Among pop music, composition is the music profession with the highest commercial status, the highest return on value, and the value of intellectual property rights. The skill of composing music for this reason has always been considered by the public to be the core of judging whether a singer has talent. Then the public usually has the following questions about music composition: How does the singer write songs?
Today, I will make the secret of composition public in simple terms, break the mystery of composition for everyone, and explain the specific composition steps of singers:
The three main ways a singer composes: routine chords (90%), improvisational humming (8%), and inspiration (2%)
In the entire pop music industry, there are actually very many ways for singers to complete compositions, and there are only three ways: the industrialized chords of music and their derivatives based on the routine chords, the improvisational humming while playing the instrument and the recording, and the most of the flashes of genius are realized by dreaming. Then these three composition methods correspond to completely different composition steps, and we will restore them one by one:
1- The composition steps of the routines and chords, as well as the principle. Routine chords, we know it by the name: this is a routine dedicated to composition. His principle is that in classical music, which preceded popular music, music composers discovered a phenomenon: the human masses tend to prefer, expect, and prefer to hear certain fixed chord arrangements. A chord is a group of notes formed by the performance of three to five single notes. Then, this fixed chord arrangement, which the human masses naturally prefer to hear, is the routine chord.
For pop music all over the world, there are the following kinds of routine chords, which have become the essence of music creation logic for the largest number of listeners and musical works in the world, they are:
A: Canon routine chord progression. The chord levels they correspond to are: 15634145;
B: Lyrical routine chord progression; 4536251；
C: When the mainstream repetition routines in Europe and the United States are in progress; 1645；
These three routines and chords are the core of the entire history of pop music, and their derivative routines and chords are based on minor seventh chords, genus chords, hanging chords, functional chords, and so on. We don't need to go into the specifics of why, because the chord is like a formula, and its significance lies in the fact that as long as you follow this formula, the result of the composition will be guaranteed, the public will listen better, and there will be market potential.
Basically, Jay Chou, Lin Junjie and all professional singers, more than 60% of most of the works in their albums are created in this kind of routine chord industrial way, betting on whether a market likes it. Then the composition steps of the routine chord are as follows
One: Choose the chords according to the genre you want. If it is a lyrical style, then give preference to canon routine chords or lyrical routine chords. Because the mood of these two chords is more long and meandering. If it is a fast song, highlighting the sense of rhythm, or highlighting the recognition of the style, choose the mainstream 1645 routine chords in Europe and the United States. This kind of routine chord is always repeating four chords, which has a strong brainwashing effect and psychological expectations, a large rhythm advantage, and sufficient memory points. But it's a little more difficult.
2. After choosing the chords of the routine, you have the skeleton of the composition - the columnar structure, and begin to split the constituent notes of the chords, and use the constituent notes as the rhythmic positive beat of the melody. This second step is actually something that most friends are unfamiliar with composing, because there is a small threshold and rhythmic understanding here, as follows:
- The essence of a chord is three to five constituent notes, and in most cases three to four constituent notes. For example, the composition of the C chord is 1 do, 3 mi, and 5 swish;
- The reason why melodies and chords produce harmonic beauty is that the melody must exist in the chords, and the melody is a part of the chords to give birth to harmonic beauty. In other words, in the case of C, the melody of the C chord should be chosen as much as possible. How to choose? It is the individual's compositional and acoustic skills and musicality.
- In most cases, take the simplest ballad as an example: the main beat of the melody or the positive beat of the rhythm of the genre, the composition of the chords can give birth to the most important melodic and harmonic beauty.
Three: Once you have the first melody based on the chord, start optimizing the loop. The direction of optimization is to give a second step to complete the functional chord changes. For example, increase the number of three components of a chord to four. This began to change in the direction of harmony, and for most low-level composers, it was only necessary to understand that the basic elements of harmony were chords and minor seventh chords.
In this way, the composition based on the routine chords completes the first draft of the creation. The real key step here is how the melody relates to the chords in the second step, and how to create four to eight beautiful and unified melodies based on the second step. It takes training, but in essence, there is one mystery in composition: Lianliankan. Linking one's own melody with the composition of the chords, and whether the intervals of the two can produce harmony and the color that the public expects, is the foundation of popular composition.
2- Composition steps and principles of improvisational humming. It's a lot simpler than the routine chords, and of course the bar is much higher. Because improvisation is a natural outpouring of accumulation. Before improvisation, there are hard and fast standards – at least one instrument must be mastered that can provide the basic chord space that you can create. Piano and guitar are the best solutions. The way of improvising humming and composing music is actually a very good composition, and most of the top musicians will choose this one.
Because of improvisation, because of the collusion of ideas and technical mistakes, there will be a sense of surprise and a driving force for progress. For example, the beauty of a seventh chord is based on the intonation deviation of a minor second of an octave that is perceived as a different kind of melodic beauty. And impromptu humming, singing out of tune, singing off track, singing deviations is very easy to do. Especially when there is no better passage to write in the fixed routine of routine chords, improvisation is often the optimal solution.
Improvisation is also a singer's best composing ability, because if you want to reach the level of improvisation, you need to have enough understanding and exploration of pitch, interval, harmony, rhythm, and style. Generally speaking, improvisation is often a very good state of relaxation for composers, without the industrial shackles of the assembly line of routine chords, which is more relaxed and self-conscious. Of course, his efficiency cannot be guaranteed. It's not very suitable for rushing the deadline.
3:- The way of composing music with a flash of inspiration is something that is hard to come by. is often a kind of dream in a highly concentrated state to complete a kind of creative logic, for example, Lin Junjie and Jay Chou have many works that are written only on this flash of inspiration. However, it was a flash of inspiration that in fact, the above two ways of composition have been fully understood.
To sum up, the essence of composition is to create a sense of harmony between chords and melody, and it is an artistic creation, but for commercial-oriented pop music, there is a standard routine chord assembly line industry standard. And this kind of industrial standard in this era, in fact, has also led to a lot of problems: the homogenization of a large number of songs, in essence, is because the routine greatly reduces the threshold requirements. But this is also the inevitable direction of music development.