Musical Composition Challenge Update (Beginning of Day 5)

Well, my personal musical composition challenge seems to be going well. I’ve been using my spare block at school to write music as I went along. The writing is somewhat improvised, so this isn’t the way I plan to composemusic for the rest of my life. Still, my goal for this month is quantity, not quality, and I’ve already composed four musical pieces in the four days I’ve given myself so far. We’ll see if I keep this up, though, sine I have 11 pieces left to do.

This isn’t to say that composing without an instrument is a COMPLETE waste of time. I suppose it’s a good way to train my mental ear to create and hear more precise tones. Hearing more than one tone at a time and remembering the chords of an entire piece, as you might imagine, trains my concentration and memory. Still, if I had access to a piano all the time, I would use it to help me compose music.

However, another important part of music is planning. I have very little time to do that this month, because as I explained, I’m writing this music as I go along. This is great for simple ideas, but unless you’re Mozart or something, composing an entire fugue or canon inside your head is next to impossible. If I wanted to compose difficult pieces like fugues or canons, though, I’d change my goal from “Compose 15 pieces of music in 30 days” to “Compose one fugue in 30 days”. I don’t think I could even do THAT.

One thing I am trying to do to improve my mental ear is to pick a chord, memorize it, and make sure to fit it in to my next piano piece somehow. Other than the standard major/minor chords, I’ve tried a seventh chord and a few “add” chords, although “add” chords are pretty basic.

For those of you who want to compose music but don’t have the correct blank sheet music to do it, I remind you that the official “Piano Tips and Musical Composition” sheet music can be found in my first post.