life play this with the instrument? Is the tempo too fast for the player?
Is the technique too hard or are there impossible chords or melodic lines? 
Adding multiple instruments together to create awesome effects is great!
Don't worry tho! I will explain these terms show some examples over these specific issues in this tutorial!

What you should keep in mind:

-With great practice, you will become great!
-Songs and musical pieces are different things:
*A musical piece is often just a simple melody.
*Musical pieces do not often follow common song structures.
*Can you really call a 30 second 'song' a 'song'? In most cases, no.
*You don't need to worry though. No one on this site is strict with using proper terms, but now you know the difference
and now It's up to you on what you want to create with this site.
-Trial and error! Listen to your own songs and learn from your mistakes. If you know something doesn't sound right, try to fix it!
-If you're trying to create a song, ask for feedback. Share it on the forums or on the site chat.
-This site was intended for saving your own melodies when humming or whistling.
-You don't have to but try following a specific song genre like: Rock, Pop, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, Ragtime, Jazz. That often helps a lot!
-Try to avoid as many dissonant notes as possible. 'Dissonance' means:



The E5, D#5 note pattern and the F5, D#5 note pattern are both dissonant. They just don't sound good together. It MAY be used in Jazz or in the Impressionistic genre but for now, do not experiment with those two patterns.



#1. Creating your first melody!

Creating your own melody might be tricky. You either hum something in real life and then you try writing it down or you
spam random notes til something happens. You really have to force yourself to make it happen. It doesn't have to sound good
and the timing of the notes might not be as you intended but that's fine! It's your first piece and you'll learn that in due time.


Here is a little melody that I created:

You can click this image and it will take you to the song. Once you're there, press play to hear it.


Here's what it should look like with explanations over what I did here:



To briefly explain the picture: That right there is a melody and I have chosen a random scale to follow. See the light parts on the grid! You may select your own
on the bottom of your sequencer tab where it says "Key:".
You can also have longer and more complicated melodies that stretch out to the second measure, whatever you prefer.
I utilized the 1/8th grid for faster notes as shown on the example. This allows us to creates beautiful thrills. 
I then repeated the melody and in the middle of the second measure, I created a little variety in my melody which will allow us to progress our melody / song further.

#2 Creating your musical piece.

Here is an example showing the entire 'first part' to your song. Songs have multiple parts and parts should be re-used throughout the song.





Here, I repeated the melody twice until finally on the third time I made it transition higher. I then continued it to the 4th measure but notice the blue text. The note you're looking at could also be an F#5 which sounds dissonant with the D#4 and chromatic compared to the previous note. Therefore you must resolve this with a half step (a note) higher or lower which creates a beautiful effect that many composers use. I then went back to the beginning. Try to make the transition back to the beginning sound as smooth as possible. If you feel like rolling notes down doesn't sound good, just leave a little gap in the melody or pause it entirely before the 'loop'.



To do for tutorial:
Show picture's of a few common left hand patterns. 
part #3 ofcourse
update picture since I made a little change to the smoothness.
THIS TUTORIAL IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

THIS TUTORIAL IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

THIS TUTORIAL IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

[Kirbyderp]

-Try to make your song or musical piece as playable as possible.

Don't wanna be nitpicky, but this is completely and utterly unnecessary. I mean, just look at UTC.

[Void]

-Try to make your song or musical piece as playable as possible.

Don't wanna be nitpicky, but this is completely and utterly unnecessary. I mean, just look at UTC.

Have edited the thread. I forgot to add that it's up to you ofcourse if you wanna keep it playable or not. More instruments can be used to cause more effect.

[Firebolt391d]

Nice little thread. But there's quite a few other things that could be mentioned as far as composing music.

For example, what about broken chords, chord patterns, chord inversions, chord types (major/minor/augmented/diminished) - and each chord's associated scale/scale type, as well as scale degrees, harmonic consonance and harmonic dissonance, meter/rhythm, beat, tempo, musical texture (melodies, countermelodies, bass, etc), musical patterns and musical form, phrases, themes, and subjects, and also types of music and music styles, etc., etc. ... ????

Just a thought, though!
(Also, almost every one of the things I mentioned really is a musical term, so anyone who is interested can look them up, [e.g. scale degrees])


*EDIT:
Oh, this forum post is still just a WIP.
I'm excited to see how much of this you'll be able to get to, Void, and how much you'll be able to talk about some of the things I've mentioned here and/or other things. Can't wait to see the finished post! Keep up the good work

[LucentTear]

-Try to make your song or musical piece as playable as possible.

Don't wanna be nitpicky, but this is completely and utterly unnecessary. I mean, just look at UTC.

Have edited the thread. I forgot to add that it's up to you ofcourse if you wanna keep it playable or not. More instruments can be used to cause more effect.

In my opinion though, this is actually a really useful "rule" to keep in mind. A lot of people don't know how to properly applicate note depth, so making something sound playable first BEFORE making it practically unplayable is actually a good start.

If something sounds like three octaves, obviously that's not possible while playing the main melody on the side. As far as I'm concerned about piano sequences, three-octave notes sound like utter crap. Not only is it unplayable, there is only artificial depth behind it, which is the bad kind of depth you wouldn't want to include.

Make something sound okay first. Once again, you can keep it as realistic or unrealistic as you need it to be. For me, I usually build some chords first (as well as the melody when I hear it). You can later add depth by adding the piano's bassline (not necessarily left-hand, but something that guides the song).

Off topic, your "piano bassline" is something really good to focus on. It tells you a lot of things, so if you feel like you're becoming repetitive in your piano abilities, then you might want to check your bassline and move it to some half-tone or a fourth, especially when you're doing some jazzy things.