At some point of your composition life you might ask yourself this question, whether to join an existing framework of creators or creating your own framework for allowing others then to join it. The question about an egg and a chicken who comes first?
At some point of your composition life you might ask yourself this question, whether to join an existing framework of creators or creating your own framework for allowing others then to join it. The question about an egg and a chicken; what comes first? As I learned and examined some of Beethooven musical manuscripts I realised one simple truth, a composer always creates his own framework, and that framework is used by him to create unique compositions. The details of how and when he implements his counterpoint techniques or orchestration methods are not important. The truth is inside the melody and harmony he usually uses…
Every composer / musician knows that every western polyphonic composition is built upon a Cantus Firmus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantus_firmus a fixed bass line that has it’s own rules and movement vectors with alterative powers. The second voice line comes to generate a melody upon that fixed bass line, what is filled inside is a set of mathematical rules to create chords and transitions between them – generating a movement. Then framed structure comes to life according to tempo and verbal movement, you can create a passages with accents and “relieves”. In usual life of people who wants to create something – these are quite stiff and hard rules to understand how they actually work, and creativity comes as an answer on how you operate these rules in your composition timespan.
As you buy a chair from IKEA, you have a very basic, but complete instruction manual on how to build that chair and get the picture done within 15-20 minutes. As you want to write or create a musical composition, you have lots of tools and rules to do that, like a “palette” of colors and a way to manipulte with these colors as with sound. It’s very very hard. Most of all it is so hard, it like comparing an IKEA chair to a J.S Bach Choral… So well, there is no framework or a style to create music you just need to find your own and create in it.
Many would say, improvisation as a catalysis for creation is somewhere true, but still structuring this “wind” is almost a necessary step to create your own framework. Why should you create your own framework? Why this is important? Music is joy, music should make one feel happy or sad, bring up memories, feelings. I strongly disagree, that music should do something else than that. It should always tell a story, but at the end the music is heard, that the way it goes in life and physics – someone doing something, someone reacts, if you have ears you listen what others say. Birds are singing – talking, chatting, dogs are barking whether you like it or not, people are shouting speaking, sound is generated. Then the question would stand whether you want to do an “ART”. What is art? Art comes from artificially making your own world so that “others” can see and understand it. Most of people can understand talking, chatting, birds, and when a baby is crying for milk or he /she is tired. If you decide making an “ART” it should be beautiful and always seeking that level of complexity to be complete and self sustained and heard – “O look at that beautiful flower, it has so many colors and it is so harmonic!”. Like a sentence you tell, “I want coffee.” or “Walking in green park, with no street polution with my friend and thinking about the sea…” something like that. An art should come out of a sentence you say to yourself and others should hear and be able to understand it. Here we are getting some framework for our creation.
When creating my own music, I usually think about some picture, visualize it inside and then I think of the sound for that picture that can apply – then I improvise around a tempo whether it is slow or fast, I try not to think about harmony or melody just imrovise, at some point I get some sentence out of my improvisation. This sentence then become a core of my creation. Then I choose an ambience – I want to choose the sound and melodies that should be vivid and some sounds should be blur. At this point only structure of that sentence would help generating a complete or seeking to be complete composition, a “Thinking” composition. Not just “wind”…