Before I start, let me add a disclaimer here. I am not responsible for any damage to your or your friends hearing or tonal capabilities from “music” created using the method outlined below. I’m an engineer and a mathematician who discovered how interesting music is at a stage in my life much too late to do anything about it. I play no musical instruments at all! I’m a nonmusician! Read the following at your own risk and at the risk of those who may accidently listen to the results!
Hey everyone! This is Beymer and I’d like to share what I have learned about music composition. First, a little background would be helpful. Back in the 90’s, I thought about making educational videos and after some thought realized that I would need some background music. Unfortunately, I had no music background, except for being forced to take piano lessons for a few months when I was around ten years old. So, I bought a guitar and signed up for some lessons. Unfortunately, I ended up quitting after a couple of months. I spent all my time reading about music theory, which I really liked, and very little time actually strumming the guitar, which I didn’t like! Other life interests took over and I put this educational video venture on the backburner.
Fast forward to late 2014. I picked up that guitar and starting strumming! I actually didn’t dislike strumming this time, but I wanted to create music and learning to play the guitar was going to take too much time. I pulled out my music theory books and googled how to create a wave file with the C programming language. It wasn’t long before I had created some music with a little theory and some C programming. This crude music was a pain to create this way! I searched on the Internet for a better way to compose music. It was then that I discovered the MuseScore music notation and playback application! Man, this was just what I needed! Much easier than the C programming that I had been doing! This application allows you to select the desired instruments and then to enter the notes and chords directly on the staffs provided for each selected instrument. There is a mixer and many other tools provided to compose music and to play it once done. With this tool, all I needed was my music theory. I did not need to learn how to play an instrument!
Ok, so now I had the music theory and a great software application. All I needed now was to learn how to create music. I searched the Internet and found enough information to get started. In the beginning, I pretty much just picked some chord progression and “fiddled” (of course, I mean tweek here … I can’t play any instruments!) with the notes in each chord to come up with a melody. Then I would go back and “fiddle” with the durations of the notes to get an interesting rhythm. More “fiddling” would get the rhythm, harmony and melody that sounded interesting (note that I didn’t say good here) to my ears. I used this recipe for composing about 29 songs. Only once did I attempt to create a song with lyrics. On that song, I started with the lyrics and then selected a melody and finally the chords. On some of the songs, I played around with different scales/modes, signatures, and even played with microtonal scales. Refer to the following link for the music I created using this approach:
My daughter was born around this time (November 2015). My music composition had to be put aside for a while. Being a first-time dad at 60 years old was an experience, to say the least! Working in my engineering job and helping the wife with the baby left no free time!
Fast forward to 2022. Finally retired and had time to do those things I never had time to do before! I liked the music I had composed in 2015, but it sounded like chamber music or background music for creepy movies. I really wanted to create rock music. I created a special Sound Font for a cool sounding guitar, but the distortion was so bad that you couldn’t hear the other instruments. I began to think that to make my music sound more like rock, I needed to work on the drums and especially on the lyrics. Instrumentals are fine, but a good voice really transforms the music into something great!
It was then that I began researching how to start with lyrics and a rhythm, proceed with a melody and then finish with the harmony. In this article, I will not be talking about drums. I’m still working on that. I’ve made some progress, but not enough to suggest an approach to matching the drums to the music. Here’s a song I added some drums as a first attempt. I’m working on it!
After a lot of searching on the Internet and skimming through a couple of books, here is the procedure I like:
Choose a topic for the song. Write a paragraph that conveys what you want your lyrics to say. Write down at least six normal length sentences.
Use the Internet, a thesaurus, and a rhyming book to create some rhyming lyrics. You could start with the last word of the first sentence and make a list of words that rhyme with it. If it is a strange word, then use the thesaurus to come up with another word that is easier to rhyme. Continue this until you get the desired amount of rhyming in your lyrics.
Break the words in the sentences into their syllables. It would be nice to have sentences with the same number of syllables. You should work towards 12 syllables in each sentence. If you can, shorten or lengthen (remove or add words) the sentences in an effort to “equalize” the number of syllables in each sentence. Now you can work on the rhythm. Sing aloud the sentences so that the syllables easily “roll” off the tongue! Repeat this until it sounds good to you. For the long syllables of the sentences, assign a quarter note duration. For the short syllables of the sentences, assign a sixteenth note duration. For the other syllables, assign an eighth note duration. Just write 1/4, 1/8, or 1/16 above each syllable on your paper.
Sing the lyrics again, but this time try to dwell an amount of time on each syllable according to the assigned note duration. For those syllables assigned a duration of 1/4, count one, two, three, four. For those syllables assigned a duration of 1/8, count one, two. For those syllables assigned a duration of 1/16 count one. Do this slowly. If necessary, change the duration of those syllables that should be shorter or longer. Ok, now you got a starting rhythm.
Refine your starting rhythm to make it easier to sing and to make it more interesting. You can do this by adding rests (silence durations) between some of the notes. If you find it hard to enunciate a syllable after enunciating the previous syllable, then put a rest between them. Some syllables naturally flow into another, while others don’t. In those cases, add a rest. Try different rest durations and use the one that makes the lyrics sound smoother and better.
Now is the time to choose a time signature. How do the lyrics flow? Is it a 1-2 flow, a 1-2-3 flow or maybe a 1-2-3-4 flow? If you don’t feel any particular flow, then just pick one, say a 1-2-3-4 flow. This would be a 4/4 time signature, which means the beat is a quarter note and there are 4 beats in a bar or measure. Let’s begin with a 4/4 time signature and a tempo of 60 beats per minute. This means that each beat (a quarter note) has a duration of 1 second and each bar or measure (contains 4 quarter notes) will have a duration of 4 seconds.
Assuming that you have 12 syllables for each sentence, break the sentence into 2 or 3 phrases. Each phrase will form a bar or measure. For 12 syllables and 2 phrases, you will have 2 bars, with each bar having 6 syllables (notes). Of course, this would vary if you inserted a rest between some of the notes. If you broke it into 3 phrases, then you would have 3 bars, with each bar having 4 syllables (notes). The idea here is to have enough notes to sound out the chord or chords assigned to the given bar. You can add extra notes (not associated with a syllable) to sound out the chords if you so desire. It’s your song!
Open up MuseScore. It will ask you for a time signature and a tempo. Enter 4/4 for the time signature and 60 bpm for the tempo. It will also ask you for the key. Just select C for the key. This key has no sharps (pound signs) or flats (looks like a lower-case b). It will also ask you for an instrument. Choose either the guitar or piano for now. Once the music sheet appears with the empty staffs, enter a C note of proper duration for every syllable and a rest where needed between notes. Enter the text for each syllable under the associated note. You now have a music sheet with C notes of varying duration. You also have lyrics. Play back your notes and try to sing along. If the rhythm is not right, make the appropriate changes. If it’s too fast, slow down the tempo. If it’s too slow, speed up the tempo.
It’s melody time! Alright, let’s work on the pitches of the individual notes. Since we selected the key of C, let’s begin with a C note for the first note. That’s easy because all the notes are presently C notes. The first syllable corresponds to C. Now, say aloud the first syllable and then the second syllable. Is the second syllable higher in pitch? If so, then move the second note up a third on the staff. Is it lower in pitch? If so, then move it down a third on the staff. If the pitch is about the same, then make it the same pitch. Since the key is C, it’s good to either start or end the bar with a C note. But what’s most important is how it sounds. Do what sounds good! Continue on with all the other notes. Once done, play and sing. If you don’t like something, change it! The earlier the better when it comes to making changes and the sooner you make such changes the less rework will result!
Ok! Now is the time to select your key. If you are struggling with singing in C, then change to another key that is easier for you to sing. You can easily do this transposition in MuseScore. Ok, now you have a working rhythm and melody.
It’s harmony time! There’re two approaches I have tried to match chords to the melody. The first approach was to find chords that contain as many as possible of the melody notes. For example, if the melody in the bar consisted of the note sequence C-E-G, then you have a perfect match with a C triad chord. But what if you had a note sequence C-D-A? Do you use a C chord? What about a D chord? Or maybe an A chord? The problem here is that the notes are not separated by a third interval. This problem can be avoided by moving up and down only by thirds in Step 9 above. Another way would be to sneak in some extra notes between syllables that would be thirds. So, in this last example, slip in a E after the D and a G if possible. The second approach is to just assign a chord or chords to the bar and move the notes to fit the chord. As mentioned previously, you can add extra notes to fit the chord. The more notes in the sequence that match the chord, the more pleasant the sound. I like the second approach better because you have more freedom with the choice of chord progressions. Add the chords and play it to see how it sounds. If you don’t like it, then make changes. I usually put two chords in every bar except for the bars that contain the major chord. So, in the key of C, bars would have either a single C chord or two chords, neither which were C.
Ok. Play the music in MuseScore and sing the lyrics. If necessary, change the tempo. If the chords don’t work, change to another chord progression. If there is a note that’s not quite right, change its pitch. Just keep on “fiddling” with it until you’re happy!
Well, there it is! My approach to starting with lyrics and ending up with a song. As I said earlier, I’m still working on the drum part. Maybe, another article when I finally figure something that seems to work? I recently composed 3 songs using this approach but have not overcome the activation energy to do the voice track for them! I hope to pull out my microphone and do this soon. Here’s the instrumental without the voice for one of them.