Steal ideas

At Berklee one of my classes had an interesting assignment. The assignment was to analyze two different songs, take the chords from one, and a piece of the melody of the other, and create your own song. Basically my teacher was telling us all to steal small musical ideas and write our own song.

That’s an interesting thought; take small ideas from pieces of music that you like and use them in your own music. It’s something that most composers and producers and musicians will do naturally, especially if you’re writing music that’s similar to another musician. If two pieces of music are the same genre then they’ll definitely have musical ideas that are similar.

So I took the two different ideas and wrote my own song. It was a completely new piece of music because I took a small melodic fragment and used that to write a melody and added chords from another song. And I had myself a new piece of music.

It’s a fun and useful exercise to do if you ever get a chance. You’ll likely write something that you’re proud of, and something that you enjoy.

ISJ