How to compose music

Information found elsewhere is for your reference

Because many friends on the Internet have asked me to exchange my experience in composing music, in order to avoid repeated typing, I hereby express my views as follows:

Many friends said that they had a great desire to write songs as soon as they came up, and asked me how to write songs. My first feeling is that this mentality is too unrealistic and lacks an objective attitude. The desire to write songs and compose music is certainly worth encouraging, but if you can't record anything, this idea will become a sign of quick success.

Actually, writing songs, including orchestration, is a natural thing. If you are still asking me how to write, I don't think you have an introduction at all, and you have no ability to master this song. Be sure to let go of the idea of writing music, learn more basic things, learn to a certain extent, accumulate a certain amount, and then naturally know what to do, including evaluating your composition ability. All the friends who started asking how to write music are friends who have little or no music foundation after I know more about it. I don't want to fly, that's what I want to say. What you need is not how to write music, but how to understand what music is all about first.

Besides, what's wrong with writing songs? Many people can often hum some songs blindly even if they don't know music theory (my dad is like this, hehe), but they can't record what they are humming, and they can't step into the threshold of music. People who know how to compose music are different. They can record songs that they or others hum, such as Wang, so some people become composers and musicians. In fact, whether you have the ability to compose music depends on whether you have the ability to record.

How to train this notation ability? First of all, you have to know the score, sing accurately, and the details of the score are very clear. Then practice your ears, including distinguishing intervals and rhythms. All kinds of complex intervals and rhythms should be conditioned to be heard by one ear. It's a bit like practicing English, to the extent of being like a mother tongue. Of course, the more complicated it is, the more difficult it is to identify, but those who can distinguish between complex intervals and rhythms can certainly write things with complex intervals and rhythms. Therefore, if you want to write a good song, you must persevere and improve your ears forever. To a certain extent, when you hear music, it is not the sound but the music score that is reflected in your mind.

Furthermore, if you can not only recognize intervals and rhythms, but also become sensitive to the chords of music. You will gradually find that the melody of songs is based on harmony. Except that China traditional music has a background of melody before harmony (that is, music before orchestration), the melody of modern music is based on strict harmony structure. The more sensitive you are to harmony, the more difficult it is to write a good song, which requires strong basic skills. The more sensitive you are to harmony, the more you will find that domestic music lacks the means to use chords, and you can hear what is a good song and what is a bad song. Really good songs are nothing more than distancing themselves from bad songs in melody, and even the melody is not as fancy as bad songs. You will know what a truly meaningful melody means.

Let's talk about how to write a good song in by going up one flight of stairs.

For friends who have experience in writing songs, it is necessary to discuss the fun of writing songs. If you can do something, others will do it, even everyone will do it, then you are not interested in doing it. If only you can do it, you will feel very different. The same is true of writing songs. If you think of a melody, but the audience can also think of it, it is very uncharacteristic, or there is no standard, and it is not difficult. Why is there a lot of rubbish in pop music nowadays? That is, when you hear the beginning, you can predict what sound he will sing next, and even if you can think of such a melody, then this song must be unpleasant. Nowadays, songs are all familiar styles and tunes. Listening to them too much will make people feel bored, because they are too ordinary and have no freshness. When writing songs, we should emphasize the fun of composing music. We should write something that can catch the audience's ears and make them feel different. This is your own personality problem. Only when you come up with such a thing will others not think so. If your music can still make others feel good, it means that your level is really good. This is the fun of writing songs. You should highlight your personality.

On the other hand, many people don't talk about various composing skills, but like to emphasize that "music is emotional and doesn't have to follow any rules". What they mean is to abandon the rigorous structure of composition and go out of their own personal world. According to this understanding, anyone can play music, regardless of the structural system that binds composition. Can you still enjoy yourself? I will give you a guitar today, and it is not impossible for you to release an album tomorrow. But how many people will admit your music? To put it bluntly, I scribble, you scribble and everyone denies each other. Is this interesting? So personally, I am very disgusted with this anti-traditional approach. I actually want to escape the rules of music.

Therefore, from the perspective of the fun of writing songs, I hope that all friends who write songs can write their own melodies under rational constraints, which is fun.

Finally, discuss a problem of maintaining the level of writing songs.

Everyone may have noticed that domestic creative singers are short-lived, either because a song is famous or because an album is brilliant, and few singers can maintain their creative level. Such as Zheng Jun, Tang Dynasty and so on. Most people have two opinions: 1 because they had a hard life when their first album was released and had a profound experience. After becoming famous, the improvement of living standards has caused changes in creative ideas, and many material factors have affected them, so they are still mediocre in the future. Because the first album is the accumulation of their inspiration for many years. After becoming famous, inspiration will almost dry up. Without inspiration, there will be no good songs. This "material life theory" and "inspiration theory" are not completely unreasonable, but I think it is definitely not the main reason. Many foreign bands became famous in the 1970s. Up to now, there are still good albums and singles emerging. Are their compositions unaffected by material life and exhaustion of inspiration?

Someone asked Li Ao, "Does writing need inspiration?" He asked, "Do prostitutes need sexual desire?" This has actually explained the problem. Creation cannot be maintained by inspiration, but by basic skills and accumulation. It is very tiring to write songs simply by inspiration. You should not only think of a good beginning by inspiration, but also think of a good transition by inspiration, and then you should write a good climax by inspiration. Other songs are like this. Can this go on? Real song creation is developed with the help of a motive, which is inspiration, and the rest is developed by the composer's skills and understanding of music creation. Those who emphasize inspiration and ignore composition skills will sooner or later walk into a dead end of resource exhaustion. The short artistic life of domestic creative singers is caused by insufficient basic skills and accumulation. For those foreign masters, what they hand-picked casually will make us feel unfathomable. Why? The foundation is different! For them, inspiration is nothing special, as long as they find the direction of writing, they can play it out, and everything is done according to their composition style, as simple as that.

So, if you want to keep your level of writing songs, or want to go further, it's easy. You should lay a solid foundation and accumulate more. Learning, learning and then learning is the ultimate way to solve this problem. It is useless to lock yourself in the recording studio for inspiration.

Write here for the time being, welcome friends to criticize and correct me.

Continued 1:

About writing songs, I can really tell you some of my own experience (and I have posted it here, but the response is not very enthusiastic, I don't know if it is profound or wrong). I can ask you this question: If I tell you a series of song writing skills today, can you write a song tomorrow? The reason why I posted the above post is to tell you that writing songs is accumulation. Even if I tell you everything I know, you can't become like me. This is typical, easier said than done. If you really want to learn composition, you can find some books on harmony theory and orchestration knowledge to study slowly, and then you should practice listening constantly to improve your ears' sensitivity to various intervals, harmony and rhythm. But how many people will do it in a down-to-earth manner? They all hope to get some tips from me to make themselves step by step. I have made it very clear. If you are still asking me how to write music, please put down the idea of writing music and understand the basic concept of music. One day, you will wake up naturally. It turns out that composing music is so simple. What I can do now is to show you the way instead of dragging you away.

In my experience, it seems that I have never asked others how to compose music, or even played the guitar, or been a teacher. But if you can keep your thoughts ahead of your skills, you can see the next step clearly without special guidance. Believe me, all the good things in the world are based on practical style and basic skills. Strengthening the training of basic qualities will make you self-taught.

Continued 2:

Maybe there are many people here who despise academic professional teachers and academic things. But once you get to know the academic school, you will find how arrogant you used to be. After all, the theory and training of composition have gone through many centuries, and the development and study of many musical geniuses have produced so many classic and incredible works. If we want to deny its function, it is not for us young people who are half a bottle of water.

The reason why this set of academic things is not valued by everyone is that domestic academic composers produce few good things, have poor practical ability and disdain to write popular things. It's a bit like learning martial arts, obsessed, but they become unreasonable. But when we go abroad to see, this is not the case at all. Many good things are misunderstood at home, such as rock and roll, which is the normal mainstream abroad and the symbol of otherness and social hooliganism at home. So is the academic school.

In addition, it was mentioned above that composition should be innovative instead of conventional. I think there is a problem of consciousness and unconsciousness here. If you consciously break this routine, I think it is understandable, because you know what the original rules should be, which are specially set to express your needs. In fact, a new rule of your own has been formed here. But if you break the rules unconsciously, I think it can only be classified as a mistake, just like singing karaoke without feeling. You can't call it unconventional or innovative. Broadly speaking, people who play the alternative must first figure out what the mainstream is, first understand and master the various rules of the mainstream, and then create the alternative; Friends who play punk should also practice their skills before playing rough ones, which will make them feel very different, handy and musical.

In a word, what I emphasize is to understand and master it first, and then to break it and subvert it. Instead of knowing nothing or holding half a bottle of water and starting to talk about it and subvert it, it will create chaos instead of music.

Continued 3:

In fact, those two or three songs can be written because of your accumulation and your learning achievements. On the basis of certain learning results, inspiration will patronize you. It's like climbing a hillside now, and any resources on this hillside can be used by you, but the things on a hillside are limited after all, and will be exhausted after a while. Then you have to climb a higher mountain, and then you can use all kinds of resources lower than this mountain. When you reach the master level, there is really a feeling that "you will die, and all the other mountains look small under the sky". You can use all the resources in the world. When will you run out? It may not be used up until the day you die of old age.

We live for music is the process of climbing up, not sitting on the slope waiting for the apples to fall off the mountain.

In my creation, I especially emphasize the theoretical basis. Why? Because China people lack this. China people may be smart, inspired and have the potential to be great musicians. But our weak music foundation forced us to lose to foreigners at the starting point. China is a nation that is not good at theory and emphasizes sensibility. Don't tell me that sensibility is the foundation of music, and touching talents is the most important thing, because I don't think you understand how music comes from, how do you think touching music is created, and on what basis the creator stands to have such touching works. Is the theory as rigid as you think, limiting inspiration and freedom? How much theoretical foundation do you have? Have you ever enjoyed the benefits of basic theoretical skills? These are all questions that China music creators need to think about. Are you studying? Are you making progress? The following is my post about which is more important, rationality or sensibility:

1

Perception is the source of creation, and rational skills are service and assistance! This sentence is beautiful, but not practical.

My feeling is that both talent and theory cannot be neglected. In creation, inspiration precedes theory, but it does not mean that inspiration is more important than theory. For example, when choosing a girlfriend, looks are the threshold, but not the most important. Personality may be the most important factor in your final choice (of course, if looks meet your standards).

The same is true of creation. What is inspiration and what is emotion is a threshold. Without this threshold, nothing can be said, but after this threshold, it depends on the depth of everyone's skill. This skill is the accumulation of music appreciation, listening and theory. Some people have good motives, good feelings and good inspiration, but they can't continue to complete the rest of their creations like this inspiration, which shows that he is still an amateur creator and can't keep up with the theoretical precipitation. And a real artist can always grasp a small motive and develop it very touching and outstanding. In fact, everyone has some misunderstandings about the theory and likes to turn it into a book. In fact, it's just a weapon to play the art of hearing and dig out the best notes. And many times, these notes can't be found by a passion alone. The so-called music masters are not profound theoretical masters, they are the perfect combination of talent and profound foundation.

Too much emphasis on talent and inspiration can easily make people reject theories and feel that they can write good works by their own cleverness without using any theories in particular. But in fact, after listening to these works carefully, I found that the artistry is still not enough, and the road is relatively wild (of course, some people will say that it is relatively free), but in the long run, it is easy to enter a dead end and the creative life is not long enough. In China, there are very few musicians who can talk about creating longevity. Why? They are all types of sudden inspiration, and one day Jiang Lang will be exhausted. But if there is deep music precipitation, the situation is different. A small inspiration can be completely expanded into a complete song, and no special re-inspiration is needed to complete the rest, otherwise it will be quite tiring.

I appreciate many foreign pop music creations, both academic (such as many movie episodes) and many wild ways (such as rock and roll). However, even the creators of the wild road have a profound musical precipitation, but their styles are different from those of the academic school. However, they are all masters of theory, and their music creation ideas have been recognized by the audience, so they are famous and can release albums one after another without lowering their level. This phenomenon is different from that in China.

In short, I feel that domestic pop music is still light in theory, and few people study hard, but many people want to write good songs and become famous immediately. Like academia, grandiose.

What the family said may be biased, but it is my personal feeling.

2

The question of which comes first, sensibility and rationality, in music is a bit like the debate between idealism and materialism about which comes first, matter and spirit. It seems that the public is right and the old woman is right. Actually, these are two inseparable aspects of things. A musical work is formed within a certain framework, and has its own thoughts within this framework. It is meaningless to talk about ideas without a framework and build a framework without ideas. It is a correct view to emphasize the importance of either side. However, it needs to be reminded not to underestimate either side. If we ignore the cultivation of perceptual or rational side, it will become the bottleneck of creation. It stands to reason that I should have worked equally hard on these two aspects, but I didn't do so. I especially emphasize that the theory is based on the consideration of some common phenomena now. These phenomena need to be explained, and everyone will naturally understand my intention.

Starting from my personal experience. I have taught guitar and many students, and most of the lessons are elementary. As we all know, the importance of learning music theory in primary schools is the same as the importance of practicing playing, and both sides should make equal efforts. However, if students are given some time to practice by themselves, most students will definitely choose to practice playing the guitar instead of solfeggio. So many people can play the music in the end (and they can play it well), but few people can tune the strings and read the music. Why is this? Because of the word lazy. Their laziness is not in their hands, but in their minds. Learning the basic skills of music theory and listening is obviously more like a kind of mental work. When they spend their time practicing playing, they don't really want to use their brains (although they may realize that learning music theory and solfeggio can make them get twice the result with half the effort). So if I don't pay special attention, or emphasize the importance of both sides in the same way, the result is likely to be like what I said above. In the end, I don't know music, I only know how to play. So every time I raise my music theory and solfeggio to a higher level than practicing piano, I ask them to concentrate (of course, I won't worry about them not practicing piano)

In fact, everyone will find a similar phenomenon. Many people play the guitar with their fingers flying, but they can't keep up with the beat. It doesn't feel like music. The so-called brain can't keep up They are not short of skill practice, and even interested in it. But they hate music theory, and even if they know it is wrong, they are unwilling to make great efforts to change it. This is what I call mental laziness.

When it comes to creating music, many people will boast that they are talented, have feelings, have experiences and so on. Emphasize that sensibility is primary and rationality is secondary or auxiliary. What I see is another meaning, that is, they want to avoid the reality of lack of theoretical basis. In fact, talent and feelings are there, branded on you, and life experiences are slowly precipitated over time, so you don't need to study hard. On the contrary, it is such a thing as music internal strength. It is the most difficult to break through without calming down to learn spirit and perseverance. So I don't emphasize these things related to thinking with my brain and perseverance. What else can I emphasize?

Don't take music as a simple tool to show your talents (objectively), it is also the embodiment of your learning spirit (subjective initiative). If you can write real works of art, it is not only the embodiment of your talent, but also the result of your hard study of music. Music is not speculation, but down-to-earth learning.

Finally, everyone listened to their favorite music and lamented that such music is really a perceptual work, which can impress them so much. But please don't forget that the author made a lot of rational preparations before writing this work. They all wrote such touching works through hard mental work, listening to tapes, playing music, learning and understanding, and using their own personal experiences. Has anyone ever seen a person with high talent but poor musical skills write a very touching work? It is not difficult to infer that the level of music creation is directly proportional to the level of music accomplishment. No matter how talented and experienced people are, if they don't continue to supplement their musical skills, they will soon fall down.

To sum up my point of view, sensibility and rationality are both important to music, but we need to emphasize rationality in particular, because it is the watershed between real musicians and music speculators.

three

Emphasize rationality in music from various comparisons between Chinese and foreign music;

First of all, we should praise the culture of our country, which is profound and profound. But now many cultures don't understand how they were formed, what kind of truth they are based on and what kind of rules they follow. The most obvious example is the Book of Changes, whose value in the world of human cognition has long been recognized by many Chinese and foreign experts. But why did the ancients more than 2,000 years ago know the world better than people today? Do they have any rules for us to recalculate and understand the thoughts of the ancients? Unfortunately, no. China's culture attaches importance to sensibility and ignores theory. Many times, as long as they are correct, it doesn't seem very important how these methods are derived.

The same is true of China's traditional music. A long time ago, experts analyzed that folk music was not good at summarizing and did not form a theoretical system, which limited the further development of folk music to some extent. It cannot be said that the degree of folk music is not high, but compared with the rigorous structure and logic of western music, folk music is generally more ornamental and emotional. In fact, the realm pursued by folk music and western music is fundamentally different, and the unification of the two must be a very difficult project. I can't do it myself, so I can only talk about folk music and western music now.

If it was in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty and China culture was the mainstream of the world, today we will talk about sensibility. But unfortunately, the music we hear and create now is based on the derivative types of western classical music. The mainstream is western music, so we should seriously study the structure of western music, which is meaningful to the topic we are discussing.

There is an unwritten saying: "Bach's music contains all the possibilities of music." Bach's music is the foundation of western music, which is why he won the title of the father of European music. I wonder if you have studied Bach's music. I don't learn much, but I know Bach uses various algorithms and theories to transpose, change, reflect and so on according to small motives. As a result, a theme that lasted only half a minute developed into a complete tune that lasted more than ten minutes or even more than half an hour. These songs don't make people feel monotonous, but they are interesting, exquisite and unspeakable. They play an extreme role in hearing and better express the author's feelings.

Western music is based on Bach's music, emphasizing theory, structure, texture and harmony. To learn western music, the first thing to understand is a series of composition skills. Modern western pop music cannot be separated from this big framework. Although the originator of modern music evolved from black blues, western composers, after understanding the essence of black music, added traditional composition techniques (and of course changed some theoretical systems as needed) because they are still western music at heart. The modern pop music we hear and know now is a combination of western composition ideas and expressions of various ethnic groups (such as blues).

For example, it is said that eric clapton is good at playing blues, but apart from those gorgeous solos, have you noticed clapton's composition routine? How many times did he use tone sandhi to develop from prelude to climax, and then return to the original theme? These complex composition routines are still relatively rare in pop music in our country. China's pop music doesn't need to be tuned many times. Only once can a composer be said to be of high level, and usually it is not in the climax part, but in the transition part from Bridge to the relationship between big and small sounds in the original tune. All clapton's wonderful perceptual solos are based on such a complicated harmony process. We worship clapton's piano friends, and most of them only see those wonderful solos, but ignore the foundation and precipitation of his theory.

Examples like this can be found in any other high-level western pop music. As long as your listening ability is good enough, you should be able to hear the grade gap between western music and China pop music. As long as we pay attention to the comparison of various details in Chinese and western pop music, we can also find how simple, poor and rough our domestic composers' creative ideas are.

four

Let's take a moment to talk about sensibility. My understanding of sensibility mainly includes two points:

First, I said before that only sensible people can write good works, and it doesn't matter what the theme of this work is.

Everyone knows that art comes from life and is higher than life, which is quite right. For example, we watch wonderful TV dramas, most of which are tortuous, romantic and ingenious. This is what we call drama, film and television works or all the performing arts are all about drama, so it can be called a typical life. But in real life, such a plot is unlikely to happen. There is no coincidence, no romantic love, no innocence or bad people. Life is just dull, with occasional small waves, and it is unlikely to be as exaggerated as TV (not excluding a few coincidences). So is music. The emotion it expresses is the acme of human emotion. It is precisely because it shows the most extreme things that it will touch the audience and make the audience feel the shock of music. But the life of music writers themselves is not so extreme. They are all ordinary people. But they are different from ordinary people. They are good at grasping this extreme feeling, which is inseparable from their emotional personality. They are more likely to experience emotional subtlety than ordinary people, and it is also the natural result after experiencing various things. This is what is commonly called life experience. Artists need to experience life in order to cultivate their more delicate feelings, rather than simply asking them to find themes or materials in life to create. Don't think that only lovelorn people deserve to write lovelorn songs. If he doesn't have a deep foundation in music, it doesn't sound like good music in the real sense. A musician who is so delicate that he can feel the pain of lovelorn as if he were there, but has never been lovelorn can also write good works.

If my opinion holds, it will give creators a lot of creative space. Many unrealistic themes can be used for creation. How did Jin Yong experience life when he wrote martial arts? Go back to ancient times and learn about the blood that flowed? Obviously impossible. He can only write what he has not experienced according to his existing experience, emotion and cognitive view. A large number of works of art are actually born under circumstances that the author has never experienced before. I don't agree to book the theory, and I don't agree to limit experience and sensibility to a range.

Second, what kind of people write what kind of songs.

The reason is very simple. Students sing pure love songs, angry youths sing extreme songs, the poor sing popular songs and the rich sing petty bourgeoisie songs. But often there will be role dislocation around us, which makes people look funny.

For example, many college students who know a little about rock and music want to form a band, and they all sing angry songs. In fact, they are well dressed and well fed, and they are not without girlfriends. They live so well, why do they sing such angry songs? There are only two reasons. First, I want to show off and follow the fashion to show that I am a pioneer. Second, because they usually like listening to this kind of music, they also want to make this kind of music. But they forget that their thoughts and feelings have not reached the point of anger, and they are a little reluctant to sing such a painful song in such a comfortable situation.

You know, like belongs to like, but when creating music, you still have to be yourself, based on your own experience and sensibility, combined with composition skills. Don't blindly pursue a certain style and ignore your "class status". It's disgusting to pretend to be deep or pure.

My views on the current situation of domestic pop music are mainly aimed at the influence of colleges and politics on music:

1

In fact, I have always felt that there are misunderstandings in domestic pop music creation, so that for a long time, in addition to our personal rock music, we listened to pop songs from Europe, America and even Japan and South Korea. Personally, I think the reason is that the domestic creative level is too single and relatively low, but the research on real pop music creation in our National Conservatory of Music is actually a blank. Look at these academic songwriters, such as Gu Jianfen and Xu Peidong. What they write is not modern pop music, but what we call pop songs, taking the middle-aged route. The real young people's pop music creation basically starts from tuba road, and street singers become composers. After only composing a few songs, it disappeared, making people feel that Jiang Lang was exhausted. The most obvious ones are Li Chunbo and Zheng Jun, while those who are truly academic and have orthodox music, such as Feng Wang and Dou Wei, have made great achievements and have a long creative life. Unfortunately, they don't specialize in composition theory, but engage in rock and roll in their spare time when studying traditional music, and they can't reach the peak. In a word, China studied composition, didn't create pop, and it wasn't a professional composer who created pop. Although it is biased to kill people with such a pole, this phenomenon is still widespread. We can't help but say that there is an omission in our national music school, which makes our audience have to worship foreign countries, even Hahanhari.

Having said that, the purpose is actually to focus on one point, that is, I hope that friends who are engaged in pop music creation can recognize the reality and reasons of the low level of pop music creation in China, start with improving their own music cultivation and music theory, and embark on an orthodox road to bring our pop music back to the college from the folk and revive our music.

2

My point is that China's political or cultural reform has a top-down tradition, and it is difficult to form a solid growth soil from bottom to top.

Without the support of those in power, it is no use crying out loud. As long as the authority speaks, it can produce a popular wind. The attention of the above people means that this industry will get special development. The following people pay attention to a commotion at most, and it is even more difficult to last for a long time.

Pop music is such a thing that everyone below likes it and is doing it. People in the colleges above disdain to engage in it (excluding individuals, such as Sambo), which shows that it is popular.