Music IV - MUSIC COMPOSITION

The student will need: Access to the Internet, and-Schaum’s Fingerpower Level Two (available for under $8)http://www.amazon.com/Schaum-Fingerpower-Effective-Technic-Methods/dp/B000R0V9A8- The Ultimate Broadway Fake book (already purchased for Music II)

We recommend students do our Music Theory I, and Music Theory II. courses as prerequisites.

The purpose of this course is to provide the student enough information and creative ideas that he or she can start composing, and to improve the student’s piano technique.

The student is to do each step thoroughly, and in sequence. The student should complete a lesson per day. This course is hard to predict the length of, but it should take anywhere from 100-200 hours of work. There are no tests. There are 65 lessons, but they’re generally long. All essays are to be kept by the student in their workbooks. A student may (and should) continue into the next lesson if he or she completes a lesson early. If a lesson takes longer, it may be spread over two or more days. This is about education, it's not a race.

NOTE ON NUMBERING AND RECORDS – When asked to write down an answer, please write down at the top of your answer the name of the course, the lesson and number. Keep records of what you've done so you can prove you did the work, if needed, to the state or a teacher.

NOTE ON DRAWING – When asked to “draw”, these are not “art” assignments. We want the student to demonstrate an understanding of a concept. Blobs of colors and shapes are fine.

NOTE ON ESSAYS, CRITIQUE – Essays are not English assignments. When reading an essay, look for the ideas expressed and not the punctuation, spelling, or syntax. In general, please avoid critique of student's answers to questions.

NOTE ON WORD COUNT FOR ESSAYS – The suggested word counts for essays are just that – suggestions. So long as the student expresses an understanding of the subject, essays may be as long or short as the student wishes.

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PART ONE – A LITTLE ADVICE, AND MORE PIANO PRACTICE

LESSON # 1

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Composition – 1) (verb) The act of creating (inventing, or composing) a new piece of music. 2) (noun) Any piece of music.

Composer – A person who creates new works of music.

Critique – 1) ( verb) The act of breaking down a work, and informing its author what is “wrong” with it, and how it may be improved. 2) (noun) The actual comments and criticisms offered regarding someone’s work, and how it “might be improved”.

2. READ AND UNDERSTAND:

You are about to start the intensive study of composition. There’s a lot to know about composition, but let’s start with a few important basic ideas.

First, the better a musician you are, the more likely it is your compositions will work. If you play piano (which you’re training to do) very badly, say, that will certainly limit how complex or interesting your compositions will be able to get. It’s hard to compose pieces we can’t play at all, and can only imagine (though this has been done!). So we’re going to continue with your development on the keyboard as you study composition.

Second, it’s absolutely critical for you to understand what others have composed before you. As you learned in Music History, there is a chain of great composers, leading back to Palestrina and Bach, to today’s rock, pop and jazz artists. You listened to many, many musical pieces, and received a good idea of how music developed. You listened to the greatest composers, and saw how they used the available forms of music (symphonies, concertos, song, etc). But the more you listen to, and the more you understand music, the more intelligent and interesting will be your own music. Great composers were (and are) great because they live and breathe music, they love it, they listen constantly, they understand music. To this end, I’m going to ask you to listen to more music. A lot more, though I’m going to provide you only general categories, like a certain composer’s works, and let you use whatever music you can easily get a hold of to fulfill the assignments. The more you hear the work of great artists, the more you’ll understand their “tricks of the trade”. These inventions and devices created by the masters of music can be used by you to improve your compositions.

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Another reason to keep studying masterful composers, as you will hear, is that different composers excel at different elements of composition. To understand melody (the part of the piece you can hum, or recall, a sequence of individual notes which make up the main musical “thought” or “idea” of a piece), you’ll want to listens to masters of melody, like Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and the Beatles (Lennon and McCartney. To understand rhythm (the pulse, or repeated unit timed patterns of a piece), you will listen to Bach, Stravinsky, blues, R & B, even rap music. And on it goes. Every element of composition has its masters. You’ll learn from them, and I’ll help by structuring what you listen to and how it relates to what you’re studying. (And you should know that it’s perfectly fine to listen to the same pieces again, and again. That’s part of learning. I definitely have my favorite composers and pieces, who I learn most from and enjoy! You probably do, to. The more you listen, the more this will be so.) Composers do a lot of listening, especially in their early years.

(NOTE – I have personally found it important, when actually in the process of composing a piece, to not listen to other music. I don’t want other musical ideas to sneak into my work. But I assumed this attitude after composing for over ten years.)

Third, patience is not a virtue in music, except in your own development as a musician and composer. You should want to do these studies quickly and thoroughly, but be advised that you’re soon going to start composing new works. This can be incredibly exciting and fun, but it can also take time to write a single composition, and it can take a fair amount of time to write what you want to write. Hearing a piece “in your head”, and getting it down on paper, are two different things.

You’re going to get lots of musical tools and ideas on this course. They will all feed into your ability to compose more and more interesting works, ever closer to your own idea of what your music should be. But you need to know that, even for the greatest composers, finding your own musical “voice” usually takes some time and experience. This means that you may, at first, start out somewhat imitating your favorite composers and works, as you learn, and this is perfectly fine! Nearly every composer who ever lived started out that way. If you love Bach, or Beethoven, or the Beatles, and your pieces sound a little like theirs at first, so be it. This will change with time, and imitation is more than a form of flattery, it’s a way to learn.

What I’m getting at, really, is that where you will need patience is in the critique of your own compositions. And I have a strong word of advice for you regarding self-critique of your work…DON’T. Don’t critique your work, not for the first several years. Compose a piece, play it, record it, listen to it, find ways to improve it, re-compose it, re-record it, listen to it…all fine. But don’t “be your own worst critic”. Work on a piece, and keep working on it, while it interests you. As you learn more about composition, you may wish to go back to pieces you wrote at an earlier time, and re-work them a bit with your new knowledge. (Again, my own

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advice – don’t do this too much! Each piece represents a step in your development as a composer, and will be your best work at the time you write it. Heard in the sequence you composed them, these pieces will serve as a history of your development…unless you constantly rework them. You’re not composing professionally, yet. When you are, re-work as much as is needed to make each piece successful in the market place. But while learning to compose, use each piece for what it is, a lesson, a step.)Oh, and don’t worry about getting “enough criticism” to improve. You don’t need any criticism to improve. You need information, practice, and time invested in understanding music and composing new pieces. Nothing else is needed, especially criticism from others or yourself. And others will always be all too happy to offer their opinions of your work. You won’t need to seek out criticism as an artist…you’ll need to learn to avoid it with a smile and a polite-but-firm “thank you, I got what you said, and I’ll certainly consider it”. (And then, unless it strikes you that the person had brilliant ideas you’ve been searching for, don’t consider anything they said at all. You’re the artist. Your compositions, at the end of the day of work, are your compositions. Only you have to live with them.)

If there’s a specific result you’re after in the audience, I suggest you compose your work to create that effect in yourself first. Want to make them sad? Write a piece that brings tears to your eyes. Then have it played to an audience while you watch the audience from a hidden corner. Do they react as you wished? If not, it’s back to composition. Want them laughing. Then your music better make you laugh, first. Want them to dance? Then your music should demand you get out of the chair and dance. Please yourself first, and then make certain your audience understands and is moved by the composition in the way you desired.

Music is an intensely personal thing, perhaps the most intimate and personal of all art forms we know of. Each piece of music is an extension of your dreams, your emotions, your thoughts, even your soul. You are sharing these things with the world. This is one of the reasons great composers are beloved. We know what they have given us. They are also loved because the music we hear becomes a part of each week, and year of our lives. Years later, we can hear a song or composition of some sort we heard as a child, and it reminds us of a hundred things that are now gone, or different, now we are older. Couples have “their song”, a song they heard at their first date, or had sung at their wedding, and that song reminds them of why they fell in love in the first place, for the rest of their lives.

Music has great power. Nothing can move an audience so quickly or completely as a great composition. You’re playing with fire, here, and I expect you to get burned many, many times. In fact, you better learn to like the heat.

3. EXERCISE: Write 100 words or more on why you want to be a composer. SAVE THIS ESSAY!

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LESSON # 2

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Etude – A composition intended to develop technique.

ƒ – “Forte” – Loud.

Legato – Smoothly and evenly.

M.M. – Abbreviation for “Maelzel’s Metronome”. Johann Maelzel (1772-1838) was a German inventor. He invented the metronome, a machine which ticks like a clock at even intervals, and can be set to click at so many times per minute. A marking that says a quarter not = 120 means that one should play a 120 quarter notes per minute. In a 4/4 piece

of music, 120 quarter notes = 30 bars of music, which is how fast the piece would be played if played evenly and constantly,

30 bars of music. This tells you exactly the speed at which the composer wished his piece played. (Find a metronome now

and experiment with it a while, till you know what it does.)

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 3, the student plays Exercise 1, Etude in Steps and Skips. (Do not do special assignments!)

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 4, the student plays Exercise 2, Etude in (6/8) Time.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

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LESSON # 3

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Alternating – Switching between one extreme or object, and the otherextreme or object.

L.H. – Left Hand.

R.H. – Right Hand.

Contrary – Opposite in direction or position.

Motion – Any single physical movement.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 5, the student plays Exercise 3, Alternating Hands.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 6, the student plays Exercise 4, Contrary Motion.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

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LESSON # 4

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Mixed Interval – Not the same intervals between notes, the intervals between notes are varied, rather than repeated (as in all the intervals would be thirds, a piece with unmixed intervals.)

Trill – A musical ornamentation (decoration) where two notes immediatelynext to each other on the keyboard are played back and forth at avery rapid pace, to create nearly one sound.

Ascending – Moving upwards, towards higher notes.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 7, the student plays Exercise 5, Mixed Interval Etude.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 8, the student plays Exercise 6, Trill (Ascending).

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

LESSON # 5

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Descending – Moving down, towards the lower notes.

Syncopation – A shift in the accent (the placement of emphasis or strength) to what is normally a weak count in a measure, such as the’

second count. (The first is usually strongest, and we count ¾, for instance, usually as 1-2-3; 1-2-3. 4/4 is usually counted1-2-3-4; 1-2-3-4…)

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Second Count – The second count in a bar. EXAMPLE: A ¾ bar has three counts in it, 1,2 and 3. The second count is, obviously, on “2” in a ¾ or 4/4, or any bar.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 9, the student plays Exercise 7, Trill (Descending).

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 10, the student plays Exercise 8, Syncopation on the Second Count. Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

LESSON # 6

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Third Count – The third count in a bar.

Fourth Count – The fourth count in a bar.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 111, the student plays Exercise 9, Syncopation on the Third Count.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 12, the student plays Exercise 10, Syncopation on the Fourth Count.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

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LESSON # 7

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Wrist – The area of the arm between the hand and the forearm.

Staccato – Broken up into brief, unsustained, even harsh strokes.

Rotation – Moving through a sequence of repeated pattern in order.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 13, the student plays Exercise 11, Wrist Staccato.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 14, the student plays Exercise 12, Wrist Rotation. (The Direction have to do with which fingers get used when. Please ignore these.)

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

LESSON # 8

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Expansion – The opening up of a thing, or the making larger of a thing; Causing a thing to take up more space.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 15, the student plays Exercise 13, Rotation Etude. Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

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3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 16, the student plays Exercise 14, Hand Etude (2/4). Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

LESSON # 9

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Thumb Crossing – The passing of the index finger over the thumb.

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 17, the student plays Exercise 15, Hand Expansion (3/4).

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 18, the student plays Exercise 16, Thumb Crossing.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

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LESSON # 10

1. UNDERSTAND THE WORD:

Preparatory – An action taken to “prepare”, or get ready for a larger and more complex action.

Chromatic – Having to do with ½ steps. (C-Db-D-Eb-E…)

2. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 19, the student plays Exercise 17, Scale Preparatory.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

3. EXERCISE: In Schaum’s Fingerpower, Level Two, page 20, the student plays Exercise 18, Chromatic Scale.

Play the piece repeated until you can play it easily and smoothly, three times in a row.

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