Music 101: How is Music Written?
Much as life finds a way on Isla Nublar, so life finds a way in New York. A way of hurling surprises at you, at any rate. (I wonder: would a velociraptor epidemic be less traumatizing than a bed bug one?) Maintaining this poor old blog has simply not been possible over the last year, but fear not, gentle readers. Music 101 has returned!
Kim asks, "How is music written? What is the process for writing a song or a piece?"
I'm not a composer and I'm not much of a song writer, so I fear I can't answer this adequately. However, I will do my best.
There is no neat answer to this. As with all creative processes, there is no standard method for composing. Given the enormous stylistic differences (and difference of musical education) between genres, it is especially difficult to pin down an average approach. We learn many standardized methods and rules in music theory classes, but of course, these are just pedagogical tools. Actual composition is a blend of criteria dictated by stylistic convention, which can guide compositional method to an extent, and personal idiosyncrasy.
For music that involves words, the words often come first. This is most true for classical music. It was true two thousand years ago, and it's true now. Composer Steve Reich, whose work often based on the rhythm of speech, says he can't begin to imagine writing music before writing the words, or acquiring a text (which in his case might be from taped interviews with people).
Songs that utilize formal poetry typically begin with the poem (which may be extant, or newly written by the composer, just for the song). The same is true for opera -- at least a draft of the libretto must be written before the musical composition can begin. Sometimes the music and libretto can develop simultaneously, but I don't think you could ever find an opera that was written in full, musically, before it had words or a story.
Looking at composers' sketches, we can get a good idea of their processes. Many composers jot down melodies before anything else. Beethoven and Puccini both tended to work like this. The theme of Beethoven's 9th symphony, for example, can be found in notes from at least 10 years earlier. He had an idea for a tune and didn't find a way to use it until much later. In Puccini's operas, you often see that he has a number (as in, a performance number in the opera) in mind and a rough idea for a melody, and he writes out the melody a few different ways--with slightly different phrasing or meter--to see which setting works best. The reason the text typically precedes music is that composers want the music to fit the text as well as possible, and it is much, much easier to change up a tune than to come up with words that perfectly fit the rhythm and arc of an existing tune. (In medieval and Renaissance music manuscripts, the words are not always written out in full under the music. So when performing, you must figure out exactly where every syllable is sung. Even when you have two puzzle pieces that you know fit together, lining them up can be quite a challenge!)
In pop music, it really depends on the individual writer's method and how a band works as an ensemble. Some song writers prefer to write the lyrics in full before beginning the music at all--they poeticize without so much as a riff! Many groups begin working on the music first and then begin the lyrics when the song has a few seeds planted; then, the lyrics are written, and the music is completed to fit them.
Other times, though, the music springs forth fully formed, long before the lyrics. One legendary example of this is Paul McCartney's story for how he wrote "Yesterday." He woke up one morning singing the eponymous tune to the words, "Scrambled Eggs/Oh, my baby how I love your legs." He thought he was subconsciously stealing someone else's song, but he couldn't find anyone who recognized the tune, so he eventually worked out "real" words for the song. He and Lennon often wrote music before the final lyrics, using nonsense lyrics as placeholders, so that they had something to sing while working out the tunes. (I've always been impressed by their ability to come up with new words to a tune on the spot. Listen to Lennon's banter before songs during the rooftop concert!)
Musically, there are probably a lot of similarities between writing for classical, jazz, and pop. I think that many pieces begin with some kind of tune, just as "Yesterday" did. In classical music, the composer probably has an idea for the main theme of a piece. In pop, the songwriter probably has an idea for a riff, or a groove, or maybe the main lyrical melody. The composer will settle on a key--or the pop writer will figure out which chords s/he wants to center around--and the piece's harmony will proceed from there.
Of course, non-tonal music has its own, unique procedures! But the gist is the same, I think -- you come up with a zygote motive and build it up. In classical music, we use the word "motive" to describe any recurring gesture--it could be a piece of a melody or a rhythm. When you don't have harmony or melodies, these motives are probably rhythms, or particular sounds or sequences of sounds. (Serial music, for example, begins with a row--but that's another essay!)
Once a writer has a zygote, how does s/he turn it into a song? This is where convention lends a helping hand. Most pop music is based around verses and choruses. If it's largely instrumental, you probably have at least two contrasting riffs or sections, so it's the same basic idea. When you're writing a song, you know you need two main tunes that work together, and you're probably going to have a homophonic texture, a rhythm section and one melody. In fact, classical music works much the same. Even an hour long symphony is built of smaller movements, nearly all of which are based on primary and secondary themes. Figuring out those tunes, or roughly how you want them to go, what kind of character you want them to have, and so on, is a good place to start.
Essentially, conventions give you arrival points. When you decide, I am going to write _____, you've instantly set a large number of parameters for yourself. If you're a composer in 1730 Salzburg and you want to write an allemande, you know it needs to be a binary form (two roughly equal halves), and at the mid-point, you're almost always going to be on a V chord. The second half will begin in the relative minor key, then you're going to transition back to the major and end on I. You have a blueprint for form and harmony. And, of course, by deciding on an allemande, you decided on a rough tempo and conventions for rhythmic emphasis--that's what makes it an allemande, and not a gavotte, or another dance. (Imagine a waltz. It always has the same ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three lilt.) Convention counts for a lot. How you get to these arrival points is up to your own creativity and it's difficult to put that into words. You might have a "bag of tricks" you're pulling from, you might just improvise until something sounds right, then refine it.
Like all creative processes, there's something a little bit mystical about writing music. The Ancient Greeks didn't create a pantheon of Muses for nothing! Where do ideas come from? Can anyone adequately explain that--yet? But I can say, some ideas come from experience, so while creativity itself is not necessarily a learned trait, I think that a creative person becomes better and better and producing new things simply by producing things. Use it or lose it, right? These things do not have to be good, it's simply the experience--the accrued intuition and knowledge of what kind of building blocks your personal style is made of--that makes spice flow, in the future.
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