How To Make My Music More Interesting

Getting straight to the point:


I'm a 16 year old boy who plays guitar (acoustic and electric) and I play a little music. I'm in 5th grade of my 'highschool' (different schoolsystem, I live in the Netherlands) and I have had music class at school for 5 years. The first three years consisted of just playing music (the course was mandatory so had to be manageable for everyone).

The last 2 years, I've had a lot of general music theory. Minor, major, harmonic scale, pentatonic, melodic, bourdon, staccato legato con arco etc etc.

This is just to let you know that I have some experience and at least know what things like this mean, so I'm not just someone who randomly decided to make music.

Since I've been playing guitar for 5 years, I have become very interested in making my own music. I like programming, games etc and I would like to be able to make music for that. At the moment, I'm trying to make a song that has the same feeling as the Lord of the Rings movie theme. Of course, I'm not that naive that I would every be able to reach the level of Howard Shore in a really short time, but I want to make music on my own level, the only problem is that I don't know all the theory about it.


My way of making a song, has always been:


-Picking a scale, for instance a minor (to be lazy for a moment)
-Writing a for heavy strings like celli in the tones of the A minor scale (abcdefg)
-Writing a melody in the same tones from A minor scale



of course this sounds really boring, but what is the best way to go on by this? To what scale can I switch inside this song and how? I know the meaning of I,II,IV,V etc but not how to use them in this. What chords go along with A minor and how do I have to sort them, etc?


Bye,

Kyron

Hello, welcome to YC

first I'd like to mention that learning to compose is a slow process, is very common to have certain styles are targets "I'd like to do something like that" but is very difficult to achieve the match quickly, so first of all you must be patient with yourself and if you compose something is not great, that's perfectly ok.

• -Picking a scale, for instance a minor (to be lazy for a moment)

pick anything is known to you (for now) Am is good.

• -Writing a for heavy strings like celli in the tones of the A minor scale (abcdefg)

ok.

• -Writing a melody in the same tones from A minor scale

add melody over harmony, good too, if is too boring just expand your world, you're in Am ok, but what about a F minor chord ? is not forbidden, nothing is forbidden, then DbM, then go back to Am just like that... what if you just repeat the whole thing to Bm for instance, and maybe add a new element, playing some countermelody like a little dialog between the main one...etc etc, there is always something more you can do.

didn't sound to well ? it's ok, you have learned something new. This chord with this chord doesn't sound too well for my taste, but keep doing this and you will find other that DO sound toooooo well and you didn't know.

SYS65, on 28 January 2012 - 03:17 PM, said:

When posting this I forgot to say that I know that it might take years to reach a good level, but you have to crouch before being able to walk

Thanks for your input!

A good way to begin to write interesting music is to listen to and study interesting music. Take some songs you love and figure out the chord changes, and how the melody weaves and connects the chords. Add more songs to your library that you wouldn't normally listen to and study these songs too. Play back these chords and experiment with them. If you do this enough, if you hear a song for the first time you'll be able to pick out the chord changes (especially if the song is pop, because all pop songs have pretty much the same chord changes!). You can then more easily come up with your own chord changes that sound cool to you.

I'm no music expert, but I've found that doing the above has helped me with finding chord changes to use.

Do you have an example you can share with us of your music?

Study counterpoint. Embrace the melodic ideals. Study the chromatic tools (e.g. diminished 7th chords, augmented sixths): deceptive use of mutual harmonies is a great way to throw twists into your music.

Considering my experience is - compose a lot and study a lot! And if you have chance, try to have your music performed! You learn a lot by hearing your experience. If you don't feel comfortable with some instruments, make arrangements of popular music. I did hundreds of them during my teenage years - we had a band consisting of violin, flute, clarinet, trumpet and trombone - and I have really learned a lot about these instruments.