On writing music

As I write this, my wife and I are home right now, on a cold, dark day in San Pedro, California. All right, it’s currently 60 or so degrees, and there is some slight overcast which has made this one of the “pearl-grey” days that I so love about coastal southern California. We’re currently starting up the wall heaters in the bedroom and the living room, and burning off the dust that has collected in them since we turned them off back in mid-March.

I’m in the living room of our little cottage now, thinking back to how I started learning to write music. I had just gotten a Macintosh (one of those small grey plastic monitor and computer combos that so captivated the world in a simpler age, before Bill Gates realized that he could steal, uh, “back engineer” the intuitive operating system that Apple had developed, and could import it into any PC DOS system). I soon afterwards bought a cheapo music notation system, and started learning how it worked. Soon, I found that I was entering music with my little mouse into the system, was seeing what it looked like, and simultaneously, was hearing what the music sounded like. This was the beginning of a breakthrough in my musical life.

At around the same time that I was learning to do this, I had been introduced to the rich tradition of Russian and Greek liturgical music, and had soon afterward become a member of the choir at St. Andrew Russian Catholic Church, around eighteen years ago. So as to better understand the music (and because I was expected to know all the parts by the choir director, Frank Ryan, back then), I started entering the lines of each part in their own staff (which meant at first making music with four staffs for Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass (or SATB)). I would start with the soprano line, go through it, listen to the part while others were playing, and then do the same for each subsequent part. Gradually, I got to the point where I could hear each part simultaneously as I sang in the choir for Divine Liturgy, and could even start remembering all of the parts and hearing them simultaneously in my auditory memory. I must have done this with five or six hundred pieces of Russian liturgical music.

This process of writing down the music via computer got to the place where I would turn off the monitor or “mute” the program, and would enter the text and more “feel” or “hear” the music as I entered it into the program. This got to the place where I could start to take blank sheet music, start writing music upon it, and could “hear” the musical line as I would write it. Needless to say, this also greatly helped my ability to sight-read music.

It finally got to the point that I could take a choral musical score, read the individual parts, put them together in my head, and get a fair idea of how the whole thing would sound. I even found that I could start to do this with orchestral scores, and get to the place where I could see and hear how the parts fit together.

So, for those who wish to write music, I recommend doing it in three simple steps.

1. Get yourself a cheap music notation program. While Finale and Sibelius are top of the line programs, avoid them for right now. Just get yourself a program that will allow you to enter music with your mouse or by your keyboard. I use Cakewalk Scorewriter myself, which cost me about $30.00 or so, but I’ve also heard good things about Finale Notepad (which is free) and Finale Notepad Plus (which is $25 or so), and Noteworthy Composer,(in free and licensed versions). You can also use Google to look up “free music notation programs” and investigate what is available. You want something that, when you’ve finished working with it, will look something like a professional score.

2. Find yourself sheet music that you like and which is relatively inexpensive (or free). One of the best sources that I have found is the Public Domain Choral Music website, which at present has more than eight thousand different scores. If your computer doesn’t already have it, download Adobe Reader, so that you can download and print out the scores, which are mainly in pdf files. You can also listen to the music, which in many cases also has midi files. If you want to start simply, there are melodies in Gregorian chant available. If you prefer other genres than choral music, then use Google or some other search engine, use suitable inquiries (e.g. “Free Celtic music”, etc.) and see what you come up with.

3. Start entering the music, one line at a time. You’ll most probably have to make use of the music program’s tutorial or ‘help” sections to start learning how to alter such things as meter, key signature, bass or treble clef, and how to enter notes, but all things require time to learn. I can tell you that it is worth the effort, because once you have learned one program’s system for entering music, it is far easier to learn another program. When you enter the music, use the program’s playback option to hear what the music sounds like. If it does not sound right, look at the text that you are entering from, and see if there is a mistake. If so, then correct it, and try again.

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It’s now a few days later, and my wife and I are enjoying a much warmer day in San Pedro, and I’m reviewing what I’ve written. The thought that came to mind upon reading it is: did you say that you wanted to write your own music? Well, that too is an option. May I suggest, however, that you may want to do something like the following:

1. Learn musicianship, that is, learn more about the way that music is put together and written. In that light, the two best books that I know of are Marta Ghezzo's Solfege, Ear Training, Rhythm, Dictation, and Music Theory: A Comprehensive Course and Ron Gorow's Hearing and Writing Music. The first teaches solfege, scales, modes, intervals, chords, and all of the elements of Western music. The second is perhaps the best book I have ever read for developing the skills necessary to hear, read and write the elements of music. With these two, and applying yourself to using them, I believe you have all you need to write down the music which you hear.

2. Learn melody. A lot of people have attempted to give the “method” by which one should learn melody. I have a simpler suggestion (and a harder one): fill your head with the most beautiful melodies that you can find. J.S. Bach filled his head with the traditional German music of the time. I am told that Berlioz stole a lot of his best music from the traditional latin chant. Ralph Vaughan Williams took some of his best music from the folk music of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland for the English Hymnal, and then went on to compose. The list can go on, for those who wish to pursue it. The point is to find good melodies, write them, and play them. It is said that memory is the mother of imagination. Fill your memory with beautiful melodies. Your imagination should be able to do the rest. You could do worse.

3. Once you have learned melody, learn counterpoint. That’s a complex word with a simple meaning: learn to listen to, and hear in your imagination, two or more melodies at a time. The beginning of that is to use your notation program to write out one part, to listen to that, and then to write out a second part, and then to listen to that. Alternate between the two. Eventually, you will learn how to hear in your mind both of the melodies (or parts) as well. This process can be continued, so that the listener can begin to listen to three or more parts. I’m told that Schubert could hear up to eight different melodies in counterpoint at one time. That would be something to work towards.

Another process, perhaps a more practical one, would be to get to the point where you could sing one part, while others are singing another part at the same time. This, by the way, is a wonderful way of developing skill at choral singing.

A third, and connected process, is to learn how to write separate lines which sound good together. I can recommend three good books; by Fux, Jeppeson and Schecter. Fux in particular gives good, simple instructions for taking a melody and entertwining it with another melody either above or below it, and further, in showing how different types (or as he calls them, “species”) of counterpoint melodies can be built upon a basic melody. By the bye, Fux’s was the basic book for training composers from Mozart to Brahms. One could do worse. Jeppeson’s book gives more understanding of how to make counterpoint in the style of Palestrina, and gives a much better presentation of how that composer, and other composers of that period, used counterpoint. Finally, Schecter’s book gives a better idea as regards how counterpoint has been used in the classical, romantic and modern periods, and gives good training in extended two and three part voice leading.

Using a music notation program is an indispensable aid in training one to be able to hear, and to write, multi part counterpoint. I suggest writing down the examples, or the work that one is doing on counterpoint, writing down the individual lines, and hearing how each one sounds on replay. One will find that if one is diligent in doing this, one will develop the ability to hear each line as it sound in the whole piece.

4. Once you have learned melody and counterpoint, learn harmony. Being instrumentless, I long depended on being able to hear simultaneous melodies in singing. However, I have found that this is of little help when one or more of the singers are insecure in their part, or are unable to “tune” the intervals which they sing. A knowledge of intervals and chords is essential in being able to fine tune a choir, or to hear and write any complex music. While the traditional text for harmony was Rameau’s Treatise on Harmony, it unfortunately is not as clear in its text as was Fux. Thus, the two best books on harmony that I know of are Walter Piston’s Harmony, and Paul Hindemith’s Concentrated Course on Traditional Harmony, Volumes One and Two. Piston is good for showing the development of harmony in Western music, and Hindemith is good for giving exercises and developing skill in hearing and using harmony. Anyone who works with these texts should be able to work with harmony and the leading of voices.

5. Once you have learned musicianship, melody, counterpoint, and harmony, learn instrumentation and orchestration. Three good books on orchestration are Rimsky-Korsakov’s, Strauss/Berlioz’ and Adler’s. (As you can see, I tend to prefer works by people who are actually composers of music). Rimsky-Korsakov’s is brief as regards the range and quality of instruments, and deals more with his practice in putting together an ensemble sound. Strauss’ is far more thorough in dealing with the particulars of instruments, their sounds and their ranges, their transpositions, and makes quotes from the scores of a far broader range of composers in order to give his examples. Adler’s book has the advantage that it includes ranges and transpositions for more current instruments than Strauss knew, the book includes a CD of each of the instruments, giving examples of their ranges and timbres. It also appears to be of value for its presentation of an orchestra as an interchange of five choirs: strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and vocal.

With music notation programs, one can make multistave scores, and can enter the melodies for each of the lines of the score. Additionally, with MIDI (which is the basis for most music notation programs), one can assign sounds to each of the lines that resemble those of the actual instruments. Finally, with musical patches (which range from freeware to very expensive; I recommend free), one can assign sounds and timbres which very closely resemble those of the actual instruments). Thus, one can either write out and enter quotations of music (or full orchestral scores), or one can experiment with one’s own arrangements or orchestrations, and immediately hear how they sound.

It seems that a number of people have been doing just that in MIDI, both with the classical compositions of the past, and with their own compositions. There are websites which have libraries of such MIDI scores, here, here, and here. I dare say that there are MIDI collections of other traditions of music out there as well. All one need do is to use Google or other search engines to find them, according to one’s interest.

There is an additional thing that one can do to get a quick appreciation of any score in MIDI: Most music notation programs have the capacity to import a MIDI score, thus generating a written score of the music. One can mute all but particular lines of the score, so as to hear each line of the score. (One can also do the same thing by extracting particular lines from the score). It is good to mention at this point that a number of western musical instruments, particularly brass or woodwinds, are called transposing instruments, that is, the music for them for one reason or another is written in another key or interval than they actually sound. The advantage of a score exported from MIDI is that the music is written in a single key, making the score much easier to read.

There is a final thing that can help one with composition or with understanding a score in MIDI: most music notation programs permit one to hear or enter text in one key, and then to transpose the music for that text to the key or interval in which a transposing instrument would be traditionally read and played. On the one hand, with a music notation program with transpositional capabilities, one can ease the process of writing music. On the other hand, it can greatly assist one in the process of learning the skill of transposition, by having something that will test whether the transposition was successful or without error.

In short, with the use of a music notation program, and the development of the skills presented in the above books, one can learn musicianship, melody, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration—the foundation necessary for a composer, a conductor, and (in my opinion) any truly educated individual. Of course, there is much more that can be learned: the history of Western music, the music of other cultures, musical form and structure, and composition, among many other things. But with this foundation, one can learn all of these things, whether on one’s own, or through formal study.

In my looking at the lives of composers, such as Wagner and Berlioz, it appears that many composers have been self taught. And in looking at the lives of a number of other composers, such as Lully, Vaughan Williams, and Elliot Carter, they have been late bloomers. Thus, for those who can say “you’re only jealous because the voices sing to me”, it might be worth while to learn, and to try to set down what one hears. Or, in the words of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was invited to hear the piano recital of a young composer addicted to the twelve-tone fiasco, “Very good, very good; and if by chance a melody should happen to pop into your head, don’t think twice about setting it down.”