Making Music Guide (Part two: Composing)

Hey, How's Your Playing?, Improving? Whatever Your answer is, Keep On practicing, You'll Get There..

Now that You're Starting To Get Better At your instrument, you want to start composing, so I'll give you simple ideas to help you on your way.

Two important things to know ,
1- when you create a song try to make it have a theme not just a mix of unrelated stuff.
2- Try to have your own sound, meaning, when someone listens to your music he/she should be able to know that's this is yours..Create your one sound..but that comes later on and takes some time.

Composing Music By Ear:

For some people It's hard to get all these music theory things memorized, and if they already have a good ear for music, what a person like them would do, is to use this great tool (Their Trained Ears) To start making their tracks, They may have a certain song idea , riff or a chord progression in their minds, they transfer it to the instrument, and then continue building on it, For some people this is easier than music theory, It may not do well critically (as it may not employ music theory well so it can have some errors which decrease depending on how good their ears are) but it can be popular with listeners, but even these composers know about music theory a good deal.

Composing to another Song:

If you listen to a song you like, it could inspire you to make a song of your own, It may give you a musical idea or a certain beat or melody to start with, it's a very easy way to help you start making your first tracks, just listen to the music and get inspired, think of things you can add to it or a change you can make, it may turn down a completely different song! you can change the key of the song (you'll need to know more about key signatures) , change the beat....etc , the point is to experiment with it.

Composing to a sample:

You can find many online sites that offers samples or loops like a drum beat or a riff, try some out maybe one of them can trigger your musical head to action!

Composing to a riff:

Scales are the best ways to make riffs, if you jam with a scale you can come up with a riff, then use this riff as the base for your song , many artist make riff based songs, especially rock artists, even hip hop can contain a repeated guitar riff or bass loop.. try it.

Composing to a Scene or a situation:

Imagine you were asked to make the soundtrack for a movie, and then imagine that movie, the scenes, the story , the atmosphere, what kind of feel does it give you?, try to express that in music..

Composing by Lyrics:

If you experienced a situation that you want to express, write it, then rewrite it but try to get it more into phrases and try to make these phrases equal in length (musically) then you can try to put similar ending words...that's it, you have a basic lyric form! what you want to do now , is to give it a melody, descend and ascend with them words, if you can make a musical phrase with them....Great! just get them feel like a song to your ears. then you might want to experiment with a chord progression, find a one that suits these words and the mood you want them to sound like, Happy (major), Sad (minor).



Building it Up:

Now that you have some ideas , start thinking of the song's structure, the very basic can be

intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge or solo, chorus, outro

you can make it simpler , be creative, you can make a song with no chorus, give it a strong structure, if you feel a part is weakening the song, remove it, add bridges and mini bridges, some variations of the verse and chorus will make it more exciting , the small things can be greatly useful, some mini riffs and melodies makes it more emotional. Don't forget the hook, It's the part of the song that keeps on reminding you of the songs even when you're not listening to it, it can be vocals or an instrument that makes the hook.

some of the websites listed here can help you.

Keep it simple, Your composing abilities will get better by trying and listening..keep it up.