Composing music

Ever since I was little, I was exposed to music wherever I went. Whether that be from my mom’s unspoken love for classical, pop songs on the radio, enchanting movie soundtracks, or hip hop hits; music has always been a big part of my life. Despite my exposure to music and lovingly pushy parents who’ve always wanted a musically talented child, evidently from the years of piano lessons they subjected my siblings to, I never found it in myself to pursue music, the piano specifically, with any substantial results. That all changed when the paralysing unproductive boredom of lockdown finally hit. I told my mom what she’s always wanted to hear, “I want to have piano lessons.” The words struck her ear dramatically as if the prophecy she envisioned for me as a child finally came true. After learning the basics, it felt amazing to learn new songs I would hear in movies or the radio. I feel a great sense of accomplishment every single time I would successfully complete learning a song/piece. So naturally, when presented with the idea of a “Personal Project” I instantly gravitated towards music, specifically piano. Prior to deciding my learning goal, I was already always messing around on the keys and creating new music, but never wrote it down or recorded it. Whenever I sat down on the piano, I would always try to spill my emotions in the music I played but felt like my music theory knowledge was very limited. With those reasons, I decided it would be perfect for my learning goal to be just that, expressing my thoughts and emotions into original piano compositions and performing them.

Product Goal

My product for my Personal Project are 4 original piano pieces, all written down in sheet music notation, and performed on video. This product is a perfect opportunity for me to explore the vast world of music theory to accurately express myself through my music. I will try to make all 4 pieces with different themes and emotional settings, this is because I want to create a diverse body of work to really challenge myself. I want to be able to tell stories through my music and for me the only way to do that is to learn how music works on a theoretical and fundamental level.

Reflection

This project gave me insight, experience, and perspective that I could’ve never gotten from just researching or asking questions to teachers. I now realize that musical composition is just one of those things that you learn while doing, as much as you think you know about music theory or music notation, it will never be the same as actually sitting down to create your own original music. Prior to the project, I had a very narrow understanding of music, only focusing on the rigidity of its rules. However, said rules are very useful in understanding why something sounds the way it does. I realised that making music isn’t really much of a process that can be planned or structured in advance, not with music theory, it's sort of the way around. I found myself playing melodies and progressions just by moving my hands around, and when I liked the way something sounded, it was only then where I tried to explain it using music theory to be able to build off from there. Music theory isn’t the first step; our ears are. The more I composed, the more confident I got with just playing around with the notes. An exercise I liked to do is keeping a scenario or specific emotion in mind and I would attempt to improvise a piece of music that I felt was suitable for that scenario/emotion. That exercise really helped me with the more creative part of this project, which was to be able to articulate emotions and scenarios into music. In conclusion, this project has given me insight on the importance of thinking outside the box in music, and to let music theory be a guide instead of a rulebook.

Product Evaluation

All in all, I believe that I’ve successfully created an original body of work that is diverse and musically complex enough to my standards. However, there is definitely room for improvement, which in my opinion is the quality of my video performances and the quality of my sheet music notation. From my personal opinion and the responses from the recipients of the survey, those two criteria were the ones I could’ve put more effort in, such as renting a music studio for the video performances, or researching further on the music notation. Other than the product, the process also had a lot of room for improvement. My time management and organizing were definitely the two main factors of the process, and I feel as though I could’ve done much better to better organize my work.