how to learn composing

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neojjjk

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Hi,
I would like to learn -how to compose music ..
my favourite style is pop & rock...I don't know from where to start? I have some queries..I hope you can help
1.which instrument to choose ?
2.is it possible with music softwares?
3.Is there any schools teaching music composing ? wish to find a school in canada (toronto /ontario)..please advice


Thanks
 
Yes, there are schools out there.
But..you don't want to attend any of them.

Pick up my guitar and play........just like yesterday.:cool:


If you lived close enough, hell you could pay me. I'll take your money just as fast as any school.;)
 
yeah, don't even worry about 'composing' (I assume you mean writing songs, not composing orchestral scores) until you can play an instrument/sing well enough to get your ideas in listenable mode.
 
mjbphotos said:
yeah, don't even worry about 'composing' (I assume you mean writing songs, not composing orchestral scores) until you can play an instrument/sing well enough to get your ideas in listenable mode.
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This is quite an interesting point actually.
I've got a buddy who was learning the guitar, she sings too and composes. Because she's been such a lazy lady, she hasn't done any playing on the guitar for a few years. But she's been writing songs and she asked me if we could knock some of them into shape as she wants to do some demos. And I'll tell you what, it's been really hard just working with a melody and a set of lyrics. There appears to be little shape to the songs although as they've been worked on they've become really good (in my opinion). But it's been hard work and I keep saying to her, 'relearn the damn guitar !' because unless you have someone close to you that plays an instrument and is always around at your beck and call, it's going to be pretty hard to share your ideas.

To deal with your main question, the way most of us learned was simply by listening to songs that we like and not just hearing, but really listening....And then just try. Most of our first attempts were not great but we persevered. Your initial songs may sound like someone else, they may sound crap but worry not. They do improve.
By the way, do you play an instrument ? I'm not going to say "don't write with software", but I would look at that further down the line. Just try to come up with something simple and short, say, 8 lines. They all count.
 
I just started playing keyboard...very hard to find co ordination of both hands...tried guitar..was fine..but dropped cause the strings were hurting my fingers..very painful after 10mts of learning...
I really love to learn singing,piano,drums...I love beats..
 
These "how do I" "how can I" threads" increasingly make me wonder how people are able to make the decision for themselves to get out of bed in the morning

Either you have ideas or you don't
If you are willing to give up after 10 minutes because something is hard then you are not serious about your goal

If you can't be bothered to learn an instrument sing your ideas into a cell phone

If you are serious about something you will find a way to do it, if you are not then all the roadblocks that prevent you are of your own making
 
Find somebody who can help you with loose ends. It's worked for me for the past couple of decades. Learn as many instruments as you can. Songs write themselves, and lots of times a new instrument or tuning can help them manifest.

I agree that you need to be able to express yourself on an instrument, even if it's just to show somebody what it is you want them to do (better).

For me, I write music because I hear music all the time and I can visualize it. It isn't because I decided one day to start writing music. I guess its more like "capturing" music, insofar as I can get close to what I hear in my head sometimes.
 
Bristol Posse said:
These "how do I" "how can I" threads" increasingly make me wonder how people are able to make the decision for themselves to get out of bed in the morning

Either you have ideas or you don't
If you are willing to give up after 10 minutes because something is hard then you are not serious about your goal

If you can't be bothered to learn an instrument sing your ideas into a cell phone

If you are serious about something you will find a way to do it, if you are not then all the roadblocks that prevent you are of your own making
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+10000000000000000000

It's a miracle any of us learned how to play at all. I mean, it's obviously the most difficult thing to do, ever. Writing songs? Holy crap! :D

Honestly, you either have it or you don't. You're either musically inclined or you aren't. You have to give it an honest try though. The strings hurt your fingers? That happens. Get over it. You'll build up some small callouses and you won't even notice it anymore. You don't have the coordination for piano? Keep practicing. You're not gonna wake up one day knowing how to play. Wait till you try drums. You'll really feel like a retarded boob the first time behind a drum kit. Drums will humble even the most confident musical noob. It all can be done though if you have a little natural talent and really wanna do it. I learned to play several instruments by just sitting down and figuring it out. Someone mentioned listening to music instead of just hearing it. Do that.
 
Greg_L said:
I Someone mentioned listening to music instead of just hearing it. Do that.
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Exactly. If you want to learn, prepare to study. It won't happen overnight and it likely won't happen this year. It's a combination of learning what you like when you hear it and why + learning how to translate that to an instrument. The first part is entirely internal...listening and processing. The second is entirely external....learning the instrument. Quitting guitar because it hurt your fingers is not a good indication you possess the level of discipline it takes to go through this process. Saying your left and right hands don't play together on keyboards tells me you haven't spent a great deal of time learning scales. Not trying to be a smart ass, but examine just how badly you want to do this before you start burning time and money and don't set unrealistic goals for yourself. That's just inviting failure.

As far as attending a school to learn how to compose, that's certainly an option. However, that usually requires a vocabulary that you likely don't possess at the moment. Song structures, chordal progressions, phrase cadences, notation....these are only a small part of the compositional pedagogy you'll be required to know prior to taking any classes on composition at least in the typical college level program. That being said, there's a school in the DFW area that purports to teach rock/pop composition to students without the usual reliance on classical methodology. It seems to be fairly successful. I know a couple of guys on staff there...I'll ask them if they know of anything similar in your area.
 
Or.......buy a ton of good stuff, get frustrated, quit, and sell it to us for cheap. :)
 
neojjjk said:
I just started playing keyboard...very hard to find co ordination of both hands...tried guitar..was fine..but dropped cause the strings were hurting my fingers..very painful after 10mts of learning...
I really love to learn singing,piano,drums...I love beats..
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If you're still around neo with 3 Js and a K, Look through this thread again and a whole lot of others.

Bristol Posse said:
If you are serious about something you will find a way to do it
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I find this kind of viewpoint increasingly true the older I get. The reality is that for all the moans people have about musicians, singers, actors etc, especially today and how the music seems like shit and pap, these people work really hard. One may detest what they do and come out with, but in truth I admire, if nothing else, the desire to work hard to get somewhere. Are you serious ?

Greg_L said:
You have to give it an honest try though. The strings hurt your fingers? That happens. Get over it. You'll build up some small callouses and you won't even notice it anymore. You don't have the coordination for piano? Keep practicing. You're not gonna wake up one day knowing how to play.


I learned to play several instruments by just sitting down and figuring it out.
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I remember when I was learning guitar. At first, it hurt ! I remember seeing a Ravi Shankar interview on the sleeve notes on the back of a record in which he said that even after 30 years of playing, his fingers bled sometimes when he played the sitar. He said something like " I bleed for your entertainment".

But he didn't say it hurt.....

As for the overnight learning, it rarely happens. Even as I used to practice in those early days, it sounded awful to me. I remember coming into a particular year determined to learn an F and a B because I had real problems with them and I knew I couldn't get away with playing the easier B7 forever. I deliberately wrote stuff with those chords in them and it wasn't until almost 18 months later
that I realized I could play them. I hadn't even noticed ! But trust me, it wasn't overnight.
TeyshaBlue said:
Exactly. If you want to learn, prepare to study. It won't happen overnight and it likely won't happen this year. It's a combination of learning what you like when you hear it and why + learning how to translate that to an instrument.
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Greg_L said:
Someone mentioned listening to music instead of just hearing it. Do that.
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As I sit here typing this, I can hear cars going by because I live on a road that can get busy at times. I hear them but I don't listen to them. When I do actually listen to them, it's a fascinating excercise. They're quite musical and they have a distinct combination of rhythms and the effect of them approaching and fading away is one that you barely notice when you hear them but don't listen. Songs are a bit like that.
 
It's rock not rocket science.
3 chords and an attitude works for me :)

Well, maybe 2 chords and more attitude if I'm feeling 'punk', or as many as 4 chords and a dose of mid-90s immasculating sensitive-ness-y-ness if I am feeling 'alternative', but in general, 3 works fine.
 
Captain Ego said:
It's rock not rocket science.
3 chords and an attitude works for me :)

Well, maybe 2 chords and more attitude if I'm feeling 'punk', or as many as 4 chords and a dose of mid-90s immasculating sensitive-ness-y-ness if I am feeling 'alternative', but in general, 3 works fine.
Click to expand...

Invest in a capo.
 
Waaaay too complicated man.
What I meant was, a 'song' idea isn't something that is composed meticulously, it has to start somewhere like a couple of chords and a rhythm to them, and then ideas just kind of fly off of it. Hum a little ditty (yay I used the word ditty today!) like a commercial jingle, some oldies radio, whatever, do you really think about what notes are in it, or just how the tune goes? I think writing music is like that. It all starts from a simple base of a couple of notes interacting with each other.

...dun naanaa nunnaa... dunnaaannaannunnaa... girl you really got me now....

not a big kinks buff just an example. even some of the most intricate instrumental work is just plowing through the individual notes of a chord sequence in some order or another, whether its bach or phillip glass style math equations, or a blues guitar solo over a walking bassline. When people sing a tune, the notes on paper don't matter, just what it sounds like. Commercial Jingles don't need a score to them, who do you call for carpet? "fiive eiight eiight... twothree hundred... empire..." Rather than 1/8 1/8 1/4 (rest) 2/4 1/8 1/8 (rest) 1/4 1/4... (the chords are A... E... A.......)
 
It depends on what you plan on being YOUR music CAREER. You can write jingles, who can't. Punch in cheesy cell phone ring tones on a midi controller. Even write software to play instruments for you. Or buy and use what others have written. Or you can play II V I progressions every night in a club until your liver fails. Are you planning on something Andrew Llyod Weber(sp?), John Williams, James Horner, and other film composers. Or just a couple chords and a melody (what passes as music for the masses today).

Even if you can't play anything or be bothered to. You can take a fake book, and tablature thing for guitar and steal a progression, type in the progression into band in a box or other application, and sing a diddy over it and call it music. But you reach a point where the nuances and time management aspects are best served with some form of playing skill. At a minimum it gives you some form of credibility and gives you a better chance of selling your product / skill if you can adapt to the job request on the spot. It's a fairly competitive market. And these days a computer can take a melody and transcribe it for you if you have some means like singing to record it to be interpreted. Even autotune and stuff to make music from public speeches and news casts. You don't really need the skills anymore. Just a computer and some tech savvy-ness.

But bear this in mind, those who make a living in music, generally derive over half of their income from private lessons and teaching in some form of school. Even the principle players with the big symphonies. And a fair many of them had parents who were successful in their own right and trained them from an early age. You don't need that to be creative. But just how many times a week do you care to eat? Because there's a lot more stable work making widgets than noise. Depending on the widget. Technology can and will replace a whole lot of widget makers. And many performance gigs have been replaced with one man midi bands. Just take a ride on a cruise ship and you'll see what I mean. They might have a trombone player and a trumpet player, but you're likely to only see them in one place, once or twice a day. And if you're getting paid by the hour, that's not a very good statistic for making a substantial living.
 
You can easily use Guitar Pro 6 ($60 / use google) or TuxGuitar (freeware). They support tablature and other functions. The best part is you can print them off, transpose, convert to a midi and even a .wav. They are both compatible. You should look into them. :)
 
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