How to Develop a Musical Idea
What Comes First? ☝🏻
When trying to compose or write music, one of the biggest challenges is working out how to approach the writing process. How do you come up with ideas? How do you put those ideas into a suitable format? How do you keep it interesting? These are the questions that make up the music writing process. So let’s try to answer them!
Typically a piece of music starts with a single idea, that idea is usually either a melody or a series of chords. I have personally written pieces of music that began in both of these ways; a melodic idea and a chordal idea. In a piece of music, we can think of the melody as the narration of the piece of music and the chords provide the emotional colour that sits beneath a melody.
If you begin with a melody; the chords, rhythm and tempo that you choose to use will dictate the feeling of that melody. So if you begin with a melody, then decide what sentiment you want the piece to have and then you can find chords that fit the style that you are looking for! Typically a chord will contain the melody note that happens at the same time that the chord is introduced. So to help you select chords, you could pick from the chords that include that note!
Let’s say I have an F in the melody, I could chose any of these chords that contain an F:
F major - F A C
F minor - F Ab C
D minor - D F A
Db major - Db F Ab
Bb major - Bb D F
B diminished - B D F
F major 7 - F A C E
D minor 7 - D F A C
Bb major 7 - Bb D F A
Bb dominant 7 - Bb D F Ab
etc...
Needless to say, there are still many options! So it’s worth working out which scale includes all of your melody notes to narrow down the possible chords you might want to use…or you can try them out and see what you like the sound of! Each type of chord (major, minor, diminished, augmented, major 7, dominant 7, minor 7 etc…) will have a different quality of sound that creates a particular feeling. This feeling might change slightly depending on the context, but the more you use these chords and consider how they feel, the more you will be able to find the sentiment you are looking for!
If you start with the chords first rather than the melody, then the likelihood is that the music will already have a particular mood and set of characteristics. It is also very likely that the chords you have chosen belong to a scale, so (once again) its worth working out which scale includes all of your chord notes so that you know what notes to use in your melody.
When starting with chords, we can use the same logic to work out a melody. A melody and a chords typically land together with the melody being one of those chord notes. So if you are writing a melody, think about which notes are in your chord and see if you can veer towards those notes when you change chords.
2. Think in Layers 🎂
Songs and pieces of music are usually formed in layers, we have the melody, the harmony, the bass and the rhythm. Often when someone gets stuck writing a piece of music it is because one of these elements hasn’t been considered fully or they are too married to one of the ideas and can’t find the other elements to match.
I have found personally that if I develop all of these elements for one idea to fully, it becomes challenging to find other ideas that fit later in the music. So if you have a melodic idea, I would try and find a few more melodic ideas that are similar in style for later in the music to put in your back pocket! Similarly if you have the harmony (the chords) then I would come up with a few more similar ideas.
From here you can start thinking about the structure and the message that you are trying to convey. If you are writing a pop song then the structure will be much more standardised then if you are writing a free form classical piece. The chorus would typically have a thicker texture and be more memorable than the verse might be.
3. Simplicity, Repetition, Diverting and Returning 𝄆 𝄇
When you are able to come up with ideas and find all of the elements to fit with your idea. Telling a story with a piece of music becomes the real challenge. Most of the best and most memorable pieces of music are actually quite simple in nature. Beethoven’s 5th symphony begins with just a 4 note idea, 3 of those notes are the same note - yet it’s one of the most iconic openings to a piece of music. The reason for this is because of its simplicity and its memorability.
Once you have a simple idea then it’s important to realise that…you don’t need to come up with new ideas for every bar. Music is largely made up of repetition and development. If your initial idea is in a minor key, what would that sound like in a major key? How would that change the feeling and the story you are telling?
Each of the elements (melody, harmony, bass, rhythm) can be manipulated to change the story that you are telling - but they don’t need to be entirely new musical ideas every time. That would result in a listener not being able to understand what the music is about. A good way to approach repetition within music is by thinking about developing and changing ideas to create an evolving narrative. Can you repeat this idea with a bigger texture to show growth? Can you repeat the idea higher pitched so that it feels more introverted?
Changing to a new musical idea can be used as a tool to make the music feel like it’s travelling, like it’s moving to a new landscape! Think of how a chorus generally feels more uplifted than a verse….this is because (the first time at least) we have a new unfamiliar idea being heard that is usually thicker in texture. When playing with different sections in a piece of music and different musical ideas, I would consider the standard structure of a good story.
The Beginning - The status quo
The Middle - Development, travelling and learning
The End - Returning with a fresh perspective
In music, we can also think of this structure. The beginning is a musical idea, the middle is the development of that idea and moving away somewhere new and the end is a return to the original idea with a fresh perspective.
Writing music is a balance between creating something unique and new and using tried and tested ideas. To write a good piece of music, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel…you just need to make a wheel in your own way!
Matthew Cawood
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