Don’t write linearly

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and we were talking about writing music from start to finish.

He mentioned something that he learned from a teacher at Berklee. You don’t have to write linearly.

You don’t need to write a song from bar 1 to bar 100 in order starting with writing bar 1, then bar 2, then bar 3 and so on.

You can write bars 1-16 first, then write bars 64-80 next. Then write bars 90-100 and go back and write bars 16-40 and then the rest of the song. It doesn’t need to be done in order.

I started writing a new album that’s going to be titled “Home” and that’s how I’m going to write it. I’ve got the first song done and I’m going to write songs 2, 6, and 7 next. Then I’ll come back and work on songs 3, 4, and 5.

The reason I’m doing this is that songs 1, 2, 6 and 7 have related musical material. They’re going to be based off of the same ideas and musical materials (melodies/rhythms/harmonies). Songs 3, 4, and 5 will be based off of similar materials as well, but different materials than songs 1, 2, 6 and 7.

It’ll keep me focused when I’m working on those specific songs because I’ll have the other related songs fresh in my mind.

Then when I’m done with those I’ll go back and write the other songs that aren’t as related or are using different materials.

This could also be applied to pieces of music. In a song that’s 15 minutes long, you could write the music in the middle at minutes 7-9 before writing the beginning.

In some cases this will make more sense than starting from the beginning because you might want to have an exposition of your melodies and themes after an intro. The main themes may be written first, and then you want to use those materials to make an intro, rather than starting from writing the intro.

This is such a simple idea, but I hadn’t really thought about it. Sometimes we get so caught up in “the normal order of doing things” that you don’t realize things don’t have to be done that way. Just because a series of pieces of music are meant to be played in a certain order doesn’t mean they need to be written in that order. Just because a piece of music is meant to be heard from start to finish doesn’t mean it needs to be written from beginning to end. You can start writing the end. Or start writing the middle.

Give it a try. You don’t need to write linearly.

ISJ