Thirteen Years of Drowning into Over-Sophistication

Hi Raphael,
Nice to meet you here. I actually don´t know the piece Mike criticed, but I listened to your 2 piece you linked here and I actually DIDN´T find it EASY to follow your composition at all. Having said that: Are you sure you were back then ahead with your composition than you are now? Don´t get me wrong, both pieces have nice moments but they are lacking of a red thread for me which has to do with a couple of things:

1. You introduce to many voices and ides at the same time doing different things. Especially the second one is an all other place chaos. (Just listen to the first few bars of the second song ..you should take more time and relax my friend. You remind me a lot how I was back in 2014 with my music, actually I did a lot of the stuff you do here. Your ideas felt like that you are afraid to feature them more so you rush to the next part in order to present something new. Are you afraid the listener could be bored? It is the other way around: The listener is confused here, not bored.
2. Your chord Progressions are not clear, at best I parts with a resolution or a cadence, but there are parts where you just have total random progression which makes no sense to me.

My advice: Piano playing is a good thing and probably you should write shorter and simpler pieces first. Sorry, but you are not there to write this yet. This is pseudo - sophisticated and it doesn´t help you continueing that. Do simple things. Write an Idea, repeat it with a slight change, and write a strong idea. Take your time for that. And then go an write a b Motif which carrries elements of the Motif a but brings something new. Can you do that? If not, you should practise at most of the time. Also there is nothing wrong to listen and transcribe pieces you like. Go and do that too. Its great ear training and you incoorporrate new flavors into your own writing.

Do you have musical idols? I have, so I transcribe music from a few composers that I really dig. I create and repeat what they do, and I try to create my own versions of their harmonic language . Over the time I learn to use this new "words" to my own style and liking more, so I develop a sophistication. My tries are not good as from my musical idols, but I am getting better. Practising every day does the job. Maybe you should try that out.

And dont´stop.

 

Yes, you said everything what I said to you. So here we are with the same observation regarding the situation. I am not mike, but let me tell you that he told me 4 years ago the following and I was strictly following his rule: "Write me a compelling short tune using a I / IV / V / I progression". As ridiculous as it may sound to you - if you can´t write that in an interesting way, stop writing using all this kind of fancy other chord progressions and modulations because you have no control over where you want to go and they control you and you end up in randomness. You can´t build a house from its top, you start at the bottom. I don´t need to practise paganini sonatas on the piano when I can´t play a damn for elise tune from Beethoven. Development is something you can learn over time.

 

Hey Raph. May I ask which composers and works you enjoy?

 

Good to know. And I know and value these composers very much too. Lets take an example: Famous Elfman tunes were done on basic chord progressions also on this infamous boring I/IV/V/I, for instance applied on a b3/b6 scale (harmonic minor), where he likes to do that I, IV, V, VI, I...very common strike there. N. Uematsu..man..his big influence aside many others is also good John Williams and you can hear in most of his older Final Fantasy Works, especially from FF7 - FF10. For instance the main title intro Cue from the FF8 (1998) he features most melodic cues (world theme, but also others) where he takes the I, IV, V, I or "affialiates". You know I am getting slightly the feeling that you just need to dive in deeper the basics, before you start to dismiss them. You are just missing the point for me when you say: There is something boring with I,IV, V,I..no actually it is you who is not able to bring out something interesting. Don´t get me wrong, I am not saying that is the only way, but it is a fundamental basic and sure..there are tons of examples where also J. Williams Adds in flavor to his themes, and he does that all the times, but most of the times his themes start very basic and add in flavor so called short modal inflections. A good example is the Indiana Jones theme (lol..) I, ..dadadadada...bii..badabum..so he features a dflat major which is out of the scale to uplift the theme with a little suprise...but he uses it just an inflection and makes sure then that he does his V7 - I cadence at the end. Maybe you really should spent more time looking into all those pieces because they teach you to create interesting things with simple ingridients.

 

Try it out. I am pretty sure if you really spent some time you will gain more liking towards with the basic chord progressions because the composers you mentioned have actually done so many great pieces where they say something interesting with those basics. And that is what I think an important part to learn.

And if you are still bored you can add flavors to the chords, e.g. major 7th, Dom7, sus4, sus2..many possibilities etc. Also the way how you voice a chord can be interesting too. I am not sure if that is true, but I feel people don´t spent that much time in thinking how to voice chords, and I think that this is important too, so that the chord is balanced and appropiate for the melody and overall situation and weight. I actually spent time into it trying out many different voices for the same part to see what is the most appealing construction. And this is something you probably learn when you study more filmscores and make reductions of the scores on 2 hand piano. You can add flavors to your chord progressions like I mentioned which of course make them a bit more interesting and film like instead of just doing a pure diatonic thing. I mentioned Williams with the Indiana Jones theme where he does that db maj at the end which is a nice surprising harmony. Maybe not anymore because we are used to that theme so much. But when you take out his chord progression you can use this technique and apply a different melody over it. And see what it makes. I actually did a piece where I did a parody of that. It is not super original music for sure but well..I had my fun enjoying that and I learned a little bit.

And...You can also make it even simpler, try and pick out 2 chords and write a theme on 2 chords, that is legit. It can work also.

 

Yes, whatever that helps someone. I actually make a mix of transcribing pieces but also reading scores. the transcription is a training which strengthen your ears also. It was the other day I transcribed Horners Universal Fanfare. Now I will never forget how cool it is when you write over any major chord a suspended melody starting on the 5th degree of the chord, super sexy imo.