Using your favorite popular music as a source for composition.

[Gongchime]

Lyrical considerations aside, I had the idea, and I'm sure I'm not the first, to take a melody from your favorite song and write it out inverted, retrograde and the retrograde-inversion. This alone produces just kind of stilted melodies in my experience but when you combine them with just two or three other techniques it really works well. Decide which one sounds the best starting on the down beat and call that the chorus.

Then decide where in the form the chorus is going to go, in the A or in the B section. Then, transpose the remaining phrases to starting points below the chorus'. Perhaps so that sections B, C and D's starting notes progress upwards consecutively until they lead to the starting note of the chorus. (The highest notes may also be an important consideration since you probably don't want any other parts to reach higher than the chorus).

Then use rhythmic displacement on these non-chorus melodies so that none of the melodies start in the same place. Displace them forward or backward by either an eighth note or a quarter note.

I think if you did that to a lot of your favorite music or public domain stuff then you'd A) have a lot of melodies and B) find some gems.

Setting lyrics to existing melodies is another problem entirely. Not my specialty (yet).

 

[Gongchime]

new melody to the lyrics is a great idea too and not too difficult.

Writing out all that music is my idea of fun. But it's not everyone's cup of tea to be sure. I'm telling you, this stuff really works great though.

When I was first exposed to all the inversion, retrograde and retrograde-inversion stuff I thought it was interesting but impractical and dropped it for a long time. With the addition of the rhythmic displacement and augmentation techniques it brings the writing to a whole new level. I can't even keep up with all the music that wants to come out of me now.

As you may have seen, I just finished 13 pieces and got another 13 in the que at the back of my brain. The thirteen I finished writing just need one more contrasting section after the second repeat, faster tempos and better production to bring them up to the standard where they need to be.

The other thing I forgot to mention was to take the melodic variation that comes after the chorus and rhythmically augment it so that it creates a more contrasted section e.g. eighth notes become quarters etc... Either that or put a rhythmically augmented version in the chorus instead.

If you've got the lead sheets to your favorite songs laying around just give it a try. I guarantee you'll be happy with the results. If you don't have anything better coming out of you at the moment.

One last thing is that the ending points of the chorus need to end in a strong position and on a strong note.

Anyway, I'm comitted to working this way now much of the time. It's working for me.

Gongchime
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