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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/25/2013 in all areas

  1. All right, you're in Amin, then Cmin, then suddenly F# (major?) . It's a little awkward and then ends abruptly. I think it ends abruptly BECAUSE it's awkward. Try changing the F# bit to Gmin, then you've got Am-Cm-Gm, or even Am-Cm-Am. Or Am-Cm-A7 which allows you to modulate to Dm-Fm-Dm. Add a bass line, rinse and repeat as they say. Just some ideas. Good luck!
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  2. It works fine for me. Just keep going. The next section can reinforce that idea so that it will be even more clear what you were doing in the first section.
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  3. By episodes I mean transitional phases between parts.
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  4. Try hitting the playback button a little sooner in your composition process or playing things out on piano as you go, or singing out a line. Unless you are doing an exercise in chord progressions and voice leading for an assignment where the point is to see how far you can get just thinking it all out in your head, there is nothing wrong with checking in with your piece to hear how it sounds as you go. Periodically putting it away for a day or two and then coming back to it can help you hear structural issues and keep an eye on the big picture too. More specifically, you can make sure there is a definite link between your different ideas. No more than two or three main themes in a piece of a given length. (The rules for certain forms are easy to find, check them out and use them as starting points.) For each main melody, you don't want to just repeat it exactly the same way 5 times, but make sure that the little tweaks that you make are just tweaks, and follow definite rules and patterns. You can decide what the rules are, and they can be whatever you like, but having a rule to follow may help hold it all together. For example, you have the main theme once, then repeat it, but two measures that had straight quarter notes become dotted rhythms instead, with no other changes, then you repeat again, but this time go back to straight quarter notes, give the melody to a different instrument, and then repeat it again and fill in the missing steps in the scale in a measure that had some skips in the melody. So if it went A, C, E, G on quarter notes, it now goes ABCDEFG on eighth notes. No other changes. It all feels organized, and the listener can always hear the original melody as it was first introduced in their head. That allows them to appreciate the changes that occur as the piece progresses. Does that help? Hard to know since I don't know exactly where you're coming from, so sorry if some of that was too basic, or not exactly on topic. (: I struggle with this too. Too many ideas trying to get out of your head all at the same time. I think the flow will let up a bit once I've written more.
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