How to connect ideas within a single composition?
- Thread starter Abdulrahman
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Steve Wheeler
Member
Plot out points of structure first. Connect with prolongation. This book changed my life: https://www.amazon.com/Structural-Hearing-Tonal-Coherence-Music/dp/0486222756/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PKGJHIDS3B4Q&keywords=structural+hearing+salzer&qid=1573551231&sprefix=structural+hearing%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1 (Salzer) Get it used for like $5.
It's a pretty tough read, but a really neat way at looking at music.
It's a pretty tough read, but a really neat way at looking at music.
Ludwin's book is also excellent (at a much more basic level)
www.musicnewapproach.com
Developing Variation | musicnewapproach
www.musicnewapproach.com
Steve Wheeler
Member
Ludwin's book is also excellent (at a much more basic level)
Developing Variation | musicnewapproach
Now this is very cool. Probably a lot more approachable from a prose standpoint too. The Salzer is an academic book from the 50's. Why a lot of academics feel the need to explain concepts using the most complex language available, I'll never know.
Don't know if this work touches on Schenker, but looks great especially with audio examples. I may pick this up myself for $30.
SupremeFist
Senior Member
Modulate.
Living Fossil
Senior Member
You can't ask this question in such a generalized way.
It's always about specific solutions, there are no simple receipts.
E.g. to quote you: you write "that nothing sounds too random or sudden"
There is no rule that states that it's always a bad thing that an idea appears all of a sudden.
But then again: often this would be a bad thing.
My advice is:
To get an overall overview of how to connect opposing ideas, you could make 2 months full of listening to Beethoven-first-movements.
Listen through the first movements of his piano sonatas and his symphonies.
In the sonata form (which Beethoven brought to perfection) you have two contrasting ideas that find a synthesis.
Second:
If it's about going from point A to point B in an organic way, Alban Berg defined the state of the art.
However, his music is quite complex, so you have to find out if this language speaks to you.
But you can't go wrong with analysing Beethoven...
For me, an answer (besides looking up something to study, like Mike Verta and development) is by dovetailing when and where it seems necessary. Though there's a lot more to be said about how to do it properly (and definitely not by me) I think even thinking of it this way could help.
Imagine walking on grass toward a gravel driveway. Next, picture a few feet of gravel and grass where grass has crept out in the driveway. For example, if you haven't had much or any brass part in the A section, but the B section of your piece will feature more prominent brass it may help to have a little brass toward the end of the A section. That way the transition going from listening to the A and suddenly hearing the B section won't be striking or jarring but instead a pleasantly interesting change that happens almost without the listener knowing.
Another idea to combine with the previous paragraph is to avoid jumps in the pitches of instruments and sections during a harmonic / structural change. If there's a significant difference between one (structural) part of the piece and another I think that keeping instrument voices around the pitches they were just playing during the preceding section will help smooth that sound out even with a tempo change. Similarly, you could go back a couple measures and change a few parts so that the pitches climb or descend to the pitch range you want an instrument section to play in for the next structural part of your piece.
I once went through a little piece of mine and wrote additional parts throughout it so that when a change (guitar) came to the front it wouldn't seem like it had come out of nowhere. In the end, I think homogenizing it that way really worked when the piece wasn't that great, and I didn't have to go back and do a ton of work. This is probably completely subjective but aside from stopping work to learn about theme development or committing a lot of time to rewrites, dovetailing is what I'd focus on if it were me.
Imagine walking on grass toward a gravel driveway. Next, picture a few feet of gravel and grass where grass has crept out in the driveway. For example, if you haven't had much or any brass part in the A section, but the B section of your piece will feature more prominent brass it may help to have a little brass toward the end of the A section. That way the transition going from listening to the A and suddenly hearing the B section won't be striking or jarring but instead a pleasantly interesting change that happens almost without the listener knowing.
Another idea to combine with the previous paragraph is to avoid jumps in the pitches of instruments and sections during a harmonic / structural change. If there's a significant difference between one (structural) part of the piece and another I think that keeping instrument voices around the pitches they were just playing during the preceding section will help smooth that sound out even with a tempo change. Similarly, you could go back a couple measures and change a few parts so that the pitches climb or descend to the pitch range you want an instrument section to play in for the next structural part of your piece.
I once went through a little piece of mine and wrote additional parts throughout it so that when a change (guitar) came to the front it wouldn't seem like it had come out of nowhere. In the end, I think homogenizing it that way really worked when the piece wasn't that great, and I didn't have to go back and do a ton of work. This is probably completely subjective but aside from stopping work to learn about theme development or committing a lot of time to rewrites, dovetailing is what I'd focus on if it were me.
Consona
Senior Member
Look at what you are changing so you know what to continue to make it sound smooth.
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ReelToLogic
Still have my reel-to-reel
This! I was going respond with something like this but hawpri said it much better than I would have. And I like the term "dovetailing". This can make a huge difference in making your transitions sound smooth and natural.
OP
OP
Abdulrahman
Active Member
Thank you!
borisb2
Senior Member
ohh yes .. spending less time in sample talk is a good thing - unless you really need to collect all of spitfires blips and blops ..
I have Normans composition book - as well as his book about orchestration .. and I also bought his video course about composition .. his way of teaching is just awesome. Very practical and with a good sense of humor (video course)
Link?
shawnsingh
Senior Member
Another perspective - sometimes random/sudden changes only seem random/sudden to the composer who is deeply invested in trying to make something coherent. There are a million musical examples in all genres where different themes are just butted together, and it works. There might be a very slight smooth between them like just the right pause or a pickup note, a leading scale or arpeggio, or something very small like that, but otherwise,just butted together.
There's something about thinking at this larger scale of phrasing nested within phrasing that is a tough mindset to get into. I always struggle with it, but once I find a kind of "macro phrase" in the piece, I realize that just butting together the themes worked just fine. And then sometimes I can see some simple ways to smooth over the transitions after that.
A great example of butting together phrases is good old classical sonatas. There's always a first phrase across several bars, followed by a second phrase, and often times a third or fourth one, and all those seem to combine together to form a kind of macro phrase. It's that level of structure that's between "phrase" and "form" about how multiple phrases are sequenced together.
borisb2
Senior Member
