Part 2: Writing Music & Creative Process

Explore a variety of sounds, textures, beats....choose the sounds of your song

Improvising and creating and exploring sounds is one of the funnest part of composing music. Experiementing, testing and trying is great, but we also need to make decisions and commit to sounds to keep the process moving, or else we will never make progress towards a finished product.

Your Task ( /5)

For this task, you will explore some sounds and at the end will commit to set of instruments for composing a song in 30 minutes

Set a timer for 60 mins, or 30 mins - challenge yourself to be done by the end of a single class. Aim to at compile a selection or set of sounds, like a painter deciding on their colour pallette.
Before the timer runs out, your challenge is to produce an 8 to 16 bar completed musical idea with drums, bass, harmony and (possibly) melody. This is will the main idea that you will use as a foundation for the rest of your song. You will eventually add things, subtract things, and maybe change sounds later, but for now, the goal is to make decisions quickly so that your artwork progresses efficiently.

Step 1 - The Foundation - Drums

Select and program/record an 8, 16 or 32 bar drum pattern (This will be your "Chorus" for the next part of this assignment).

Step 2 - The Foundation - Harmony

Consider these two approaches for writing your song. We can establish a chord progression based on a bass line, or the chords. Sometimes even from the melody, but this can be more challenging with out more advanced chord theory skills. For this section your goal is essentially to chose one option for establishing the chord progression. If you are new to this, process and song writing in general, you can write a song with just a single chord, and use sounds and rhythms to make it interesting. If you are not new to song writing, here are some great tools to consider:

Before you begin, I STRONGLY suggest to KEEP IT SIMPLE.

a) Select a bass sound, and experiment writing a bass line.
- Use the smart instrument
- Draw in your own MIDI notes
- Play it using the instrument
- Quantize

b) Select a harmony sound and find a chord progression.

- This could be a keyboard, or a guitar, or synth pads. This instrument fills in the sonic middle of our song and establishes the chord progression
- Draw, program, play or record a general idea, keeping in mind the same notes you played in the bass
- Use the smart instruments, or google chord progressions.

Step 3 - The Catchy Bit - Melody

Select a sound for the melody

This is a hook, or singable part of the song.
It is the main thing that someone might whistle or hum.

You now should have a musical idea or at least a set of sounds that can be use to build your song. If you established a completed section, it will likely be the "main" idea and we can deconstruct it and simplify it to create the intro, verses, bridges, an outro, and all sections of a song. This is what we will do in the next part.

Keep in mind, that you need to understand basic chord theory and how music works in order to understand how to put the bass, the harmony, and the melody together in a way so all of the parts are in the same key and chord progression in order to create something that sounds "good" and musical.

Step 4 - Export The Audio

Create an Assignment 4 folder on OneDrive and export your completed 30-60 min musical idea with a screenshot.

5 Marks - 8, 16 or 32 bar musical idea is complete with a drum groove, a bass line, harmony, and an melodic idea. There is a definitive chord progression and a set of sounds that work well together. The composition is a solid start of a song and represents the main idea from which the rest of the songs can be built around

4 Marks - A musical idea has been produced, but some elements are missing. Some parts are in different keys or there is no established chord progression.

3 Marks - A musical idea has been produced, but major elements are missing. Musical ideas such as repetition, pattern, texture haven't been fully considered. It is a start, but need more work.

2 Marks - A music idea has been produced but is missing substantial components, the instrument components do not make sense together, are in different keys, or have not establish some sort of musical pattern.

1 Mark - An audio file of sounds has been produced but lack the qualities common with popular and contemporary music. It may sound unintentionally abstract or experimental and lacks the tonal qualities of common and popular music. Little effort and thought when into the composition.