Graham English

Posts Tagged ‘composing’

Virtual Composer Creates New Music

“There’s a mysterious new composer on the classical music scene. Her name? Emily Howell. But no one’s ever seen her in person. The reason? She’s a computer program created by David Cope, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Host Guy Raz speaks with Cope about his creation and gets a sneak peek at Emily’s first record, which hits stores next spring.”

Brian Eno On Composing

“Craft has to be dropped at a certain point. You’ve gotten somewhere and you have to decide what you want to do there.”

How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies

Music, much like life, is fundamentally a swinging pendulum between tension and release. Fortunately, with music, this is easy to represent objectively and to utilize in your music composition.

Songwriting Challenges – Where Do I Begin?

One of the most common challenges I hear about songwriting is not knowing where to begin. With the lyrics? With the music? Or something completely different? It’s a rather simple challenge to find a solution to, really.
Start with a single note or single word
Play a single random note and just listen to your imagination. Does [...]

Music for 12-29-06

This is me sketching out an idea on the piano in the key of F.
solo piano composing ballad 77bpm ToWrite
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Music for 12-07-06

This is a verse and chorus I came up with tonight. I’m not really sure how I want to modulate back and forth from major to minor yet. The rhythm of the melody and harmony don’t provide much contrast but the move from minor to major might be enough. Another option is that the verse [...]

Is Your Ear Suspect?

If your ear can’t understand whatever it hears, then it’s suspect. Whatever the application — composing, songwriting, singing, playing the guitar, piano, or any other instrument — there is a logic to becoming a spontaneous musician. Your goal as a musician should be to get your musical intellect to the point where it becomes intuitive.

Define: Microtones

Division of the octave into intervals smaller than the half-tone, the smallest interval used within the tempered scale. Examples include Fokker’s thirty-one-note organ, Partch’s forty-three-note percussion instruments, etc. Microtonal music, compositions based on microtones.

If You Haven’t Checked Out Splice Yet, You Don’t Know What You’re Missing

Splice is a free website where you can download music, compose songs, record sounds, remix, make friends and just listen to new music — all through your browser window!

Hacking Your Musical Strategies Day 5: Composing Strategies

Find another musician or composer — and with their permission — elicit the strategy they use to choose what to compose or the strategy they are using to compose a current piece of music. Use their strategy to decide what you are going to compose or to help you with the music you are currently [...]

Discover the Power of Mental Rehearsal Part 2: Image Streaming

Image streaming is the exact technique used by geniuses such as Einstein, Edison and Tesla. Not only will image streaming enhance your creativity, it will actually increase your IQ!
Image streaming is your doorway to the subconscious mind. This stream-of-consciousness visualization technique delivers spontaneously-generated thoughts directly from the subconscious mind as an answer or solution to [...]

The Rules and Principles of Counterpoint

Counterpoint: a composition which is written strictly according to technical rules. In earlier times, instead of our modern notes, dots or points were used. Thus one used to call a composition in which point was set against or counter to point, counterpoint; this usage is still followed today, even though the form of the notes [...]

Discover the Power of Mental Rehearsal

Have you ever created the perfect melody or song in a dream? Or maybe you composed a complete symphony or an amazing solo?
Imagine that you could create those “perfect dream moments” anytime you want. Imagine there is a process so powerful that you can literally program your mind to create anything you want.
Read these examples:

Nicholas [...]

Deceptive Cadences

The progression from V to I has the name “authentic cadence” and from IV to I, “plagal cadence.” A “deceptive cadence” is understood to mean the substitution for the expected progression, V-I, of the progressions V-VI or V-IV.
The effect is strong because the deceptive cadence creates the possibility of preparing the actual close again and, [...]

How To Master Musical Textures

If you need more compositional choices or your music needs more depth, you might want to play with the textural qualities of music. This won’t be difficult because I’ve prepared a textural dictionary for you.

Polyphonic, while literally meaning “many-voiced,” refers to multivoiced texture of considerable interlinear independence, often imitative; it is understood to have qualitative [...]

Define: Counterpoint

1. The art of polyphonic composition.
2. Composition with two or more simultaneous melodies. Double counterpoint is written so that the upper voices and the lower voices are inverted. Thus, the low voice becomes the top voice and vice versa.

Music from 10-20-05

This is me composing a ballad on the piano with a beautiful haunting melody in the key of G. I might put lyrics to this one.

Music for 02-23-06c

This is the work in progress of the next song. No need to listen to this unless you want to hear me composing. Around 12:00 I start to find what I’m looking for.

Do You Consider That Each Note Has A Different Character?

Ross: Hi, do you consider that each note has a different character? If so, have you found that the same qualities of the same notes are heard by different people (eg. F# = bright, Eb = dull)? If not, what do you see as the point of learning AP besides using it as a party [...]