Composition

In the Music discussion, there is the Harmony forum; perhaps I should rename it Harmony and Composition to remove any doubt. I am replying to you and moving your well-received discussion to the correct section...

So, what do you need to know to compose? Knowledge of classical harmony is certainly necessary. I don't know if you have already taken the two-year harmony exam at the conservatory. That exam gives you some indications, or rather corrects the harmonic errors commonly made when writing music; corrections that are based on melodic lines (horizontal) which must respect certain permitted intervals and harmonic lines (vertical) which must respect the correct harmonic ratios of chords. Errors aside, it is the good taste and poetic line of the artist that suggests a composition in the classical style.

To compose, it is not necessary to be near the piano; it is so true that composition exams, including the two-year complementary harmony for pianists and instrumentalists, do not involve the use of the piano precisely because it is assumed that a musician who has studied the rules of composition does not need the piano. Obviously, having a piano helps, so no one is preventing you from "testing" what you have written by ear.

Lastly, to compose, one can proceed in the traditional way with staff paper and pen; however, nowadays technology provides us with various tools to drastically reduce time and have an immediately audible result. We are actually doing some lessons on one of these software programs, specifically Logic 9. If you have followed at least one of our video tutorials, the intro of every video has a musical background of Debussy's famous Clair de lune; that theme was created with this tool by recording a virtual piano and subsequently adding strings, which were not intended by Debussy, all in just 5 minutes of clock time. This is just to give you an idea of the potential of these software programs. If you are interested in composing, I therefore recommend following our tutorials on how to use these programs. On average, we manage to create one tutorial per week, a bit like newsstand collections...

For any other questions, we are here!

Best regards,

It's true, I realized it only after already having published the discussion.

Anyway, I am a private student who has been studying for 2 years and hopes to enter as an internal student at the Naples Conservatory.... despite only 2 years, my teacher and others, even other experts "have said" that I learned very quickly for having only 2 years of study.

I didn't ask my teacher because I believe she might think that if I also dedicate myself to other things outside the program, I am not doing her program well.

I know chords and scales (maj, min harmonic and melodic) of all keys and which intervals they are formed with, and I have good musical reading.... I haven't taken the harmony exam... but passion won't let me wait for my diploma to start composing 😕 .

Anyway, the question is..... what do you mean by horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic lines?

I haven't followed the tutorials on your programs yet, but I will soon 😉

....in the meantime, I'll start getting the program....

byebye and thanks 1000!!!

DanielePiano wrote:

I didn't ask my teacher the question because I think she might think that if I also dedicate myself to other things outside the program, I am not doing the things in her program well.

I know the chords and scales (maj, min har and mel) of all keys and which intervals they are formed with, and I have good musical reading.... I haven't taken the harmony exam... but passion doesn't want me to wait for my diploma to start composing 😕 .

Anyway, the question is..... what do you mean by horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic lines?

I haven't followed the tutorials on your programs yet, but I will soon 😉

....in the meantime, I'll start getting the program....

byebye and thanks 1000!!!

Well, knowing major, harmonic minor, and melodic minor scales is absolutely not sufficient for composing. There are many harmony books where you can learn the fundamental notions for composition, or rather to avoid the classic harmonic and melodic errors that are committed; however, even this will not make you a composer. If you want, I can recommend books to study. In any case, especially for the two-year composition studies, books are not enough; you must necessarily be supported by a composition teacher who corrects your bass lines and explains the strategies suitable for the various situations that arise when harmonizing a bass. The risk of composing by "ear" is creating a catchy melody that is totally incorrect from a formal standpoint. For this reason, it would go unnoticed by non-experts but not by experts... It's not by chance that if a diploma in composition requires 10 years of preparation, there is a reason. So, if you are interested in composition, my advice is to first dedicate yourself to the piano, trying to complete your studies in the shortest time possible, and then perhaps enroll in a composition course. I don't know if it is possible within conservatories to follow both paths in parallel; you should ask the conservatory directly. All this is not to discourage you, it's just to tell you that if you want to compose light or pop music like what you hear every day on the radio, there is certainly no need to become a composer, but if your interest is composing classical pieces, well, then I really think you should enroll in a composition course.

By harmonic line and melodic line, I mean this:

As you see in the staff, what belongs to the bass is represented by the male bass voice; some use both the bass and tenor in the bass clef, but it is perfectly analogous. Meanwhile, in the treble clef, we have the tenor and the two female voices, Alto and Soprano. A harmonic line consists of a chord, therefore from the union of the notes of each of the voices, in this case four. Thus, every chord constitutes a harmonic line (Vertical). However, we can also follow the movement of the individual voices. Taking for example the soprano (the extreme voice), we see that it moves in this way: G# - C - B flat - C. This horizontal motion or horizontal line constitutes the melodic line of the Soprano.

There are rules regarding the movement of the melodic line, namely permitted and non-permitted intervals, just as there are rules for the harmonic line. The study of complementary harmony deals precisely with these rules so as not to incur harmonic errors (vertical line) and melodic errors (horizontal line); obviously, there are many other topics such as modulation to near and far keys and various methodologies for modulation, progressions, progressions with imitations or imitated progressions, and many other topics that contribute to giving you a basic preparation to be able to approach the vast field of composition in depth.

People often think that music is something simple. There are seven notes! What does it take? In reality, music presents many facets, each of which requires months or years to be understood and reused.

Regarding the software, if you use a Windows PC, I highly doubt you will be able to obtain the software we use for your platform since it is only for MAC OSx; in any case, you can get an analogous software like Cubase for Windows, for example, which does not differ much, except for some functions of Logic's usage.

In any case, I hope I have been useful to you; for any further questions, you can find me here,

Best regards,

Hi Simone, I read what you wrote regarding composition, but not having studied it, I struggle both to follow your explanations and to even minimally imagine what harmony actually is. Ignorantly, I have always thought that in the composition of a work, the author is someone who lets themselves be guided by their musical taste, by their imagination, composing more or less instinctively; instead, if I understood correctly, it's not like that, because music actually has precise rules, much like grammar. What I simply imagine regarding composition—a composition without rules, instinctive—applies only to light music (and jazz too, I suppose), right? Where what matters is composing a pleasant melody, like when one whistles a little tune at random, avoiding, guided by the ear, using a note that clashes with the others (the ear immediately understands if a note clashes with the others, but while the ear doesn't know why that note doesn't harmonize with the others, the laws of harmony can understand and explain why this happens, right?). So the great musicians of the past, or rather the great composers (Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.), in addition to being excellent players, were also experts in harmony and its rules, just as a writer of books, for example novels, can only write if they know the rules of grammar, right? Or did these great composers take some liberties sometimes? Furthermore, I wonder, has harmony always been as it is known today, or, just as spoken languages change over time, does harmony also change? What is music, really? In India, for example, they use scales different from ours: unlike our 12 notes, they also use quarter tones, at least from the little I know. Forgive me Simone, fantasizing like the perfect ignoramus that I am, I got lost and therefore asked you silly questions, wasting your precious time in answering me.

What you have brought to the "table" is a vast subject

I will try to say something.

Not all Music is tonal and governed by the rules of harmony. There is a coherence that makes Music, like Painting or Dance, a credible Art, worthy of great interest. You specifically proposed contemporary music where all tonal references, and not just those, have been destroyed. Yet it falls within and is considered Music. The fact that it is difficult for us to recognize it as such is another matter. If we pass by Michelangelo's Pietà, we cannot help but shout "to the Masterpiece". It reaches all of us. It is not so for a painting by Magritte.

Of course Harmony has a history, an evolution. First, counterpoint (punctum contra punctum—that is, note against note) reigned supreme, and we know well that great friend of ours called J. Sebastian Bach, who "thought" directly in polyphonic terms. While locking himself inside his room, trying not to be distracted by the confusion created by his numerous children, he cast his polyphonic music directly onto the staff, his inner geometry, which he simply had to write down. Harmony grew like, as Massimo Mila says, the grace of a young girl who loses the innocence of childhood but does not yet possess the seduction of a woman. It will culminate in Romanticism and Late Romanticism, with its maximum richness. Then the fall of monarchies.... and of the tonal system. Indeterminacy and the freedom of the "model"

Surely every composer felt and feels their own music within themselves. This, however, does not mean it becomes a composition. Rubinstein used to say that he felt music playing inside him from the moment he woke up in the morning until the evening when he went to sleep. Yet he was not a Composer.

Mozart wrote effortlessly. Beethoven polished a quartet for two years. Schubert wrote a symphony in three days. It is interesting to see some manuscripts, to see the deletions and the modifications.

Naturally, tonal harmony has rules, but the Greats skillfully transgressed them, making error a "tasty dish". Vivaldi was very undisciplined, but his music is wonderful. What can one say about the "coldness" of the "empty fifths" in Puccini's Bohème and the heartbreaking unisons on the last page after Mimì's death? Naturally: "learn the rule and forget it," as Verdi said......but one must know how to do it. In the triumphal march of Aida, suddenly without "sweet modulations," it repeats the theme by abruptly transposing the base key into a distant key.....the right one. Every other solution fails, but this one fantastically evokes the sense of Radames' Triumph.

Harmony and composition, a wonderful and boundless world.

Dear Paolo,

I am not an expert in this field, or a "carpet" as you much more sympathetically put it, however it is fascinating to talk about it; after all, we are talking among friends about the world we live in, or rather, the world in which God has placed us to live. We are talking about noises or sounds (of which notes are their "musical" expression), colors, and the patterns of that "carpet" that God has placed beneath our feet, not to exploit it (as the Bible clearly states), but to take care of it, therefore to "organize" it, using a term more suitable for us musicians (forgive me if I too, a mere aspirant, already define myself as a "musician": there is a difference between saying and doing...), so studying harmony, as you did, as all music students do, is fundamental, because doing so makes man capable of swimming in this otherwise unknown world, in this universe of "noises," that is sounds, that is notes: tones, semitones, quarter tones, etc. Just as a painter draws the world that is outside of himself, as Michelangelo did for example, or inside himself (as Paul Klee did, for example), depicting existing images in dreamlike universes, "real" yet imaginary, so the musician, with his sixth sense, or sixth ear, or sixth antenna, can capture sounds and organize them into "celestial" melodies, as Bach did (beautiful, Paolo, in your post, the representation of Bach barricading himself in a room to "soundproof" himself from the racket of his numerous little ones), or else take those sounds, those "noises," reprogramming them, reorganizing them in a different way (like the painter who painted the world inside his head; I imagine, for example, John Cage instead of Bach: instead of closing the door, he would take his recorder, record the boisterous voices of those little devils that are his children, and then yes, only then, close the door behind him, and work on those noises to turn them into a composition). After all, who is the musician if not the skilled magician, alchemist, organizer, and reprogrammer of noises, sounds, and notes? One who moves, however, in a harmonic universe with precise rules, which must therefore be known and studied so that he has the freedom to transgress them, thus becoming a creator in full right (read "composer" in this case) just like God, who created man in his image and likeness.

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