It takes strength to create. I mean, truly create...

It takes strength to cut out an idea that was easy to find but is just a cliche, especially when you know it will sound pleasing to people.

It take strength to avoid writing extremely complicated "works" that will sound completely random to the human cognitive process.

It takes strength to keep digging when your fingers are already raw.

It takes strength to wade through your own sh*t and not come out smelling like crap.

It takes strength to have the confidence to write something pretty, melodic and nice in the current new music climate.

It takes strength to stand face to face with that blank piece of manuscript everyday, not knowing if anything good will come out.

It takes strength to constantly push to the brink and be faced with the dark, empty unkown.

It takes strength to be faced with your own incompetence on a daily basis and still believe in yourself enough to keep going.

It takes strength to believe in yourself when your parents keep telling you to get a job, and you receive thank you cards from your credit card companies.

It takes strength to sit down and be creative when you only have 30 minutes before you have to go to work.

It takes strength to work when the kids are screaming upstairs, when the house is dirty, the dishes not done, when you have no clean underwear and that pile of laundry is calling out to you.

It takes strength to compose in a world where Bach and Beethoven have lived.

Some pieces go astray. It happens. It all sarts off with a promising idea and then it just goes nowhere. How does one avoid getting lost along the way?

I believe in inspiration, but it is an unreliable partner when composing. In any case, having a plan of attack, a method to your work does just as well or even better than inspiration.

The goal is control over musical ideas and the shape (form) they eventually take. There are many ways to achieve control and here is one.

Know Your Idea

Before rushing into the composition of the piece, get to know your initial idea. For me, that is usually a line, that's what I like to start with. I write until I get that line just right because it will be the backbone of the piece and once I get going I can't change it.

Once the idea is ready to go then here are some ways to get to know it intimately.

• Sing it
• Play it
• Analyze it: motives, structural lines, high note, low note, processes inherent in the material, and any other salient features.
• Explore the material by developing it strictly using inversion, retrograde, RI and everything else you can think of. Keep going for a while and really exhaust your possibilities. Seeing what your initial material can bring is part of knowing it well.
• Transpose it at the keyboard.
• Improvise with it.

The analysis part is important and the most difficult, because you need to really look and see what is there. It will provide much information that can lead to logical development of the material.

Also, a good way to really know an idea intimately is to sleep with it... I mean sleep on it. So don't rush into composing the form, fool around with it for a few days and you will have much more control.

If you don't ask "why this?" often enough, somebody will ask "why you?"

If you hit every time the target's too near.
- Tom Hirshfield, Inventor

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
- Emile Chartier, Philosopher

The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas
- Linus Paulin, Nobel Prize winner

If you spend too much time warming up, you'' miss the race. If you don't warm up at all, you may not finish the race.
- Grant Heidrich, Runner

My objective is technical perfection. I can strive inceasingly to this end, since I am certain of never being able to attain it. The important thing is to get nearer to it all the time. Art, no doubt, has other effects, but the artist, in my opinion, should have no other aim.
- Maurice Ravel

I don't know anything about music. In my line, you don't have to.
-Elvis Presley

Writing music can be intense work, and like any intense work, taking a break helps keep the juices flowing.

Do I ask too much of myself? Probably, my wife always says so. I do think it's important to aim high, but the drawback to that mindset is all the stress it can create. Because let's face it, how many Bachs have there been in history? So the paradox is you should always aim for the top, but when the top is Bach, well, good luck buddy.

So I have found that tension builds up easily when I compose, and I have become increasingly aware of this. So recently I have started taking very frequent short breaks. Just walk over to the computer, check my email, come back, that sort of thing. I don't beat myself up over this (I used to) and I come right back to work.

That little break, which occurs every 10 minutes or so, makes a big difference. I find ideas more easily and without tension. It's like a little pressure valve. Just open it for a second, let out some steam, get back to work.

Email is okay, but Google is bad.

Familiarity breeds contempt, which is certainly true of a composer and his themes.

Scenario: A motive is written, put aside to provide some distance, and then revisited a few dyas later. Still being satisfactory, it was then choosen as the basis for a new piece. A melody is then written based on it, played a few gazillion times, sung a few more, analyzed, reworked, played some more, tweaked a bit more and then finally, a melody is born.

So by the time the melody is written I have already lived with it for a few days and heard it so many times it's a wonder I even continue with the piece at all!

From the author's over-familiarity with his subject comes the tendency to develop it too much too soon, forgetting that the listener has never heard it before.

This has always been a problem with me. That is why I often follow a few guides, one of theme being "Develop slowly, and make your development audibly linked to the main material."

Let's face it. If you are trying to write something new, different, or just pushing yourself further than before (and reaching for something new is the composer's M.O.) then you will be uncomfortable and this can lead to stress and a decidedly UNrelaxed state of mind - the antithesis of a creative state.

I find that a creative state of mind is a relaxed and stress-free state of mind. Which is ironic because when you are striving for a big idea, as stated above, you will most likely feel stressed. But stay relaxed we must...

When the going gets tough, when an idea won't budge, taking a break is not the solution. I take a breath, walk around the room and start to sing the idea, play it on the piano, relax, lie down, whatever. Letting go at this point is always bad, you must stay immersed in the idea for it to yield. You must keep pushing to gain momentum.

Gotta push, hang in there, but stay relaxed as you do it.

Although this is usually uncomfortable, the idea invenitably starts to yield, to move, gaining momentum and if I work long enough (usually 2 hours or more) I can barely catch up to it! But you gotta work long enough, without break or interruption for this to happen.

It's not easy, though. It takes stamina to hang in there long enough to build that momentum.

What constitutes a well-crafted melodic line?

I have begun work on two-part inventions, of course influenced by Bach, and being in the first part of the working process, I am confronted with the problem of crafting strong lines.

Here are some inital thoughts and observations:

Well-crafted melodic lines have some or all of these features.

Interesting rhythmic design.

• A variety of rhythms is one of the keys to writing lines that feel natural.
• I suggest looking for unique and instantly recognizable combinations of rhythms. Let go of obvious ideas as they will be more likely to appear trite and common.
  
• Rhythmic activity can increase when leading to a cadence.
• Rhythmic cells are strong motivic features, even more so than pitches. Remember that when developing your material.
  

Memorable and logical interval contour.

• The DNA of a melody is found in the pitches, and each should be a unique combination.
  
• Each motive or line must be logical. One approach is to find the ideas instinctively and then dissect them to fully understand their interval structure, the inner relationships between the notes, whatever features make the music work well. From there one can adjust pitches and rhythms as needed to achieve a more logical flow between the notes.
  

Limited DNA material
Even within one melodic statement there should be only a limited amount of motivic material. These motives can be transformed in to create endless variety, resulting in "beads" that can be "strung" together to create a cohesive whole. This has always be a basic tenet of composition.

Directive pitches are clear and logical.

• High points in a melody should be properly and logically prepared and achieved.
• Repetition of pitches shoult not be haphazard as they are crucial in achieving a sense of centre in a non-diatonic or tonal chromatic environment.

Inner voice-leading.
This is a manifestation of logic in the structure of a melody.

• High notes and low notes tend to be associated together in our minds. Think Gestalt theory. These are especially important to consider when aiming for a well-structure melodic line.
  
• Of noo less important are the inner notes, which can benefit from thinking in terms of voice-leading.

"But do I need to think of all this, did Bach really think of all this stuff?"
A question all composition students ask at one point or another. The answer is yes to both parts of the question.

"But no one hears these things, why should I bother?"
Of course people hear these things, they just don't have musical erudition to explain or even be aware of it. Consider the following:

People that don't understand visual design in all its forms - print, architecture or whatever - react strongly to what is well structured and poorly to what is not, but they can't discuss contrast, symmetry, repetition or even the rule of thirds.

People react strongly to well-crafted stories, but they won't be able to tell you about a three act structure, a plot-point, metaphore are anything else. And they don't need to, they are users not creators.

The brain is wired to seek structure, patterns, and we find beauty in them. Think of this: we straighten the frames in our house, the magazines or utensils on a table, and we do this instinctively. It is our nature.

So why bother? It is your job as a composer to care how the brain naturally react to things when you compose, and as a result to always infuse your music with a perceivable structure and logic. To do otherwise is either lazines or ignorance or both and will always create inferior music.

As I mentioned a few posts back, I love Baroque sequences but tend to dislike them in any other genre and period. I've been reading the autobiography "Prokofiev by Prokofiev" and came upon this comment by the composer.

"At first glance it would appear that a sequence heightens the emotional effect and gives the motif a new coloration by repeating it on another pitch level. Many composers have been trapped by that. Actually, the effect yielded by sequences is cheaply bought and as something cheap, it should be avoided."

Well, there you go.

Prokofiev, Sergei, Appel, David H. ed. "Prokofiev by Prokofiev". Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, 1997.

Why bother looking for concepts? I got my reasons.

To be in control, that is my goal. I once read Josquin Des Prez described as the "master of the notes", that he could get them to do whatever he wished. That is the kind of control I seek.

Bach was like that. I routinely analyze his music and inevitably discover how everything is so beautifully controlled. Bach's compositional strength was just awesome and it always leave me both dumbstruck and inspired.

So it is with the goal of achieving control over the materials and language of music that I seek out to define and name its core concepts.

So what is the use in naming these concepts? I read this beginner's design book by Robin Williams (she's a woman, this one) and she wrote that "once you can name something, you have power over it." This applies to music as well.

To define and name the core concepts of musical construction requires an understanding of them, and conversely, the concept's name itself leads to a deeper understanding. And with understanding comes control and, with work, mastery.

And that is the power in a name.

How important is it for composers to learn and understand a lot of music?

I wish I had written down where it was that I heard this story, because now I can't remember. It was a while ago. The story is a parable that applies to all creative people and here's my succint retelling of it.

There was an old farmer who had spent his life toiling the soil, just as his father had before him. He was largely uneducated but had a strange affection for mathematics, of all things.

Having never owned a mathematics textbook and, being far from any city, he never thought of buying one. Yet, he played with his numbers almost every night as a way to relax after a hard day of physical labour.

Over the years, boxes and boxes of papers accumulated, filled with increasingly complex equations. The farmer was now an old man and his sons urged him to bring these papers to the university and show them to the professor there.

So he did. He loaded the boxes unto his truck and drove for more than an hour to see this mathematician who was nice enough to take the time to see him. The old man left the papers there and returned home.

The weeks passed and then , finally the mathematician called. He was astounded! He said the old farmer was a mathematical genius; he had reinvented calculus all on his own!

This is a very sad story. The old man was a genius but because he never bothered to learn what had already been done, he wasted his genius recreating what already existed. And now it was too late to do anything of value.

So yeah, it is very, very important to learn, analyze and assimilate a lot of music.

The working process is one of the hardest things to master for a composer, but it is crucial to assuring a strong creative flow. Here I discuss the judging of an idea.

I can't tell you how many notebooks I have filled writing about my process, and I fear all those trees died for nothing since the solutions were pretty simple. But ask any mathematician, simple and elegant solutions are not easy to reach.

Finding an idea is, of course, the first part of the process, but I'll talk about that later. I was composing this morning, going through a bunch of motives and phrases, having to decide which one I wanted to use.

Scenario
How many times as this happened to you. You find this idea and you think "Great! This rocks!" and start composing it out right away, only to find that your enthusiasm soon dims. A few days later you play through the piece and realize that, in fact, it didn't rock at all.

This has happened to me a lot and I have come up with a simple and elegant solution.

I come up with a bunch of ideas and put them aside. The next day I come back to my ideas and select the ones that strike me as being good. This way I remove my initial sometimes misguided enthusiasm for my ideas.

A little trade secret: I often record promising ideas so I can just listen to them instead of reading them. This allows me to more adequately judge the impact of the ideas free of analysis, which I inevitably do while reading music.

Here are some of the criteria I have for selecting my ideas.

1. Do I like listening to it? Does it have impact?
Why did I get into music in the first place? I can tell you that it wasn't because I fell in love with that clever tone row by so-and-so, or that great I-Ching tossing idea by the other guy or that silly music cross-word by Sir Queen.

There are those moments as listeners that have drawn us so powerfully that we said "I want to do that!". The music had a forceful impact! I want my music to have that kind of impact on me first and foremost. Thus, the idea needs to have impact to begin with.

2. Is it different in some way or am I just playing it safe?
If something was easy to write and sounds pretty good, I am immediately wary of it since it might mean I am rehashing old ideas, mine or someone elses.

That doesn't mean I ignore ideas that sound like others I have had, just those that sound like other people's ideas!

3. Is it smart?
What does it mean, smart? Man, that's a whole other entry right there. It means different, clever, well constructed... let's just say that if an idea is overly simple I might keep it if the impact level is very high, but that might not be enough to save it from the discarded pile!

4. Does it have development potential?
You know what I mean. An idea might be good but you can't for the life of you think of what to do with it! Where does it go next?! Not a clue. Then it goes into the "good ideas" folder. Maybe later I'll know.

These main selection criteria help me feel confident that I have a good idea and then I can completely commit myself to developing that idea into a fully realized piece of music.

The history of music is the story of tonality, which came to fruition in the Baroque period with the advent of the even tempered scale. Tonality, or the idea of a pitch center is found in all musical cultures, so why did modern composers discard it?

First, let's define the concept of tonality this way: a perceivable departure point and destination.

From this definition it should be clear that tonality does not need a diatonic or tertian musical language to be manifested. A pitch center (tonality) can be created in a variety of ways divorced from the constraints of a specific language.

The use of the words "departure" and "destination" is important, stating that the music starts at a specific point and is then directed towards a goal. Simple. The opposite of aimless! And that ties in neatly to the idea from the previous post that our mind seek structure and actually require it in some form in order to find things beautiful.*

No goal = lack of purpose = aimless = pointless.

Does a center need to be the same for a whole piece? (Think Schenker). No. A center can shift from phrase to phrase, as long as the feeling of moving towards a goal is kept.

What about pitch hirearchy? I think this is a slightly artificial and arbitrary concept, but one that is based in an audible reality, e.g.: the leading-tone pull towards the tonic, that's an audible reality. But if we use a different language, modal or freely chromatic, then the only rule that applies is that of voice-leading. (Which again brings to mind Gestalt theory.)

Does that mean music should always have a center? If done with purpose, then okay, knock yourself out. Have a ball.

(By the way, the fact that I support tonality as a cor tenet of music composition doesn't mean I am a fan of the Neo-Romantic or minimalist movements.)

So our initial question: why did modern composers discard tonality? Could it be that it was just easier to ignore this central tenet than look for ways to build upon it? Could it be that composers lacked information? Did they have people writing about music cognition and psychology in the early twentieth century? I'll have to check it out.

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* A shape, colour or a sound can be beautiful on its own and doesn't require additional structure to be experienced as beautiful. But as soon as more than one are combined, the mind looks for structure. (Gestalt Theory.)

Beautiful is used in the sense of an aesthetic experience. Superficial ugliness can and often does result in a strong aesthetic experience and is thus "beautiful".

In an effort to fully understand musical structure and composition, I strive to whittle it down to its essential concepts. Here I briefly consider melody.

I had a composer friend tell me once, with no uncertain pride, that she had never written a melody in her life. Having done post-graduate studies in composition I understand where she's coming from but I also am convinced that it is wrong. Melody is a core concept of music and to ignore this is a suicidal path that most contemporary composers are on.

I believe that only a weak creative mind attempts to reach for something new by ignoring the essential tenets of his art. Music has used melody since time immemorial, so instead of saying "I don't do melody," a composer should strive to understand and use the concept of melody.

So what is the core concept of melody? Melody is a logical succession of pitches.

Yeah. Truthes are always simple and if a core compositional concept doesn't hold to be true then it was not a concept to begin with!

A logical succession of pitches incidicates that the pitches are understood by the listener as belonging together (without the need for scholarly analysis.) This is a psychological need for the listener - the aesthetic experience requires a logical, perceivable order! Everyone should know that Gestalt theory is true explanation of how our brains work, and to ignore the way our brains work is, well, stupidity.

Logical succession is traditionally created in various ways: motives, motivic development, repetition, formal sections etc. But this important tenet can be followed in a myriad of other ways, perhaps only limited by the imagination of the composer. Melodies can mean much, much, much more than a hummable folk tune!

Is a Charlie Parker solo a melody? Hell yes!

Yet, this crucial tenet is often ignored in favour of obscure, indecipherable pitch structures and processes that completely ignore how music is perceived. You don't need a freakin' course in music cognition or psychology to know that if you can't hear it, it's not there!

Perhaps the most important question a composer can ask himself. But is there an answer?

I've been playing through Tchaikovsky's Seasons this morning, thinking about the quality of his ideas and what good ideas are. It is my main preoccupation these days.

I have been looking at some great melodies and thoroughly analyzing them: Gabriel Fauré's Pavane, Bach's Air on the G String, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and more. I've come to a few very, very general (but actually quite helpful) conclusions about great melodies.

Great melodies feel natural, as if they always existed. Nothing seems forced or "compositional" about them. They do this by...

Using a variety of rhythms
If a melody has, for example, only quarter notes and half notes and is always in direct concordance with the meter, the result is usually stiff and lacking in variety. The variety of rhythms doesn't need to be large, just enough to make the music flow with a feeling of spontaneity.

Avoiding direct repetition or sequencing.
This is tough, because I love Bach sequences, but not Beethoven's sequences or Tchaikovsky's for that matter. What makes them different? I think it could be that Bach's music is contrapuntal/imitative at the core, so sequences fall neatly into his language. They feel natural and give great satisfaction to the listener.

But Tchaikovsky is a melodic composer and his sequences often feel like he is "going through the motion" as he leads us to a new section or a return of the melody. In his Seasons I find that he uses the sequential device in his weaker pieces like Carnaval while there are none in his famous Barcarolle.

In the hit parade of great melodies I have looked at and listened to, none incorporate an overt sequence, not even the Bach Air.

To be continued...

In a world already filled with musical masterpieces, is there a need for new music?

I remember reading a comment by a well known popular musican that the world did not need one more album. How distraught I was at the thought that what I loved the most was essentially futile. That it had all been said before and that my efforts added nothing. Depressing.

Since then I have learned two things; 1) popular musicians don't know anything about music so don't listen to them, and 2) there is always a need for new music.

Point - People have an insatiable hunger for new aesthetic experiences.
If you need confirmation that this is true, just look at the constant flow of films and new albums to see that people are always looking for something new. Or look at your own listening habits.

But... there is more than enough music written already to satisfy many lifetimes of hungry listening!
It has been said that the classics are still relevant because they are new for the person who reads them. This is of course true and classics will always be relevant to some degree, but the question regards the need for new music.

The contemporary listener looks for contemporary aesthetics.
Bach is the best composer of all time, but were a composer to write in a Baroque style and idiom he would be laughed at. New music* is always needed that follows or even determines constantly evolving aesthetics.

And that's all there is to it. We need need music because we constantly crave new aesthetic experiences and these need to be in a relevant, contemporary idiom. It's that simple, and Truths are always simple.

* Of course, this implies that the music created is actually new at some level, unlike popular music which constantly rehashes the same material over and over and over. I am referring to contemporary classical music.

Creative people tend to suffer from self-doubt, some more than others. Here's my little story on the subject.

It is 3 AM. Insomnia strikes again. My chest aches with a profound angst as I am consumed with the thought "Why do I write music?" These little black dots seem so pointless. Futile. I should have been a farmer.

Yet the next morning I wake up groggy but happy to get back to my manuscript paper and composition is the only thing that matters, thoughts of dirt and manure being the furthest from my mind.

So why is music so important to me when it seems to serve no real purpose? Ravel called music a "divertissement de luxe" a "useless occupation", which doesn't help my sleeplesness at all. However, I did receive some help understanding my need for music from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking through his famous sleuth, Sherlock Holmes:

"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from flowers."

It is clear that the rose was a metaphor for "divertissements de luxe" such as detective stories and, of course, music. I remember reading this and feeling in my bones that this was the Truth.

So now, when I wake at 3 AM, I'll push away my doubts with thoughts of beautiful useless flowers and get right back to sleep.

Every morning I wake up, head down to the pit and compose for three hours. Around noon I climb up and have lunch. The early afternoon is spent on completing the layout for my first book of piano music. A few hours later I head over to the music school where I teach.

I am a modern classical composer to the bone. I am obsessed with all things related to the craft of composition and it is my thoughts on this subject that I wish to share through this blog.

Should be fun.

www.alainmayrand.com