In my 35+ years of writing music for piano, I've composed and arranged over 200 works for solo piano, most of them original. A fan who read my advice for pianists article asked if I'd write a similar article for beginning composers. So, I've put together these 12 tips for anyone who would like to compose music for the piano.
You don't have to come to the piano with an entire musical idea already in your head before you start composing. Just start with one simple melodic phrase. That melody will be the centerpiece for everything else in your composition. It's the foundation and the focal point of your piece. As you begin to compose, improvise on that melody and see where it naturally wants to take you. The musical place it leads you to is usually your 'hook', or what I'll refer to in this article as your chorus. Think of your chorus as your melodic destination.
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As you develop your overall melody, think about the emotion or image you want your composition to convey. What is the message? Is it love? Faith? Winter? Water? Whatever your message is, keep it in the forefront of your mind as you compose. Doing so will influence the direction the composition takes. I find it helps to give the composition a name early in its development. Then the composition title becomes the 'goal' you're working toward, in a manner of speaking.
It is sometimes tempting to write a long introduction (something I'm guilty of) to 'set the mood' for your composition. Be careful with this. Remember, the melody is (typically) what makes or breaks your piece. It is also the device that holds the various elements of your composition together. Finally and most importantly, the melodic hook is what your listener will remember. So, get to the melodic point quickly, and don't linger too long on your introduction. People don't generally hum introductions to themselves - they hum melodies.
Some compositions are just 'mood' pieces. I have a few of these, which don't really have a melody so much as cool, ambient sense about them. There's nothing wrong with writing mood pieces, but be warned, you can only carry a 'mood' for so long before the listeners ear tires. Keep your mood pieces relatively short. Under 3 minutes is a good, general rule.
It's not uncommon to find that while you're developing a composition, you find yourself taken into an entirely new musical direction. The question to ask yourself is, does this 'new direction' belong with your original melody? Or, have you accidentally stumbled upon a new, second melody better suited for an entirely new work? A great number of my pieces originated as spin-offs of other compositions. So if you have a great melody and it takes you to a second great melody, consider whether you're might really be working on two different pieces and whether you need to split them apart so they can 'play' in their own separate worlds.
Once you have firmly established your melodic phrase and chorus, don't pound them into the ground. You might play your melody twice the same exact way, but by the third time you ought to be embellishing it so that even though it's the same melody, it sounds different. That might mean playing it in a different octave, adding more bass, more flair, or a slightly different rhythm. However you do it, enhance the melody throughout the piece. Don't let it grow stale or your beautiful melody will begin to grate on your listeners' ear.
Remember, you're telling a story with your music, so arrange your piece in such a way that it keeps moving in a particular direction. When you read a storybook to your kids before bedtime, you don't read page one, read page two, then go back to page one again, and then read page two, read page two, and read page two once more. Your kids would get really bored! With each new page, the story needs to advance toward the happy ending, in proper order. Do the same thing with your music. Every 'page' of your composition should develop your storyline a bit more, building to a gratifying conclusion.
Don't fret too much about making mistakes as you develop your work. Mistakes can lead to some very cool sounding chords. More than once I've played the wrong notes and then thought, "Hey, what a switch, that sounds cool!" Your "mistake" might end up being the very twist you need to add spice to your tune to catch the listener's ear. When I first start composing a piece, I make a LOT of mistakes. It's just part of the process. Music composition is like pottery. You start out with a dirty blob (an idea) and you mold it into something. The process isn't always pretty, but In the end, with persistence and skill, you may end up with something beautiful.
After you've developed your melody, you'll need to change things up a bit to keep the listener interested. The 'change up' might be a secondary melody, though it's usually not as strong as the primary melody or chorus.
One of the reasons I think people enjoy my compositions is that they are basically songs. I write them to be, for lack of a better description, songs without words (sorry for the clich). Every one of my "songs" has a verse/chorus/bridge pattern to it. For example, listen to 'One Night at Mozart's', one of my popular pieces from my early years. Here's the pattern:
Do you see the song structure? Every composition is a bit different. The point is, compositions that are memorable tend to be song-like in structure. Even with the great classical works, when you hum them, do you hum the entire piece? No... generally what you remember and hum is one very small melodic hook. In comtemporary instrumental music, at least within my world, the melody is what it's all about. So give your pice a song-like structure and...
The biggest mistake I hear in others' composition is over-complexity. For some reason, beginning composers try to make things complicated - as if bigger is better. Part of this, I think, is the need to impress others, and part of it is the mistaken assumption that the more complex a work is, the more significance it has. No, no no. Simplicity is the key to beauty. Clarity is the key to perfection. Don't write to impress and don't write because you are seeking significance. Just find a simple melody, develop it, give it a twist, and finish it. You should be able to do it in less than 4 minutes. If you have a composition (for solo piano) over five minutes, examine it closely. You might be doing more than you need to.
I know a very talented pianist who writes incredible melodies, but his pieces are way too long. It drives me crazy, because if he'd just simplify his arrangements, his entire album would be a thing of beauty. I won't name him, of course, but just look at this arrangement:
The piece runs at six and a half minutes. While the piece has one of the most beautiful melodies I've ever heard, the artist plays it into the ground. By the time you're five minutes into it, you're wishing it was over and ready to skip on to the next piece.
Realize that it might take years to complete a piece. Now and then, I'll write a composition in two hours flat, but that hardly ever happens. Most of my works take 6-9 months to compose, and some have taken years before I feel they are truly finished. If it takes you a while to finish your composition, don't get frustrated. If you need to, set the composition aside and come back to it later. Sometimes if you take a couple months off of a piece, then come back to it, you'll find you have new and fresh ideas to help you complete it.
Finally, keep your phone (or however you prefer to record) near you so you can record your ideas while you're still sitting at the piano. There's nothing more frustrating that having a great idea, getting interrupted, and then forgetting it. With a phone handy you can take the two minutes you need to record a rough-draft or melodic idea and come back to it later if need be.
Thanks for sharing that great resource, Dan. It looks like 7.0-7.5 mm is the sweet spot. However, they also recommend minimum 9 x 12" for paper size. Whereas I expect these piano scores to be printed on 8.5x11" paper on personal printers.
I do not understand why there are two treble cleff staves and why there are music notes in the middle of the two staves. Which hand should I play those notes with and why are there two treble cleff staffs? Thanks for any help! :)
The two staffs on a piano grand staff are primarily used to differentiate between your left and right hands. Sometimes, the left hand will need to play notes in the treble clef range, and sometimes the right hand will be playing notes in the bass clef range. In those cases, you will have two treble or bass clefs. In this case, however, the piano music is only in the two staffs with the brace around them at the left. The treble staff at the top of the page is only for a singer.
In this case, the notes in the middle of the grand staff are on ledger lines that extend from the treble clef, and the stems are pointing down, indicating they are in the lower voice of the treble clef. In your example, they are As and C#s.
The other part of your question is answered with - the notes on LEDGER LINES are too low to fit on the middle stave, but too high to be played using the left hand. So they are written like that to make the tune playable. As in the second bar, the A and middle C# can be reached using the right hand, while the left hand plays a low F#.You wouldn't reach the A/C# with your left hand, whilst holding the low F#.
Also note that with ordinary music, written in standard form using treble/bass clefs, the tails are generally put up or down to keep it all looking tidy, so it's not going to be the same format as your example.
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