Need some info pertaining to writing an acoustic instrumental

[mbonitat]

All,
Curious as to a method or template to follow while creating (or at least attempting to create) acoustic instrumental's . What things are necessary to start going down that path? Learning and playing other peoples songs/music is fine and it has helped me tremendously in my growth of playing acoustic guitar. But at what point do you take what you've learned and the music you play is your own?

Many moons ago when I decided to be a chef....in the beginning it was washing pots and pans, peeling garlic, potatoes etc. and not even getting a whiff of the stove. But you learn how to do things to make you better and get you prepared.

Same as guitar playing (in my mind), you start at the beginning learning different things, maybe take some lessons, books, playing others music but you start. As time goes by you keep progressing and get better, at some point at least for me you want to figure out how to play your own stuff.

I guess what I am asking is, if you are at the place where you are writing, and playing your own songs, how did you get there?

Thanks for reading. Be well everyone. Mark

[rick-slo]

Listened to music by the likes of Mozart, Brahms, Chopin since a tot. Played piano early on. Discovered bluegrass and did a lot of listening to the
likes of the Dillards and then took up banjo. Got into guitar listening to Segovia, Bream and the like. Some listening to fingerstyle and artists that
did that well. In short a lot of listening. Then all I had to do was figure out what liked within the various styles and use some of that in my own
compositions.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by mbonitat

All,
Curious as to a method or template to follow while creating (or at least attempting to create) acoustic instrumental's . What things are necessary to start going down that path? Learning and playing other peoples songs/music is fine and it has helped me tremendously in my growth of playing acoustic guitar. But at what point do you take what you've learned and the music you play is your own?

Many moons ago when I decided to be a chef....in the beginning it was washing pots and pans, peeling garlic, potatoes etc. and not even getting a whiff of the stove. But you learn how to do things to make you better and get you prepared.

Same as guitar playing (in my mind), you start at the beginning learning different things, maybe take some lessons, books, playing others music but you start. As time goes by you keep progressing and get better, at some point at least for me you want to figure out how to play your own stuff.

I guess what I am asking is, if you are at the place where you are writing, and playing your own songs, how did you get there?

Thanks for reading. Be well everyone. Mark

Learn how music works via music theory, all the classical composers took formal training in composition, they didn't just mess around till they produced something that sounded good. Most people start one of two ways . Learn a scale , set a metronome going improvise a journey toward the tonic in time to the metronome, if you produce something you like you will have a melody, you then need to record it somehow so you don't forget it, once recorded do some research into how to harmonise that melody so you can flesh it out into an arrangement with chords and intervals. The other approach is to construct a chord progresion leading toward the tonic chord using chords that when they do change only do so on the strongest beat of a bar, experts will change chords wherever it suits but you need to keep it simple start with two chord progressions, again keep a record of your pregression then do some research into how to create a melody line passing through it as a distinct thread.
Couple of books to help gain an understanding of how music works.

Music theory for Dummies
and
Music Composition for Dummies,
If the books don't provide you with illumination seek out a good teacher.
of course you can allways just mess around till you create a masterpiece, monkeys and typewriters etc.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by mbonitat

All,
Curious as to a method or template to follow while creating (or at least attempting to create) acoustic instrumental's . What things are necessary to start going down that path? Learning and playing other peoples songs/music is fine and it has helped me tremendously in my growth of playing acoustic guitar. But at what point do you take what you've learned and the music you play is your own?

It becomes intuitive. I don't consciously use things I've taken from other music, it's just all part of the vocabulary I have in my head. All the music I've ever heard in my life combines into a single language, but of course the music I've actually learned to play is at the top - the clearest elements of that language.

Every composition starts with an idea. That might be a melodic phrase that springs into your head for no reason - or is some ear worm from another song you keep hearing - or it's something you discover while improvising on the guitar. Sometimes a random noodle throws up a phrase that sounds and feels good. (It can be an unusual kind of chord change, but usually it's a melodic phrase.)

Then it's a matter of developing that. Firstly, finding what chord or chords sound good with the phrase. I do have plenty of theory knowledge here which helps suggest things, but it's an aural judgment in the end.

Then repetition (very important!), and beginning to get a feel for how the tune fits into a form. There are standard song templates that we all find familiar and intuitive.
As a chef, for example, if you're developing a new recipe, you have standard meal portions that govern how much of anything you use, as well as standard sizes of dish or pan, and so on. For a painter, they will have a canvas: in a choice of sizes, but generally rectangular in shape; they don't just fling paint on a wall. The point is, these standard forms are not a restriction; they make valuable templates to work within.

The song needn't necessarily be fitted into the usual 88- or 16-bar verse-chorus sections. If it does that naturally, fine. But sometimes the melody that inspired you fits something less regular - it shouldn't be forced somewhere it doesn't fit.

IOW, I always let melody lead me - for instrumentals as much as vocals because all good melodies are singable. I treat a melody as something which has a life of its own. At the end of one melodic phrase - or even after every single note - I try to get a feel of where the tune "wants" to go next. There's always a natural move, up or down, by a small or large step, that feels natural to sing at that point. That's always what I'm looking for. I might be playing it on the guitar, but I'm feeling / humming / singing it too. If I can't sing it myself (and my voice is not great!) I'm imagining someone else singing it.

The other thing to keep hold of is simplicity. The more you know, the bigger your library of chords and chord changes, the more tempting it is to throw more stuff in to make it "interesting". But often this temptation is strongest when your original idea is not that great - and then the idea gets swamped, and you lose your way in a jungle of chord and key changes. When your idea is strong, then you often don't need fancy chords at all.

As a chef, again, sometimes you just want cheese on toast, right? Sometimes an honest, basic simple dish is what hits the spot. You don't want haute cuisine the whole time. And even with a complex recipe, you want to be careful not to swamp it with too many herbs or spices - you want the main ingredients to sing out, just with some appropriate flavours added in support.

Originally Posted by mbonitat

if you are at the place where you are writing, and playing your own songs, how did you get there?

Well, I wrote four songs in the first week I started playing guitar. It was new toy, so I played with it. Why wouldn't you? Nobody told me I needed to get to a certain level before I was entitled to write a song. I knew roughly how songs went, and I made up something similar. Naturally, they were bad! But the more I did it, the better I got....

[Straw]

I think Jon shares a lot of insight into the creative process. His description of being led by melody and not forgetting a certain simplicity strike me as true of my own experiences. Admittedly, I write songs with lyrics; what instrumentals I have are still really melodies that I haven't yet found the words for.

Your sense of a musical genre (or genres) may also be important. (This might be what Jon means by templates.) Despite our desire to be totally original, I would be hard pressed to name artists in any area (music, painting, poetry, whatever) who have not been enormously influenced by traditions and certain other artists who particularly inspire them. Playing around with musical ideas, especially as they are commonly handled in a genre you like, might be a way to discover your own voice. The genre provides some guidance--or guard rails, if you will--for chord progressions, rhythms, even melodies. As you listen to pieces you like, you might follow the musician's lead and hum along, maybe even improvising yourself. At that point, you are launched. Don't wait

[stanron]

I wrote my first song before I started to play any instrument. I just wrote lyrics to a tune that I already knew. When I started to play guitar I made up songs to chords I knew. I didn't play the tunes as melodies. I played the chords and sang tunes to them. I couldn't notate music so I had to remember what I'd made up. I reckoned that if I could not remember a tune it was not good enough anyway.

When my guitar playing improved to the point where I could play instrumentals I would noodle around on the guitar and if I found something that caught my imagination I would try to develop it into a song or instrumental tune.

I started playing in 1962. Around about the early 1990s I discovered traditional tune sessions. I stopped going to Folk Clubs and spent most of my time playing in tunes sessions at first on mandolin and then on fiddle. I more or less stopped playing acoustic guitar but did gig around on electric. Writing took a back seat although I did come up with a few traditional like tunes. By this time I could also read and write notation and when I found computer software that could play the music back a new world opened.

After about fifteen years of this I started to play acoustic guitar again. I decided to revise a lot of my approach to acoustic playing, like standard tuning only, not using a capo and changing my picking hand to a non-resting and non-floating position. I started coming up with instrumental arrangements of traditional tunes and some original instrumentals. These were based on thinking of the melody first and then trying to arrange them in the same way as I had arranged the folk tunes.

By last year I found that age had taken it's toll. I can no longer play guitar. The fingers of my fretting hand can't bend enough to actually fret the guitar. However as I can write music into the computer I can think of music and write it into a notation editor. Musescore is the current program of choice. So although I can't actually play I can still come up with original music.

What I did at the beginning and what I do now is come up with musical ideas in my mind and then develop them into compositions. A knowledge of structure, how melodies are made up out of smaller units, is very useful. There is not a lot about this in music theory but all you really need is an analytical approach to listening.

[rick-slo]

Don't get too buried in theory detail or you're likely to get nowhere fast, however having an idea of the outlines of what is
going on in the stuff you already like listening to is a good start. Do a few instrumental arrangements of existing melodies
(rather than something totally from scratch) would be a good start.

[Gordon Currie]

Like others, I started 'composing' right away. Early on, it didn't produce finished compositions, but rather little bits and sections. LOTS of them.

It took me years to complete a tune. (Even now, the last mile is the hardest.)

The first tune that I'll admit to/show someone was completed 7-8 years after I got my first guitar. It's a short neo-classical piece that can be counted in either 3/4 or 5/4.

I see many parallels with writing (prose, poetry, articles, stories). You have to make it an effort on it's own - it doesn't just arise out of nowhere. Compositional skills must be practiced just like your performance skills.

I would recommend starting slow and begin composing little patterns and phrases. Practice invention. At some point, you'll start combining bits into longer sections. Eventually you will be looking ast your first composition.

[islandguitar]

Great wisdom in this thread! I'd like to copy them all and post them somewhere on my office wall!
I think my interest in composing came early on from the folk group I was in years ago where we transitioned to our own stuff (lyrics and guitar). I loved the process! Like others, listening to different styles is important. I think listening when I was younger to Segovia also planted some seeds, long before I picked up a guitar.
I now do instrumentals.

As Jon PR states, it could be numerous "triggers" that get you going. A chord, a mood, a phrase, a pre-determined pathway that shows itself, a melody which perhaps you can hum, or also in my case a potential name for a tune which then contributes to how I might find my way through composing. All this accompanied by what he (Jon) describes as "aural judgement". I think that's a great term! Also, I would say that having the confidence to know you're on to something and not letting go of it is helpful, even if you know it'll be a while before things substantially evolve. It think it's important not to rush things, unless "lightening" really strikes on a particular project you're working with. Then, of course, go for it! LOL!

I don't find myself relying on too much theory, but will often find my way into a tune and then figure out where I've brought myself with theory which can sometimes lead to further steps in composing.

Really can't add much beyond what has already been offered by folks with great insight. Best wishes on the journey!
Fred

[mbonitat]

Great stuff! Thank you to all for taking the time to express your thoughts, you have given me a better insight on what to do next. I can't tell you how grateful I am. I have been listening to music since the mid-60's so there is much to mine there. I have played for almost 6 years now....I gotta get crackin'....much to figure out still, but I am loving it. Thanks again. Mark

[DukeX]

Great thread and great comments!

[Bob Womack]

I studied composition at university. One of the things that was most drummed into my head was "tension structure." Tension structure is the "pull" of the music, the structure of the music that draws you forward and makes you want to keep listen. Without thinking of the tensions structure the result can be a flat tensions structure. A flat tension structure can take the form of a slow piece that doesn't seem to go anywhere or a fast, frenetic piece that doesn't develop. I see the latter in some tapping pieces that start fast and complex and never go anywhere and in rock pieces that have what I call a "square wave" tension structure: they hit the floor going a million miles and hour and continue at that pace until they just... stop.

Humans like to hear development. You need to have things start at one place and build to another. You can feature more than one build, but it has to start smaller and build larger overall. Ant example of a piece that builds from start to finish is Maurice Ravel's ballet piece The Bolero. The piece states two melodies that repeat about nine times each time with increased urgency in the form of more and more instruments and more and more strident tones from the instruments. As we approach the climax the composer steps us over into a third melody briefly and then continues the build until we catastrophically hit the climax and collapse in a pile on the floor. This piece has the tension shape of a perfect right triangle, beginning small, building to the apex, and dropping vertically back to the altitude of the base. It is also described as the "sexiest" orchestral work in that its tension structure resembles the tension structure of the act of intimate love.



When you compose, start somewhere, create a developmental journey that demands that your listeners follow along, and deposit your listeners at a place they want to go to.

And an aside, I find that I love the art form known as the precis. A precis uses the minimum of gestures to accomplish its goals. Once I listen to a precis and then go back to think about it I usually end up with a sense of inevitability, like "that had to happen." I also get this feeling, "Why didn't I think of this?"

Tension structure. Learn how to make it.

Bob

[DCCougar]

Keep it simple. Thousands of songs use the chord sequence 1-6m-4-5 (C-Am-F-G). Tom Petty switched that around and played 4-1-6m-5 and voila -- Learning to Fly. He doesn't even throw in a bridge. Of course, he uses a little syncopated phrasing, but still... The main part of Petty's Won't Back Down is just Em-D-G. He has a couple of variations in that one, but again, they're quite simple. To me, composition is pretty much a matter of chord structure, repeating a pattern of chords. Vary that with a different pattern for a bridge, then return to the original pattern. That's a very typical song structure.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by DCCougar

Keep it simple. Thousands of songs use the chord sequence 1-6m-4-5 (C-Am-F-G). Tom Petty switched that around and played 4-1-6m-5 and voila -- Learning to Fly. He doesn't even throw in a bridge. Of course, he uses a little syncopated phrasing, but still... The main part of Petty's Won't Back Down is just Em-D-G. He has a couple of variations in that one, but again, they're quite simple. To me, composition is pretty much a matter of chord structure, repeating a pattern of chords. Vary that with a different pattern for a bridge, then return to the original pattern. That's a very typical song structure.

This approach provides a practical starting point and is very easy when you can play the progression and just sing a line that sounds good over the chords, you imediately get a distinct harmony and melody part and a tune that's singable, like wise on keyboard - play the progression with the left hand and just explore a scale in the same key with the right.
This isn't so easy to do spontaineosly on an acoustic guitar which I think is why a lot of stuff which is composed on the guitar sounds like a series of arpegios rather than a distinct melody with seperate harmony. How do you get over that?

[SingingSparrow]

Such a great thread! Thanks for starting it, and everyone for contributing!!