Become a composer! Part 1: Baby Steps!

[MetalRenard]

Become A Composer! Everything You Need To Get Started.
Part 1: Baby Steps!

Introduction
Dear friends and fellow creative souls, this is an introduction to creating music in a digital environment. These tutorials are for absolute beginners! They are in a series of tutorials I have made over the past couple of years and take parts from previous tutorials but change the focus from production to composition. You can read my previous tutorials here:
An Introduction To Digital Music Creation, Pt 1
An Introduction To Digital Music Creation, Pt 2
Those two tutorials teach you how to set up your environment, find instruments and the mechanics of creating music. What you learn there can often be applied to other software too.

These new tutorials will not teach you how to compose! They will give you the tools to learn how to compose on your own.
This will be achieved through analysis, exercises, discussion and your own hard work. Be forewarned, I am not a trained composer, my approach to composing is therefore one of a self-taught musician and might not be for everyone.

Feel free to ask questions about anything I mention and more! A curious mind is a great mind.

Understanding These Tutorials
This isn't going to be easy. Composing, creating music, is a difficult task and one you will need to dedicate a lot of time to if you want to get good. It is incredibly rewarding though! Seeing people's eyes light up when they enjoy something you've created is a fantastic feeling.

Quite often I will put a word in italics. This is to help you understand when I'm stressing an idea, to help add intonation to the writing.
Other times I will put a word in bold. Every word in bold is an important word you probably need to understand/research. Explanations of these words are available on Wikipedia, just type them and "wiki" into google to read up on them. Easy!
Specific instructions are in orange.


Part 1: Baby Steps!
We begin by assuming you know how to use midi, that you have a DAW set up and that you have instruments ready. If that made absolutely no sense to you (:P), please refer to the other 2 tutorials mentioned in the introduction that cover that in full! There are many ways to start your songs but today we're going to do an exercise together. This isn't about making good music right now, it's about understanding the mechanics behind making good music. It doesn't matter how good this sounds either!

To begin with, load up an instrument you can use in the high frequencies (violin, piano, guitar, flute, a synth...) and throw down some notes.
I assume you are able to detect when something sounds out of place (clashing notes, dissonance) but if you don't then you need to start by choosing a scale for your song or alternatively just stick to the white keys on the piano. Place your notes in some kind of order to create a melody.
Example Melody 1



Now you can move those notes around, change their length or replace some. I just moved the last 2.
Example Melody 2

Now choose another instrument you can use in the lower frequencies (bass guitar, cello, bass synth, bassoon...).
This is where you take your first baby step into the realm of composition! Are you ready?

Find one (yes, just one!) note that fits your entire melody (but make sure it's lower down, this is a bass instrument after all...). Repeat this note over and over.
Melody And Bass Example 1


Tadaa! You have the beginning (or "introduction") of a song! Congratulations!
Do you think you haven't learnt anything yet? Well you're wrong! Let me show you what we've learnt today!

What We've Learnt Today
Today we've learnt that different instruments are used for different kinds of things. A higher frequency instrument is usually better at playing a melody whilst a lower instrument is usually good at making a bass-line.

We've learnt that music isn't just one thing at a time. I cannot stress how important this is!!! Music is also the interaction between two or more complimentary elements. You can have a melody playing with one instrument and a bass/rhythm playing under it. If they're both playing notes, this is called polyphony. But let's not get too far into that theory stuff... Music can be just one melody, that's absolutely fine, but it's also important to learn that you can do more than just that. You have a vast range of sounds at your fingertips, don't be afraid to try them out. Together they might make something that surpasses each individual element on its own!

We've also learnt that sticking to a single musical scale is a really good way (in the beginning) to avoid using notes that sound ugly/dissonant.

We've revised how to use MIDI and midi editing in general just by doing this exercise.

We've become more familiar with our chosen software.

Last but not least, we've begun to discuss song structure by talking about a song introduction.

End Note
That's it for Part 1! In Part 2 we'll study something I like to call "Learning Your Instruments".
We'll learn how to use the appropriate instrument, how to use an instrument correctly and study how different instruments work together.


Please do NOT reproduce this content without my express permission.