I never once sat down with the intention to write a tune. Any tune I've ever composed has first had to tackle me and force me to write it down. I have managed to escape from a couple of tunes, but most are relentless in their pursuit of me. The problem is that they waste my time that could be better spent working on my playing or learning gorgeous tunes that have already been written.
1) Ask a whole load of people you don't know on an internet discussion board how to compose
2) Once you get their answers, simply ignore them
3) Obtain a pen and a sheet of scrap paper
4) Write the following at the top of the sheet of paper "A B C D E F G"
5) Make a list of 1-96
6) Choose one of the letters at random and write it beside each number, using the list of letters at the top of your page as a reference (that way you won't make a mistake and put "H", and have to change it later)
7) Write down your random letters in a long, horizontal string, being careful to maintain the order that you have so carefully chosen. You can write some in upper case and some in lower case if you like, and if you decide later you don't like it, you can just tell everyone you made a typo
8) Count along the long line of letters, and after every 6 letters, draw a barline.
This is your jig. Now you can post it here as follows:
9) Go to "submit tune"
10) Make up a name for your tune - the more mundane and modern-sounding the better, like "Channel-surfing In My Gran's Living Room", then you can tell everyone how the tune came into your head while you were channel-surfing in your gran's living room and the title will suddenly make sense
11) Choose a random key signature from the drop-down menu
12) Choose "jig"
13) Type in your tune and press "submit" - Jeremy will tidy up your abc and make sheetmusic for the tune, and before you know it, people will be playing it in sessions across the globe.
Do what ceolachan suggests - get familiar with a fair range of tunes through listening and playing - major ones, the different modal ones, ones with the odd (well-placed) semitone in them, etc. If a tune strikes you as indifferent / uninteresting / awkward / badly put together, try to put your finger on what you don't like about it: it could be some feature in its composition.
Now and then, a couple of bars may come into your head that seem distinctive or original. Write them down (if you can write music - it's a great help). Often they'll turn out to be bits of some tune you already know. I do this. Rarely, by some subconscious process I cannot define, I've been able to follow them through, to compose something that as far as I can see is original. I haven't been able to just sit down and compose a tune like that, in an hour or so; my experience has been more like that of Tao Cat, if his note above is autobiographical.
The prolific writers of good tunes in ITM and the British equivalents have all, I imagine, got huge experience of the music. Music comes from music: if you long to write a tune about a person, or a place, or an event, and haven't got a modicum of the music, you're the less likely to get the tune.
I wonder, had Beethoven or Brahms grown up in Ireland or the UK, if they would have knocked off really good jigs or hornpipes three a penny as learners' exercise. Apart from the greats, many classical musicians are very fertile tunesmiths, judging by shows put on by local music-teachers, for instance. But again, it's thorough familiarity with music that does this - playing of course, listening, knowing the theory, usually continually from early childhood - rather than having a brain like a planet, though that might help.
But all the best with it.
for years i would doodle on the guitar and banjo without writing anything down.
lately ive been writing things down.
Its like explored a continent and now im trying to map out places from memory.
i reckon writing yer own tunes is 90% about the physicality of how you approach/hold/blow/bow/strum your instrument. thats where the individuality comes from.
Im not into mysticism when it comes to writing/making things...sure sometimes you dont know exactly where a tune comes from, but it all flows from a continual process of listening and getting physical with yer instrument. (oo er)
Dow's "tune-o-matic" ~ he's obviously been drinking again, as I know he could do better than that at coming up with a formulae, like for romance novels, for jigs... What he's given above is awful, but 'slightly' funny, just ever so slightly. There have been several mad folk who have come up with computer programs for composing tunes. I did used to know one such mad person. As I remember it, he couldn't play worth shight, but had no pretentions to the contrary, but he made a program to make tunes, and all it needed were a few basic things, for example, the range of notes, as Dow hints to above, for example for a fiddle, maxing out at c':
G, A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c'
And keys ~
If for jigs, optional basic value per beat (N = note):
N3 & N2 N & NNN
You could build into the formulae 'agreement', for example that measures 1 & 2 agree mirror 5 & 6... And you could have a choice of closing measures depending on the key...
So you could enter in your request, I want a 6/8, two part, 32 bar tune, or AABB, and I want it in e minor... Push the button and await the results... The possibilities seem limitless...
Now we know how Dow composes his tunes. I'm going to have to go over them again now that I have this new insight to his creative processes...
Alright, now you're out in the open IT'S AN ASSIGNMENT!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY TO START WITH???
So it doesn't need to be genius or genuine... Yes, you can fake it...
Spend some time playing your favourite jigs, then start the dreadful thing we call "NOODLING"
Noodly yourself up a phrase, maybe even just two measures worth, the equivalent of | NNN NNN | NNN N2 N |
Alright, write it down, leave the next two measures blank, then write down exactly the same thing again for measures 5 & 6. We're just having a lark now, don't worry about whether or not it is cack or inspired, that doesn't matter, this is an assignment. See if you've got a key defined yet, which is very likely. If you do, well, let's go to measure 8 and fudge a conclusion, something like ~ | NNN N3 :| ~ or ~ | N2 N N3 :|
You can now start with your B-part and give it the same concluding measure, with the N3 being your tonic...
Now, if you want more agreement, well, you can have measures 1 - 3 = measures 5 - 7. Fudging a measure 4 should be easy now. Also, your B-part can have more in agreement at the conclusion than just measure 8, so why not, once you have it, repeat at least the same 2 bar conclusion, measures 7 & 8 for both parts being the same.
Now, you've got your A-part sort of started up. What you could do for a quick solution, depending on where you started, is to lower your A-part, if you started high, and then copy the octave up for the B-part. Now, it will seem a bit wooden, but if you play around with that basic structure, give it some time and have some fun with it, you might end up with something that would be OK for an assignment...
Your other option would be to start something here, say a couple of measures, and we could do as we've done before and work on a joint effort? ~ and you could take credit for it in your coursework. No one need know...
Beware Dow, he will lead you astray and into wicked ways...
You could always start by stealing the last measures for the A & B parts of some 32 bar jig you already are familiar with. Alternatively, you could take a tune you already like and morph it into something completely different with variations and even starting out with just changing a measure at a time until you have a completely new tune, but leave the last measure of both parts pretty much in tact, and use the principles of agreement mentioned earlier, so if you've change bars 1 & 2 (&3) you can copy those changes to bars 5 & 6 (&7)...
Evil man grego... You never know what a teacher might be able to do, like google some abc's to find that old standard... But we could work around and beat up the poor Kesh into something unrecognizeable for where it began...
If you want to keep 'basic', start and end on the 'tonic', so if in D Major, start with a D/d in the first measure of each part...
In the simplest of ways ~
DDD ~ D2 D ~ DEE ~ DFF ~ DGG ~ DAA ~ DBB ~ DED ~ DFD ~ etc...
And you could mirror that choice an octave up for the B-part...
Still keeping it basic and LEGO like...
There are two main methods I use when composing. One is to approach the tune melodically, which means running up and down scales, often pentatonic, and repeating plenty of notes when you can't think of where to go next. This is how a lot of Irish tunes are composed. The other is to think harmonically. Have a rough idea of a chord sequence to start with, for example, |D|GD|GD|EmA|D|GD|GA|D|. You need to know how this progression feels, not how it sounds, because you don't have to stick to chord tones in your tune (better if you don't). As has been mentioned elsewhere, it 's like a question and an answer. The question usually starts on the tonic and ends on the dominant, the answer is like the question but ends on the tonic. Of course, a lot of the more interesting tunes don't do this. That's where the fun starts.
Like, here's "Tom's Tootle":
K: D
A|DED FGF|ABd A2G|FEF DFA|GFG|E2A|
DED FGF|ABd A2G|FEF DFA|GEC|D2:|
Chords: |D|GA|DBm|EmA|D|GA|BmEm|AD| or such like.
For the B-part just substitute something higher up for bars 1 and 5.
Keep well away from Dow. He'll have you writing something absolutely riveting in 6 parts in the Locrian mode before you know it
I've just got back from a rehearsal otherwise I would have joined in the excellent advice given in the last few posts. All I'll say is, basically, look carefully at the structure - the format if you will - of a tune. If you can read the dots, look in Tunes, or if not, then the ABC. Trouble is, the ABC doesn't visually show you the up-and-down of the tune ...
A good example of a simple tune which illustrates the approaches outlined in previous posts is Bill Harte's Jig http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/2788, which well repays a bit of careful analysis.
At this level of composition a lot of it can be pretty well automated - after all, most jigs, reels, hornpipes and polkas were composed originally for set dancing, and the village fiddler, like all most of us, liked things to be simple, so the older tunes tend to have a bit of repetition, which you can see from Bill Harte's Jig. This isn't by any means a bad thing because it gives more opportunities for inventive ornamentation and little variations on the fly.
Even Mozart, back in the 18th century, wrote a method for automatically composing minuets (a little dance in 3/4 - possibly a remote ancestor of the waltz). Today, that would have been written as a computer program.
Yeah, that was my initial suspicion, but his compositions say otherwise ~ more devious methods are employed that he is letting on...
DonaldK has a good alternate approach, starting with harmony ~ you could always start with a chord progression built on a 32 bar tune, though I'd suggest starting with just the A-part, 8 measures, and create around that, as many songwriters have and still do...
Another mad idea would be to take something like "The Kesh", grego's suggestion, only an old shoe in D Major instead, and one that illustrates very well what I was on about 'agreement':
Now we can have some fun messing it up, first, change it to d minor, and then move everything up one step to e minor, not something I would necessarily jump up and down about, but for illustrative purposes, it's an new tune:
~ similar wavelengths houndog?
'Dance Music' ~ mostly what we're about, helps the dancers, helps define the changes, that's where the phrasing and 'agreement' comes in. The moves of the dance ~ each measure is a step, jig, polka, hornpipe, and that builds up into into phrases that help punctuate the figures, so a two measure phrase is an Advance (2 steps), Two of these becomes a 4 measure identity and you have Advance and Retire, take that in most cases that repeats, or 2 X A & R, and we have our first A-part of the tune, 8 measures... The music is the dance and the dance is the music... There is reason to it all.
When it goes on stage and becomes an exhibition, and 'dance' is not longer a part of it ~ then all kinds of hair brained things can happen. They might sound great and be fun, but they generally tend to be shight to dance to...
does it have to be a jig? i found that reels are easier to write, seeing as the rhythm is pretty strait forward. i usually just sit down at a keyboard and screw around until something comes. is this for a music class? I've had to do the same thing for my theory class and it usually works out. good luck.
Dance and skip around the room and hum melodies to yourself. If a good one comes up, stop and write it down. Research the melody you wrote down to see if it's already been used. When you find out it has -- start over.
Repeat this process until you can no longer walk. Keep humming tunes to yourself as you lie on your back staring at the ceiling. This is how you compose a slow air. After you recover (wait for at least a week) repeat the process and see what happens. By the time you reach age 40 you might have written a jig.
So that's what's happened to me is it? Trouble is, like you said earlier Button, the damn things are playing me, and sneaking up on me when I least expect it ~ not me playing them... And it often happens when I'm fartin' around in the kitchen, which sometimes includes dancing... They come on me in all kinds of moods, and sometimes when I'm thinking of someone or something in particular. The lovliest ones often come on me when I'm out in the middle of nowhere and there's a storm. Sometimes I pull a fast one on them and manage to write something down despite being soaking wet and shivering... Sometimes the ink doesn't run. It almost seems at times like it's intentional, like this is only for the moment, and so, many of them are just that, give joy or sooth pain and then they're gone... I still think it's magic... I'm just glad that a bit of it takes hold of me on a regular basis...
Tom Boxman, following on from 'Button's' offerings here ~ get out and do a bit of dancing, and two left feet is no excuse. Some of the funnest characters I've had the pleasure of knowing were dancers with two left feet...
Wasn't it Tartini, the Baroque virtuoso violinist and composer, who dreamed the Devil appeared to him and played a tune? Tartini woke up, scribbled it down and turned it into a spectacular sonata ("The Devil's Trill") which is quite prized among those violinists who can play it.
I agree with the chord progression version. I had to undergo a similar torture of being forced to write a tune for a class. I was stumped, so I went to ask for help.
Gunn told me that's how he starts. Plays a chord, then goes to the next, hearing the progression that he wants, then creates a melody to smooth the transition. This worked for me, for I try to hear the chords anyway. (piano player) A tune is naked without. Plus, that's basically what makes some tunes irresistable to me, the odd, uncommon chord changes. Love it.
Atune that was composed with the chords first is a well-known jig called "Up In The Air." What I heard was that Micheal O'Domnaill came up with the chord progression and Kevin Burke followed with the melody.
The tune I submitted recently,Carthy's March came fully formed to Dave Swarbrick in a dream.It was Dick Gaughan who said that Scott Skinner composed with a slide rule. If I sit down to write a tune then it never works.They always seem to arrive from nowhere when I'm watching television and mindlessly fingerpicking the mandolin or bouzouki.Now again a phrase pops out that seems to be the beginning of a tune and I just carry on from their.Beware,it is very easy to "compose" tunes that have been around for years.
Hey houndog, I've no doubt the devil regularly visits the likes of Button and me in our dreams. Also shared, I don't think of the music as me dragging it out of the air, but it, like with ol' Tartini, dragging me out of bed ~ or to attention... Sometimes, when I'm really low and the rain is falling hard and I'm out on a long ramble, the music comes to me and allows me to feel more openly the pain or loss. Music has a healing quality to it that way. It's wonderful stuff, whether inspired by devilment, an angelic choir or the fairy folk...
Last night, trying to sleep, I suddenly realized that my rushed transposition from D Major to d minor to e went down to c instead of up to E on bars 1, 3 & 5, missing the tonic, E, altogether... Here it is corrected...
"Roast Gander and Tatties" ~ It having nudged me further...
On my da's side they were all farmers, he ran away from that. My gran on that side never wasted a thing, as is the nature of such work. When it came to a bird, and I've inherited that, everything that can be used is used. So we always made a stock from the bones and bits. In another situation I remember a Gander that went randy and started chasing everything that moved, including the dogs, and they just ran. It was taking after the chickens too. In the end it had to be put down and as usual nothing went to waste. As I've said, that is part of me, as I was reminded getting half a dozen meals out of one small guinea fowl recently. We once, sadly, clipped a pair of pheasants. Yes, they also did not go to waste, and damned were they fine. I'm not so keen on pheasant hung overly long, so if I do that it's at most a few days. In this case, it was that evening's meal, and they fed us for the rest of the week...
"Roast Gander and Tatties" & hanging on G ~
alias "Spit & Drip"
K: e minor
|: F |
EGB EBG | A^GA F>=GA | EGB EBG | AFD E2 D |
EGB E/F/GB | A^GA F=GA | GFE FdB | AFD E2 :|
|: A |
B2 e e/f/ge | dBc dAF | Bee ege | f/g/af g2 A |
Bee ege | dBc dAF | GFE FdB | AFD G2 :|
Regarding "Gander", the source for my meanderings, I cut and pasted it and for convenience left it as the original transcriber had given it, as D Major, they probably intending for c in bars 2,4 &6 of the B-part to be natural, =. That transcription is confused and has the sharp sign given instead.
Personally I would be tempted to have done it as Dow suggests in the comments as D Mixolyidian and only sharpened the last c in the A-part... So, I cheated, leaving it as D Major, minus accidentals, because I was short of time and in a hurry... I will now go make amens and add at least one transcription to the 'comments' for "Gander"...
compose
compose
what are the first steps to composing a jig in 6/8 time and how to start composing guitar chords for the tune.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by today
Re: compose
1.) Listen to, learn and play a hell of a lot of 6/8 jigs...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
i have but i still dont know what to do
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by today
Re: compose
I think that you simply wait for the tune to come to you. I doubt you can force a fine tune.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by TaoCat
Re: compose
I never once sat down with the intention to write a tune. Any tune I've ever composed has first had to tackle me and force me to write it down. I have managed to escape from a couple of tunes, but most are relentless in their pursuit of me. The problem is that they waste my time that could be better spent working on my playing or learning gorgeous tunes that have already been written.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: compose
Yes ~ I'm very much in agreement with TaoCat & Button...
Is this an assignment, something someone else has put on you? ~ like a music teacher? Tell us more...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
1) Ask a whole load of people you don't know on an internet discussion board how to compose
2) Once you get their answers, simply ignore them
3) Obtain a pen and a sheet of scrap paper
4) Write the following at the top of the sheet of paper "A B C D E F G"
5) Make a list of 1-96
6) Choose one of the letters at random and write it beside each number, using the list of letters at the top of your page as a reference (that way you won't make a mistake and put "H", and have to change it later)
7) Write down your random letters in a long, horizontal string, being careful to maintain the order that you have so carefully chosen. You can write some in upper case and some in lower case if you like, and if you decide later you don't like it, you can just tell everyone you made a typo
8) Count along the long line of letters, and after every 6 letters, draw a barline.
This is your jig. Now you can post it here as follows:
9) Go to "submit tune"
10) Make up a name for your tune - the more mundane and modern-sounding the better, like "Channel-surfing In My Gran's Living Room", then you can tell everyone how the tune came into your head while you were channel-surfing in your gran's living room and the title will suddenly make sense
11) Choose a random key signature from the drop-down menu
12) Choose "jig"
13) Type in your tune and press "submit" - Jeremy will tidy up your abc and make sheetmusic for the tune, and before you know it, people will be playing it in sessions across the globe.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by Dow
Re: compose
Do what ceolachan suggests - get familiar with a fair range of tunes through listening and playing - major ones, the different modal ones, ones with the odd (well-placed) semitone in them, etc. If a tune strikes you as indifferent / uninteresting / awkward / badly put together, try to put your finger on what you don't like about it: it could be some feature in its composition.
Now and then, a couple of bars may come into your head that seem distinctive or original. Write them down (if you can write music - it's a great help). Often they'll turn out to be bits of some tune you already know. I do this. Rarely, by some subconscious process I cannot define, I've been able to follow them through, to compose something that as far as I can see is original. I haven't been able to just sit down and compose a tune like that, in an hour or so; my experience has been more like that of Tao Cat, if his note above is autobiographical.
The prolific writers of good tunes in ITM and the British equivalents have all, I imagine, got huge experience of the music. Music comes from music: if you long to write a tune about a person, or a place, or an event, and haven't got a modicum of the music, you're the less likely to get the tune.
I wonder, had Beethoven or Brahms grown up in Ireland or the UK, if they would have knocked off really good jigs or hornpipes three a penny as learners' exercise. Apart from the greats, many classical musicians are very fertile tunesmiths, judging by shows put on by local music-teachers, for instance. But again, it's thorough familiarity with music that does this - playing of course, listening, knowing the theory, usually continually from early childhood - rather than having a brain like a planet, though that might help.
But all the best with it.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by nicholas
Re: compose
There is only one tune.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by FyfferGuy
Re: compose
for years i would doodle on the guitar and banjo without writing anything down.
lately ive been writing things down.
Its like explored a continent and now im trying to map out places from memory.
i reckon writing yer own tunes is 90% about the physicality of how you approach/hold/blow/bow/strum your instrument. thats where the individuality comes from.
Im not into mysticism when it comes to writing/making things...sure sometimes you dont know exactly where a tune comes from, but it all flows from a continual process of listening and getting physical with yer instrument. (oo er)
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by DubChieftain
Re: compose
thanks everyone but i have to have this in on friday so i need a quick solution
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by today
Re: compose
Dow's "tune-o-matic" ~ he's obviously been drinking again, as I know he could do better than that at coming up with a formulae, like for romance novels, for jigs... What he's given above is awful, but 'slightly' funny, just ever so slightly. There have been several mad folk who have come up with computer programs for composing tunes. I did used to know one such mad person. As I remember it, he couldn't play worth shight, but had no pretentions to the contrary, but he made a program to make tunes, and all it needed were a few basic things, for example, the range of notes, as Dow hints to above, for example for a fiddle, maxing out at c':
G, A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c'
And keys ~
If for jigs, optional basic value per beat (N = note):
N3 & N2 N & NNN
You could build into the formulae 'agreement', for example that measures 1 & 2 agree mirror 5 & 6... And you could have a choice of closing measures depending on the key...
So you could enter in your request, I want a 6/8, two part, 32 bar tune, or AABB, and I want it in e minor... Push the button and await the results... The possibilities seem limitless...
Now we know how Dow composes his tunes. I'm going to have to go over them again now that I have this new insight to his creative processes...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
I agree completely with Dow, except the naming. Make certain to credit him in the title..."Dow's Jig #5", or "Dow's Happy Now."
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by TaoCat
Re: compose
Alright, now you're out in the open IT'S AN ASSIGNMENT!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY TO START WITH???
So it doesn't need to be genius or genuine... Yes, you can fake it...
Spend some time playing your favourite jigs, then start the dreadful thing we call "NOODLING"
Noodly yourself up a phrase, maybe even just two measures worth, the equivalent of | NNN NNN | NNN N2 N |
Alright, write it down, leave the next two measures blank, then write down exactly the same thing again for measures 5 & 6. We're just having a lark now, don't worry about whether or not it is cack or inspired, that doesn't matter, this is an assignment. See if you've got a key defined yet, which is very likely. If you do, well, let's go to measure 8 and fudge a conclusion, something like ~ | NNN N3 :| ~ or ~ | N2 N N3 :|
You can now start with your B-part and give it the same concluding measure, with the N3 being your tonic...
Now, if you want more agreement, well, you can have measures 1 - 3 = measures 5 - 7. Fudging a measure 4 should be easy now. Also, your B-part can have more in agreement at the conclusion than just measure 8, so why not, once you have it, repeat at least the same 2 bar conclusion, measures 7 & 8 for both parts being the same.
Now, you've got your A-part sort of started up. What you could do for a quick solution, depending on where you started, is to lower your A-part, if you started high, and then copy the octave up for the B-part. Now, it will seem a bit wooden, but if you play around with that basic structure, give it some time and have some fun with it, you might end up with something that would be OK for an assignment...
Your other option would be to start something here, say a couple of measures, and we could do as we've done before and work on a joint effort? ~ and you could take credit for it in your coursework. No one need know...
Beware Dow, he will lead you astray and into wicked ways...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Let's limit your notes to start, and go with a safe 'whistle' range, D-whistle:
D E F G A B c d e f g a b
And limit the keys you work in:
D & G Major / E & A Dorian / b & e minor ~ for now, as it is an assignment...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
You could always start by stealing the last measures for the A & B parts of some 32 bar jig you already are familiar with. Alternatively, you could take a tune you already like and morph it into something completely different with variations and even starting out with just changing a measure at a time until you have a completely new tune, but leave the last measure of both parts pretty much in tact, and use the principles of agreement mentioned earlier, so if you've change bars 1 & 2 (&3) you can copy those changes to bars 5 & 6 (&7)...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Oh the humanity!
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: compose
You have till Friday ~ start some ABC-ing here if you're game and maybe we can and will help? It could be fun if nothing else...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
By the way, 'button' is skilled in this kind of mayhem, but will he join in?
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Here's a simple and very basic sample you could start with:
K: D Major
|: ~ ~ | ~ ~ | ~ ~ | ~ ~ |
~ ~ | ~ ~ | ~ ~ | GFE D3 :|
|: ~ ~ | ~ ~ | ~ ~ | ~ ~ |
~ ~ | ~ ~ | ~ ~ | gfe d3 :|
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
You could always just submit this relatively unknown jig:
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/55
We won't tell.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by grego
Re: compose
Simple alternate conclusions ~ an example (K: D Major):
~ | GEC D3 :| or ~ | GEF D3 :|
~ | gec d3 :| or ~ | gef d3 :|
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Evil man grego... You never know what a teacher might be able to do, like google some abc's to find that old standard... But we could work around and beat up the poor Kesh into something unrecognizeable for where it began...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
If you want to keep 'basic', start and end on the 'tonic', so if in D Major, start with a D/d in the first measure of each part...
In the simplest of ways ~
DDD ~ D2 D ~ DEE ~ DFF ~ DGG ~ DAA ~ DBB ~ DED ~ DFD ~ etc...
And you could mirror that choice an octave up for the B-part...
Still keeping it basic and LEGO like...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Well, I think it was said of Scott Skinner that sometimes he seemed to be composing his tunes with a slide rule...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by nicholas
Re: compose
There are two main methods I use when composing. One is to approach the tune melodically, which means running up and down scales, often pentatonic, and repeating plenty of notes when you can't think of where to go next. This is how a lot of Irish tunes are composed. The other is to think harmonically. Have a rough idea of a chord sequence to start with, for example, |D|GD|GD|EmA|D|GD|GA|D|. You need to know how this progression feels, not how it sounds, because you don't have to stick to chord tones in your tune (better if you don't). As has been mentioned elsewhere, it 's like a question and an answer. The question usually starts on the tonic and ends on the dominant, the answer is like the question but ends on the tonic. Of course, a lot of the more interesting tunes don't do this. That's where the fun starts.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by DonaldK
Re: compose
Ha, I like Dow's. The problem is though, that it's so accurate, hr must have actually done it
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: compose
Like, here's "Tom's Tootle":
K: D
A|DED FGF|ABd A2G|FEF DFA|GFG|E2A|
DED FGF|ABd A2G|FEF DFA|GEC|D2:|
Chords: |D|GA|DBm|EmA|D|GA|BmEm|AD| or such like.
For the B-part just substitute something higher up for bars 1 and 5.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by DonaldK
Re: compose
Keep well away from Dow. He'll have you writing something absolutely riveting in 6 parts in the Locrian mode before you know it
I've just got back from a rehearsal otherwise I would have joined in the excellent advice given in the last few posts. All I'll say is, basically, look carefully at the structure - the format if you will - of a tune. If you can read the dots, look in Tunes, or if not, then the ABC. Trouble is, the ABC doesn't visually show you the up-and-down of the tune ...
A good example of a simple tune which illustrates the approaches outlined in previous posts is Bill Harte's Jig http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/2788, which well repays a bit of careful analysis.
At this level of composition a lot of it can be pretty well automated - after all, most jigs, reels, hornpipes and polkas were composed originally for set dancing, and the village fiddler, like all most of us, liked things to be simple, so the older tunes tend to have a bit of repetition, which you can see from Bill Harte's Jig. This isn't by any means a bad thing because it gives more opportunities for inventive ornamentation and little variations on the fly.
Even Mozart, back in the 18th century, wrote a method for automatically composing minuets (a little dance in 3/4 - possibly a remote ancestor of the waltz). Today, that would have been written as a computer program.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by lazyhound
Re: compose
Yeah, that was my initial suspicion, but his compositions say otherwise ~ more devious methods are employed that he is letting on...
DonaldK has a good alternate approach, starting with harmony ~ you could always start with a chord progression built on a 32 bar tune, though I'd suggest starting with just the A-part, 8 measures, and create around that, as many songwriters have and still do...
Another mad idea would be to take something like "The Kesh", grego's suggestion, only an old shoe in D Major instead, and one that illustrates very well what I was on about 'agreement':
"The Gander In The Pratie Hole"
Key signature: D Major
Submitted on November 28th 2001 by Jdharv.
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/401
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
R: jig
K: D Major
|: FAD FAD | GFG EFG | FAD FAF | GED D3 |
FAD FAD | GFG EFG | fed ecA | GED D3 :|
|: Add ded | cAB cAG | Add ded | cAB c3 |
Add ded | cAB cde | fed ecA | GED D3 :|
Now we can have some fun messing it up, first, change it to d minor, and then move everything up one step to e minor, not something I would necessarily jump up and down about, but for illustrative purposes, it's an new tune:
K: e minor
|: GBc GBc | AGA FGA | GBc GBG | AFE E3 |
GBc GBc | AGA FGA | gfe fdB | AFE E3 :|
|: Bee efe | dBc dBA | Bee efe | dBc d3 |
Bee efe | dBc def | gfe fdB | AFE E3 :|
With a bit of work it might even evolve into a decent tune? ;-/
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
'Dance Music' ~ mostly what we're about, helps the dancers, helps define the changes, that's where the phrasing and 'agreement' comes in. The moves of the dance ~ each measure is a step, jig, polka, hornpipe, and that builds up into into phrases that help punctuate the figures, so a two measure phrase is an Advance (2 steps), Two of these becomes a 4 measure identity and you have Advance and Retire, take that in most cases that repeats, or 2 X A & R, and we have our first A-part of the tune, 8 measures... The music is the dance and the dance is the music... There is reason to it all.
When it goes on stage and becomes an exhibition, and 'dance' is not longer a part of it ~ then all kinds of hair brained things can happen. They might sound great and be fun, but they generally tend to be shight to dance to...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Check out the B-part closer ~ before or after the mutation ~ bars 1, 3 & 5...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
does it have to be a jig? i found that reels are easier to write, seeing as the rhythm is pretty strait forward. i usually just sit down at a keyboard and screw around until something comes. is this for a music class? I've had to do the same thing for my theory class and it usually works out. good luck.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by rob_handel
Re: compose
"does it have to be a jig? i found that reels are easier to write"
ha ha ha hoo hoo ho ho tee hee he ha ha.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: compose
"Gander & Pratie Stew" ~ having nudged it a bit further on...
K: e minor
|: F |
GBB GBG | A^GA F=GA | GBB GBG | AFD E2 F |
GBB GBG | A^GA F=GA | GFE FdB | AFD E2 :|
|: A |
Bee ege | dBc dAF | Bee ege | dBc d2 A |
Bee ege | dBc dAF | GFE FdB | AFD E2 :|
Or it having nudged me because it wasn't happy where I'd put it...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Thanks llig, I can't stop lauging now...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Sure-fire way to wcompose a jig:
Dance and skip around the room and hum melodies to yourself. If a good one comes up, stop and write it down. Research the melody you wrote down to see if it's already been used. When you find out it has -- start over.
Repeat this process until you can no longer walk. Keep humming tunes to yourself as you lie on your back staring at the ceiling. This is how you compose a slow air. After you recover (wait for at least a week) repeat the process and see what happens. By the time you reach age 40 you might have written a jig.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: compose
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
They usually come mixed in with old standards, and just suddenly I realize I'm hearing something I don't recognize...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
I just wish I had a tape recorder when I'm dreaming that I could bring back with me when I wake up. I've played some deadly music whilst dreaming.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by Phantom Button
Emotions will do it every time, for me anyway...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
You know that music in dreams is a blessing, not everyone has that pleasure...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Tom Boxman, following on from 'Button's' offerings here ~ get out and do a bit of dancing, and two left feet is no excuse. Some of the funnest characters I've had the pleasure of knowing were dancers with two left feet...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Most of the musicians I knew and respected also happened to enjoy a bit of dancing too...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Wasn't it Tartini, the Baroque virtuoso violinist and composer, who dreamed the Devil appeared to him and played a tune? Tartini woke up, scribbled it down and turned it into a spectacular sonata ("The Devil's Trill") which is quite prized among those violinists who can play it.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by lazyhound
Re: compose
I agree with the chord progression version. I had to undergo a similar torture of being forced to write a tune for a class. I was stumped, so I went to ask for help.
Gunn told me that's how he starts. Plays a chord, then goes to the next, hearing the progression that he wants, then creates a melody to smooth the transition. This worked for me, for I try to hear the chords anyway. (piano player) A tune is naked without. Plus, that's basically what makes some tunes irresistable to me, the odd, uncommon chord changes. Love it.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by Tessa
Re: compose
Atune that was composed with the chords first is a well-known jig called "Up In The Air." What I heard was that Micheal O'Domnaill came up with the chord progression and Kevin Burke followed with the melody.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: compose
The tune I submitted recently,Carthy's March came fully formed to Dave Swarbrick in a dream.It was Dick Gaughan who said that Scott Skinner composed with a slide rule. If I sit down to write a tune then it never works.They always seem to arrive from nowhere when I'm watching television and mindlessly fingerpicking the mandolin or bouzouki.Now again a phrase pops out that seems to be the beginning of a tune and I just carry on from their.Beware,it is very easy to "compose" tunes that have been around for years.
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by dafydd
Re: compose
Hey houndog, I've no doubt the devil regularly visits the likes of Button and me in our dreams. Also shared, I don't think of the music as me dragging it out of the air, but it, like with ol' Tartini, dragging me out of bed ~ or to attention... Sometimes, when I'm really low and the rain is falling hard and I'm out on a long ramble, the music comes to me and allows me to feel more openly the pain or loss. Music has a healing quality to it that way. It's wonderful stuff, whether inspired by devilment, an angelic choir or the fairy folk...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Almost forgot you Dafydd, I definitely know the devil has visited Dafydd...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Last night, trying to sleep, I suddenly realized that my rushed transposition from D Major to d minor to e went down to c instead of up to E on bars 1, 3 & 5, missing the tonic, E, altogether... Here it is corrected...
K: e minor
|: GBE GBE | AGA FGA | GBE GBG | AFE E3 |
GBE GBE | AGA FGA | gfe fdB | AFE E3 :|
|: Bee efe | dBc dBA | Bee efe | dBc d3 |
Bee efe | dBc def | gfe fdB | AFE E3 :|
"Roast Gander and Tatties" ~ It having nudged me further...
On my da's side they were all farmers, he ran away from that. My gran on that side never wasted a thing, as is the nature of such work. When it came to a bird, and I've inherited that, everything that can be used is used. So we always made a stock from the bones and bits. In another situation I remember a Gander that went randy and started chasing everything that moved, including the dogs, and they just ran. It was taking after the chickens too. In the end it had to be put down and as usual nothing went to waste. As I've said, that is part of me, as I was reminded getting half a dozen meals out of one small guinea fowl recently. We once, sadly, clipped a pair of pheasants. Yes, they also did not go to waste, and damned were they fine. I'm not so keen on pheasant hung overly long, so if I do that it's at most a few days. In this case, it was that evening's meal, and they fed us for the rest of the week...
"Roast Gander and Tatties" & hanging on G ~
alias "Spit & Drip"
K: e minor
|: F |
EGB EBG | A^GA F>=GA | EGB EBG | AFD E2 D |
EGB E/F/GB | A^GA F=GA | GFE FdB | AFD E2 :|
|: A |
B2 e e/f/ge | dBc dAF | Bee ege | f/g/af g2 A |
Bee ege | dBc dAF | GFE FdB | AFD G2 :|
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Submitted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan.
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/6733
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
"The Gander In The Pratie Hole"
Key signature: D Major / D Mixolydian
Submitted on November 28th 2001 by Jdharv.
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/401
Regarding "Gander", the source for my meanderings, I cut and pasted it and for convenience left it as the original transcriber had given it, as D Major, they probably intending for c in bars 2,4 &6 of the B-part to be natural, =. That transcription is confused and has the sharp sign given instead.
Personally I would be tempted to have done it as Dow suggests in the comments as D Mixolyidian and only sharpened the last c in the A-part... So, I cheated, leaving it as D Major, minus accidentals, because I was short of time and in a hurry... I will now go make amens and add at least one transcription to the 'comments' for "Gander"...
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/401/comments#comment255977
# Posted on February 1st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
Dow! I cannot beleive you told everyone my formula for making up tunes. That was my magic, specially and incredibly acurate way......Now I'm annoyed
"does it have to be a jig? i found that reels are easier to write"
ha ha ha hoo hoo ho ho tee hee he ha ha.
Tee Hee. Thats a good one!
And - if not stating the obvious -
"what are the first steps to composing a jig in 6/8 time and how to start composing guitar chords for the tune.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by tom boxman
Re: compose
1.) Listen to, learn and play a hell of a lot of 6/8 jigs...
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by ceolachan
Re: compose
i have but i still dont know what to do
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by tom boxman
If the above is true - then the only solution is to play and listen alot more.
# Posted on February 2nd 2007 by bb
Re: compose
God - I speak great Englandish....:(
# Posted on February 2nd 2007 by bb
Re: compose
It's hanging around with Newfoundlanders, it'll scramble your syntax every time...
# Posted on February 2nd 2007 by ceolachan