Any advice for a novice composer?

Question

I have been learning the acoustic guitar for about 3 years, but just recently started writing my own songs. I am currently learning music theory. Given that starting point what advice would you give to a novice composer? Books to read? Anything to avoid? Just to clarify I am not asking how to be a great or the greatest composer, but rather any advice that would be helpful to new composers.

Answer 1

Hello! How are you today? I hope you're staying safe at home!

Some things you should include among your study topics are:

1.) Harmonic Function: Defines the "direction" of your compositions, harmony-wise. Essential harminci functions in basic music are Tonic, Subdominant and Dominant but there's a lot of notions and tools you can use for your benefit.

2.) Voice-leading: It is a notion that considers chord tones as voices moving from one chord to the next). Real musical voice-leading recommendations include: avoidance of parallel fifths or octaves, movement of any voice by intervals longer than 2 tones from a chord to to the next, among others.

3.) A chord-by-chord harmony mindset.

d.) Modal songwriting. Modal scales or simply Modes work by changing the "tonal center" of any musical idea (melody, harmony) by using a degree other than the I. (first level), not keeping the harmonic function of what will become the I degree now and other elements. It's a really satisfying new world for composers.

... and there's a lot of other tools you can use.

All this sounds a little confuse, but if you learn in an step-by-step, organized way your learnings will work WONDERS for creating great music. I am available for harmony lessons of you are interested! created an educational standard called Polaris Education, which provides you with great resources that help a lot to develop new notions and exercises to understand and practice with your creations...

If you're interested in taking lessons with us please let me know! I'd be glad to assist you!

Have a great week

Carlos