The First Steps to Composing
One of the blocks that many guitarists face when composing is, “how do I get started?!”
What lots of guitar players will do first is to play chords with arpeggios, which can sound really lovely, but can leave you feeling stuck as to where to go next.
Instead, I challenge you to spend A LOT of time planning first. But how do you plan if you’re not experienced with harmony, form, phrase structure, etc.?…
By studying another well crafted piece of music, preferably one you know well and can play fluently.
Here is a recent example of Nima’s work, who completed the first tasks of CCG’s composition course.
Nima chose to look a gorgeous Sor Study.
Step #1: separate the melody and accompaniment.
Step #2: identify the phrase structure of the melody by looking at how many bars each phrase is.
Then you want to look out for a really common way that composers organize phrases - with a question and answer structure (also known as a “period”).
When you do this, you’ll almost always see a lot of repetition. Do you see the repetition in Sor’s opening period?
Step #3: Study the shape of the melody and any other observations you think are worth noting.
This will provide you with a blank canvas, that contains information and inspiration drawn from the piece you studied. You can now be confident that you have a solid structure in which to compose your own melody.
Step #4: Optional - add you own melody in.
Here is Nima’s melody, a really gorgeous one!!
