If you’re wanting to start composing music, here are some tips to help you get started composing your own music.
I have used these ideas many times in my own composing work, and find them rewarding and productive in discovering and developing ideas for my compositions! I hope you have the same enjoyment and success!
You can begin with some improvisation using any instrument. These exercises are improvisations at first, but as you have fun and explore the ideas, they can consolidate into a composition.
Music Playtime Improvisation Composition
“PANEL BEATING” EXERCISES – Subject your ideas to a musical mash up!
I have always imagined that composing could be like musical ‘panel beating,’ where you take a musical idea or figure and play with it – changing it, morphing it, and exploring it, until it takes on a life of its own and becomes a “composition.”
Try some improvisation on your instrument using these ideas … and be ready to record the good ones, so you can come back to them again and again as you develop the ideas into a composition!
1. Sing, play or hear a musical idea or figure 3 times…
- Improvise it and Discover it
- Consolidate it and Know it
- Imagine it
2. Repeat a musical figure…
- Immediately
- After a gap -space – then place each gesture carefully
- Transposed
- Sequentially (i.e. same pattern, repeated higher or lower in a different part of the mode or scale – follow the contour / shape of the original idea)
- Extended
- Shortened
- Developed
- On a different part of the bar
- X number of times immediately
- With something else in between
- Within a structure e.g. bar 1 = bar 2
- Keep several musical ideas/ figures in the memory at once, and create a dialogue between them.
3. Process Loop: Feedback/Feedforward …
- Set parameters for your composition
- Imagine/listen to it
- Ask, “What could I do differently”
- Try another variation of your idea
- Starting points for pieces can be a word, picture, poem, or musical gesture/quality e.g. music with a quality of fire
4. Composing with a group of musicians
Another music composing tip that I have found to be fun and very fruitful, is to get together with a small group of like-minded musicians, and just explore, improvise and start composing music together.
In a group, try this recipe to improvise and compose a piece of music:
- Take three drones in a similar register that are different but related
- Phase in and out of the texture
- Then each gradually move to a stable structure where the sounds have a defined hierarchy of foreground, middleground and background
- Swap roles
- Gradually expand the register space.
Conclusion
When starting your first musical compositions, remember to have fun! Improvising and exploring music and sounds with a sense of adventure will free you to compose your own music much quicker than if you try too hard to “get it right!” Allow the music to lead you, and don’t judge – just enjoy the process! You will discover these composing music tips will give you a good start on finding and exploring musical ideas, which is a big step towards becoming a composer.
You can find more music composition techniques here.
Please feel free to contact me if you need a hand with your compositions or would like to learn more about composing. I teach music composition lessons online and in Sydney, and would love to help you discover your music through composing!