Papageno

Thank you for listening to my music. They are improvisations meaning I just make it up as I go along. I do it everyday at the piano and sometimes I record them. Some are more coherent than others. I'll upload another. When I played the first chord it felt like the beginning of a sonata so I continued with that in mind. I can be experimental with my ideas and you just don't know whether they'll work until you try them. A trill between a major third high on the piano ended up sounding like an old fashioned phone ringing! Lol. I play plenty of bum notes too. Ideas from previous improvisations come up too.

I love it! I can see and hear what your intentions were and they are great ideas. The execution in places could do with some work. Was there a particular style you were looking for?

This second improvisation is more personal in that i was expressing how i felt. I had no theme but found one as I played.

This is an improvisation on a theme I had stuck in my head, an ear worm. In my minds ear it was a fugue subject sung by a choir. I don't know if going from d minor to e7 in 3rd inversion at the beginning of a theme is original. It does give the idea a forward tilt and restlessness which I liked.

The revised minuet. I decided to shorten the trio.

Hi, Kevin You pretty much summed up my approach to composition! I didn't know others thought as I did. It is indeed a language and no textbook can replace sitting at a keyboard instrument. I would also add that midi software is great, but it's a trap. Use it for multi-instrument composition but use pencil and paper for keyboard work. If you can't play the piano, compose and learn at the same time. That's what I'm doing. Compose easy to play music and as your ability progresses, so will the complexity and difficult of your compositions. As your learn to play a new piece, learn from it. I learned to compose just by playing JCF Bach's musical leisure hour book. From there I bought minuets from Haydn and Mozart. They use all the musical schemas and they are clear to see and understand. Darren

Thank you Henry for listening to my music and for looking closely at the score. I never really thought about my handwriting, I think it's clear so I can read it better at the piano, I tried doing a scruffy short-hand style before but it looked awful. I like your balancing suggestion, I'll see what extending Minuet B or contracting Trio B does to the feeling of forward momentum. And I wasn't quite sure about the 5ths when I wrote them, the pedal note might count as a third voice, I'm not sure to be honest. In any case going down to e after f and going up as V7b would solve it. Thanks again 🙂 Darren

I love it! Its very expressive and romantic. It is truly a bouquet of flowers! The difference in dynamics between the loudest and the softest seemed quite extreme though. Not your score, the midi rendition, maybe its a problem at my end. I had to adjust the volume on my phone a couple of times. I'm not sure about the final few bars, the repeated high chord for 4 bars was a bit like a stuck record, maybe a descending octave in the left hand would give it more movement or give the left hand a two bar sequence that's repeated twice to make the 4 bars. Perhaps that was the point though, to keep the suspense hanging in the air! Either way it's great and it would be breath-taking played on a grand piano. I listened three times in a row, it's one of my favourite pieces I've heard on the forum. It's beautiful and expressive and my mind was filled with pictures of dance, lipstick and champagne. Darren

I like your work in A minor! Most composers gravitate to one particular minor key. Henry Kiu likes C# minor I think! I like D minor. The fugue is cool but without counterpoint skills it'll just be a stab in the dark, Henry. Take a look at the basic counterpoint rules and maybe have a little fugetta in one of your bagatelles if you want to explore that type of immitation.

Here is my minuet and trio in C major. A bit more baroquesque than my usual offerings, except for the speed. When Mozart was 14, and in Italy I believe, he wrote about quick minuets which a bit more livelier than the stately dance he was used to.

I improvised on the theme again today. I don't know if it's of interest. Might be interesting to hear my second run and how it has evolved. If I allow myself to keep going it'll be composed but I'm trying to go in step with Aaron so I'm being patient.

Thank you, Henry and Vince I'm helping Aaron. My idea was to ask him to create 5 x 2 bar themes and from there create a modulating period. I chose the third theme although the other themes are OK. I'm going to compose along side him step by step. Darren

Hi, Peter It should be over 3 minutes. I just listened to it again. It's raw AF. Not sure I should have shared it. I improvise to look for ideas and try out new sounds and textures. Hopefully it will have uploaded properly this time.

An improv based on a 2 bar theme I created to demonstrate how to create a modulating period in a lesson plan I'm working on with Aaron. It's a first run so very raw and noisy. Influenced by mozarts piano sonata in D I think because of the repetition of the theme in ii.

Hey, Carl Thank you for listening to my minuet and for your kind words. I think minuets are a great place to begin classical and baroque composition. Their appeal lasted a very long time with composers and listeners alike. Beethoven probably recognised that the many 10,000's already written had exhausted the creative possibilities of the form but he composed one of the best ones ever, the one in G. His short forms are definitely worth a study. I play music from Bachs little book. There might be some influence from him. Composers got a bit lazy after him and often used repetitive bass lines, variants of the Alberti bass which listeners probably wanted but a little counterpoint adds interest in my opinion. Darren

Hi, Henry Thank you for listening to my minuet and for your feed back. I composed the minuet about a year ago and my style has change a bit since then. I've had a chance to play minuets from Mozart and Haydn since then too, and they seem to use material from the minuet in their trios to create more unity. From a listening perspective my trio is not too bad although dancers might complain about the quicker pace. I never thought about that, it is a bit Schubertian in the trio, for me that's a compliment. He wrote some fine minuets as a young teenager. I don't think minuet composing is equaled as a platform for learning the classical schemas. I intend to get as closer to the true style as possible in my next series. My 6th one is simpler still with a bit more counterpoint. I'll try to record it today so I can study a few scores next week before I compose again. I'll probably write down the piano sonata before I forget it soon too. I think I will wrote out the score before I play the next minuet, it occurred to me that's why I keep making mistakes by playing from memory. I've started creating a 'how to guide' for learning to compose for complete beginners. Once I've got some more of it written down could I bounce it off you, your input would be appreciated? I want to help capture some of our beginners on here so that there is a better understanding of the craft on how to get started.

Hi, Serge Thank you for your kind words and feedback. In the 18th century it was the custom to vary repeats. I found a really old book from the period that teaches how to vary repeats and it did occur to me to dispense with repeat bars lines and just write out a variation for the performer. That would be cool. I think you're right, changing the dynamics would spice things up a bit. Darren

This is my 5th minuet and trio from a series of 6. I tried to make each of these minuets unique and not in the style of Mozart or Haydn which is difficult. I set myself the restraint of only one note per hand so that it's suitable for beginners. My playing is a little hurried because I get nervous as soon as I press record and then I make mistakes. I can't get back those wasted 2 minutes! The pressure is intense! The trio is contrasting to the minuet in style and texture which maybe too much variety to be considered balanced. This problem infected my 6th minuet and trio too. For my next set of 6 I will endeavour to compose closer to the style of the late 18th century with greater unity and the use of more common phrase structures of the period. Thank you for listening.

Hi, Henry You've definitely levelled up with this piece, it's delightful! Well done! I went straight to my piano to play it. I'm really impressed! Darren

Amazing!!!!

Hi, Aaron I love your piece. It's relaxing to listen to and it has an impromptu feel to it. I'm a classical composer too so I am endeared to my fellow Haydn/Mozart fans. Your theme could become a rondo them but it would need a little more movement and clear harmony. I'll add a short example. My advice to composers beginning out on their journey is to look at melody writing. Forget textbooks, YouTube videos are way more helpful. Look at sentences and periods. And learn about schemas. Start composing 8 bar themes with a complementary B section. A = 8 bars *tonic to dominant B = 8 to 16 bars *dominant to tonic You can begin the B section with any inversion in the dominant I believe. You can start a piece with the third in the base if the treble is the 1st or fifth scale degree. I'll include an example although it's actually beginning with V7 of II.

Would you like me to take a look at your scores and point out anything that seems foreign to the style?

Me again. I didn't answer your second question. "How can I build up to more complex forms?" In the beginning, I would concentrate on ABA form. You could have 8 bars for the A section, 8/10/12 or 16 bars for the B section and then back to 8 bars of A. A=8 bars (modulating to dominant) B=8 to 16 bars (modulating to tonic) A=8 bars (staying in tonic, this will mean adapting your original A section to end on the tonic) Write in different keys each time and try out different time signatures. If you compose for the flute it sounds quite good on midi. Get good at composing short melodies. Don't be afraid to compose inferior music, you have to be comfortable being 'the fool' before you can be 'the master'. Thats a Jordan Peterson quote. I'm still a fool, I'm composing minuets, marches and other short forms, they are approaching 'good' in terms of quality but I have a long way to go before they sound anywhere near authentic and that's OK. To learn to juggle you begin with two soft unbreakable objects! Then you add a third, and a fourth etc. We would all love to be composing fugues like Bach or sonatas like Beethoven but we have to be realistic. They had the luxury of excellent instruction, hours upon hours of playing, and the need to make a living doing it. For most of us it's a hobby, we have limited time and limited instruction (textbooks can only take you so far). You can study juggling theory from a book but you have to keep dropping the ball in practice, over and over again. The typical place people begin is short form on piano. If you want to compose in the baroque style, Fux counterpoint study or any derivative of his work is a place to begin. From there you can add counterpoint to your melodies. Personally I think the classical style is easier to begin with because you can create melodies and add an alberti bass. That's just my opinion though and I'm sure others have theirs. Get good at melodies with an understanding of the implied harmony. If you play the organ you can add the chords under your melodies while you play them. Sometimes I hear piano music on hear and it's obvious the composer doesn't play and that they wrote for both hands simultaneously as they went. If you isolate the melody it's not so great and that would be obvious to them too if they heard it. First comes the melody, then the bass line, then the middle voices. If you're a genius maybe it all comes at once but to us mere mortals, it's like building a house. There's a process and isolating one aspect and to get good at it the way footballers practice penalties over and over is the best way forward. The impatient among us may disagree! It's fun to try complex forms but they'd get torn to shreds, or worse, ignored, by the fugue experts on here lol. I'm kidding, but it would be like drawing a stick man as an adult and putting it up on the fridge, people would be confused. In conclusion, study melody writing, there are a few rules that'll help you out to create catchy tunes. Put your melodies in ABA form. Play them at the organ with chords underneath. Study counterpoint along side this effort then you'll be able to add a second voice to create convincing baroque music in short forms. Darren

Welcome to the forum Lucas! "How can I come up with good ideas?" That's the age old problem for artists of every type of art; from poets to tattoo artists. Every composer has their own way of approaching this. You might be inspired by a chord progression, or a fragment of a melody, or hear a beautiful hymn and want to create your own. I think when you are confronted by an empty, lifeless manuscript paper, or a newly-created, empty midi file it can be a bit daunting. No different than a poet sat by candlelight with his quil and ink pot faced with the infinite expanse of his plain empty paper. But, there is music in you! You said your favourite composers were Bach and Vivaldi, they too would have had this problem from time to time. How did they come up with good ideas? An empty stomach sure is a good motivator for an aspiring young composer, they didn't have much choice but to face the frustration and dig deep. You may have 10 ideas but only one of them is any good. It's a bit like mining for diamonds on Minecraft, you'll dig through a lot of rock before you find anything of value and that's OK. When Haydn heard Mozarts six string quartets he remarked that Mozart had such good taste. He didn't say how clever his music is, or how beautiful his harmony, he referred to his taste, meaning his ability to discern good ideas from bad ideas. That's interesting. The question could be reframed, "How do I discern good ideas from bad ideas?" That takes 10,000 hours of experience, trial and error, perhaps talent too. There are so many unfinished fragments from the great composers, you won't get to listen to them on the radio, but if you did you'd realise they had this issue too. Although to be fair, their castoffs are of such good quality, but they were chasing a higher art form, that us, as beginners needn't concern ourselves with. To point you in the right direction reflect on the fact that a motif is the unit of thought in music. We can all hum or sing a short musical idea, try it. The motif from Beethoven's fifth da da da daa. From that idea sprung a symphony. If you try to invent an entire melody spontaneously it most likely wouldn't make much musical sense. So come up with many short one or two bar ideas, let's say 5 of them, then with you watchmakers eye, scrutinise them and cast off fools gold and keep the one that you believe is half decent at least. Then develop the idea, maybe come up with 5 more ideas that develop it to 4 bars. Delete 4 again, keep 1. Another way to tackle this problem is to have goals and constraints. Choose a form, let's say a minuet, do some research to see how long they typically are, do they typically modulate at the end of the first 8 bars? What chord do composers typically use at the beginning of the B section? How long are B sections? How much material from the A section do they use in the B section? Once you have an inderstanding of a typical baroque minuet that will create constraints which will narrow the infinite expanse of possibilities. Then, what mood do you want to create? Some minuets are quite sad, some are pompous, some are naive and playful. Again, that will create a limiting constraint. Then, what key would suit the style of minuet? Grave but dignified might suit G minor for example. Little by little, constraint by constraint, you will build a discerning ear that will cut down any roots of mysical ideas that clearly do not fit the mould. In the beginning, being a composer is more akin to learning to juggle than a brooding artist trying to put his soul on paper for the world to admire. Its a craft no different than that of a bricklayer building a house or a blacksmith fashioning a horse shoe. Art comes later once you're a master of the craft. Apprentice yourself to others on here that are a little further down the path. We are all really helpful, we were all absolute beginners at one point. If you would like me to take a more critical eye to your scores I can help you learn a few rules that will help guide you and point out a few errors? I found that helpful when I first started uploading scores on here. Darren