Composing for piano

If you don’t play piano, or if you don’t play piano at a high level, writing for piano can be a difficult task.

If you’re writing for live players, as opposed to writing something that you’ll sequence yourself, learning about the instrument and the techniques that are used to play it can help ensure that the recording session, rehearsal, or performance goes smoothly. It can also save you some potential embarrassment or headache if the piano player tells you that what you wrote is either way too difficult or, worse, unplayable on the instrument.

I’ve seen this happen with student composers that are new to writing for piano especially because unless you’re a piano player some things that might seem easy can be incredibly difficult and some things that might seem difficult are incredibly easy.

Before we get into some specific tips that I have, one of the best things you can do if it’s possible is have the player look over the music. Even if they’re an experienced piano player it can be incredibly useful, especially if you aren’t an experienced composer for piano. Some things on the instrument, just by nature of how the instrument is set up, are unplayable and writing those things should be avoided.

With all of that let’s get into a few tips that I’ve got for writing for piano:

• Study piano music
• Learn some basic techniques
• Make sure it fits within your hands
• Be careful with large jumps
• Be careful with speed
• Be careful with repeated patterns
• Be careful with octaves and block chords

Let’s get into these in a little more detail.

Study piano music

My biggest recommendation when writing for piano is to study piano music. Get some books of piano music and take a look at how they write music for the instrument. Classical scores work fine, but any professional sheet music for piano players will also work perfectly well.

As a piano player I would caution against looking at piano vocal scores for operas and musicals as well as piano reductions of orchestral music. Some of these scores can be incredibly difficult to play even for well accomplished piano players because the arrangers are trying to include everything that they can from the original orchestra score. Some scores are easily playable, but there is a wide range of difficulty levels in accompaniment books, especially for music that was original composed for orchestra.

You want to find music that’s written specifically for piano. Look at how they arrange melodies and accompaniments. Look at how they arrange spreads of chords.

Look for common patterns that are used in the music. How are chords often voiced? What are the common accompaniment patterns and methods? How are the melodies arranged and played? What range is written for one hand?

Learn some basic techniques

Learning some simple techniques for piano can be incredibly useful in being able to compose effectively for that instrument. You don’t need to become a classical concert pianist or a professional jazz piano player, but learning about some of the techniques and knowing the names for them can be useful.

Learning about stride piano and playing melodies in octaves or how tremolos are performed can better help you translate your musical ideas into a way that is understandable and playable for the piano player.

Learn how piano players play legato, either with their hands or using the sustain pedal. Learn some basics of position shifting and how piano players shift their thumb underneath their other fingers.

Learning how the instrument itself works can also be useful. Knowing about the different pedals and how the instrument makes sound on the inside can be useful to better translate your musical ideas onto the instrument.

Another thing that can be useful is to learn about how piano players play chords and arpeggios in their left hand. There are a number of different ways to voice chords on piano, and some chord voicings are more common than others.

Looking at these things along with studying scores can help you better understand the specific idioms of that instrument and how piano players play music.

Some techniques of writing are alberti bass, arpeggios, chordal accompaniments, and hymn or chorale style writing. Each of these types of writing is common for piano players to play and can be used comfortably knowing that the music will look and feel like piano music. When composing for a specific instrument there are conventions and common techniques that are often used. These don’t need to be used all of the time, but if you have an idea in your head and aren’t sure how to write that idea, these techniques can come in handy.

Remember that whoever the piano player is for your music they’ll have practiced a ton of other piano music. They’ll have practiced specific techniques and specific styles of playing. They’ll have a lot of knowledge of other types of music on their instrument and how your music fits in with that previous knowledge can determine how familiar the music is to them. Even if something is playable, if it’s strange or something that’s not often written for the instrument, it may throw the piano player off because they likely haven’t seen it before.

Make sure it fits within your hands

If you’re not an experienced piano player this can be difficult, but start with the hands separated. Try playing just one hand of your piano piece. Then try playing the other hand. Playing them separately, but still with the correct hand, can be a good way to check how well it’ll fit when it’s actually performed.

The goal of doing this is to make sure that there aren’t huge errors in the part.

If as you’re doing this it seems absolutely impossible, no matter how much you practice, then think about whether or not you’ve seen that specific technique in a piece of music before. If you haven’t seen it anywhere (or if you’ve seen it in a Franz Liszt piece) then it’s probably something that should be re-written.

The same thing can be said with left hand spreads. We’ll talk about this later in the article, but if you can’t reach the interval you wrote, and it’s more than an octave, then I’d suggest re-writing that interval. I’d stick to an octave or less in one hand unless you know that the specific player that will be performing or recording your piece can reach a larger interval. All piano players will be able to reach an octave in one hand. Not all piano players can reach larger than that, though many can reach a ninth or even a tenth (an octave and a third).

Be careful with large jumps

One common piano technique is called “stride piano” and it’s often used in jazz music to play a bass line, or bass note, and accompanying chords. The left hand jumps back and forth from the bass note to a higher chord voicing. Depending on the speed and size of these jumps it can be a fairly difficult technique to learn.

Be aware of this when writing for piano. The larger the jump and the faster the music, the more difficult it will be for the player to be accurate. Below is an example of something that is quite playable. It’s the song “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)” by Duke Ellington.

Things to notice here are that these jumps are just about an octave the entire time. The largest the jumps get are a 12th, or an octave and a third. That’s not all that large of a jump. If someone is familiar with stride piano then this excerpt should be quite playable. If someone is not familiar and comfortable with stride piano this may require some practice, though most piano players at or above the college level will be familiar with stride piano.

Below is an example of something that is much more difficult.

The main thing that makes these two arrangements different levels of difficulty level is because the whole left hand has to travel a greater distance. In the first arrangement the piano player can play the low bass note with their pinky finger (finger five) and play the above chord with their thumb, index, and middle fingers (fingers one, two, and three). Their hand doesn’t have to travel all that far.

In the second arrangement the piano player has to play the low bass octaves with their thumb and pinky finger (fingers one and five). The chord after it can still be played with the thumb, index, and middle fingers (fingers one, two, and three), but look at how they now have to play two notes with their thumb. Their thumb alone travels from G on the bottom line of the bass clef all the way up to the G on the third ledger line above the bass clef. That’s two octaves that their thumb alone has to travel.

These two arrangements will sound largely the same. The only real difference is the bass octaves and the melody up an octave, but the overall feel and effect of writing both will be largely the same.

If you want to write stride piano music or something that sounds similar you can get the same effect, or a similar effect, by writing alternating broken octaves. This can be seen below.

This won’t sound as full as proper stride piano, but it’s a similar sounding effect, and depending on how necessary it is to have proper stride piano can be a great substitute. It’s also a way of getting a lighter effect than a more full stride piano arrangement. Depending on the specific effect you want it can be a useful thing to add into your music to have a larger range of sounds.

Be careful with speed

Writing fast passages on any instrument is tricky because you need to make sure that the person playing them can actually play that fast. For piano scalar runs are fine because most piano players will be able to play scales quickly. Major and minor scales and chromatic scales should all be perfectly do-able within reason.

The main thing to be careful for is when you write music that’s incredibly fast that’s outside of the normal patterns of fast playing on piano. Writing a fast scalar run in thirds would likely be fine, but writing a fast run up a series of triadic arpeggios that don’t have an order might be a little difficult.

Certain patterns will be easily played quickly, but outside of those patterns, or outside of something related to those patterns, it may be difficult for the player to get their fingers underneath the music.

This leads us to the next point.

Be careful with repeated patterns

I’ve definitely made this mistake when writing for piano before.

I wrote a repeating ostinato in the right hand and a left hand bass part. The right hand part was way too unfamiliar and didn’t fit well under one hand. In addition to that I wrote a crescendo in the music.

During the rehearsal for this piece my friend who was playing the piano let me know quickly that what I’d written wasn’t playable at the speed I’d written it at. He was an amazing piano player so I knew that what I’d written must’ve been strange if he couldn’t play it.

We ended up taking out the left hand part and just using the right hand part, but split between the hands. That made the strange repeating pattern playable at the proper speed.

I bring this up to point out that some repeated patterns, if the pattern doesn’t fit well underneath your hands, likely won’t be playable at a high speed. Some patterns are awkward underneath your hand. It doesn’t mean that these patterns need to be avoided at all costs, but it’s something to consider when composing a piano part. Knowing what will be difficult and what will be easy to play will better help you use the piano to convey your musical ideas.

Be careful with octaves and block chords

Writing octaves and block chords are fine. They’re both something that piano players do all the time. Even for melodies. Often piano music has melodies using both block chords and octaves. It’s very common. So definitely write it into your music, but the reason I include it here is because it can increase the difficulty of a piece of music substantially.

A piece that’s easy to play will become harder in octaves. It’ll become much harder if it’s written in block chords AND octaves.

Let’s take a look at an example. Below is the melody for “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

If we re-arrange this melody to be written in octaves in both hands it’s still not incredibly difficult.

If we re-arrange it yet again we can add block chords to this so that the right hand is playing both block chords and octaves. This increases the difficulty level of the piece quite significantly from the above arrangement.

This is significantly more difficult to play than the original one. We can arrange it one more time to make it sound even larger by changing the left hand part and adding some jumps.

This new arrangement is definitely playable, but it’s significantly harder to play than the original arrangement with just the melody and the bass line.

It’s still something you can write if the sound that this type of arrangement creates is the desired effect. Just be aware when writing something how difficult it will be to play.

There are alternatives to this that can be used to get a similar effect. The left hand could be alternating octaves, like we discussed earlier when discussing stride piano. The right hand could be only the top three notes, removing the bottom octave doubling. That arrangement will have largely the same feel and largeness but will be a whole lot easier to play than the above arrangement.

This suggested arrangement is pictured below.

Final thoughts

The main thing to keep in mind is who your players are. If you’re writing music to be played by a professional pianist like Yuja Wang, Tigran Hamasyan, Brad Mehldau, or Lang Lang then you can basically write anything that’s playable. Those players are at such a high level that they’ll be able to play basically anything on their instrument.

But if you aren’t writing for someone at that high of a level, then take into account who exactly will be performing your music. If it’s your friend that’s a piano performance major at your university, take that into account. Ask them for some music that they can play easily and something that will take some practice. Ask to look at some music that they’re working on. Use that as a guide for a suggested difficulty level.

If you’re writing something and you don’t know who the player is yet, then take a look at some similar pieces of music. For example if you’re writing a piano sonata, take a look at some piano sonatas to get an idea of how other composers have used the piano and what will likely be familiar to piano players.

One other consideration, in addition to writing for the player that will be playing your piece, is to realize that different piano players will be familiar with different things. A jazz piano player will be good at different things than a classical piano player. Even if they are at roughly the same level within their own genres there will be certain techniques that the jazz piano player will be much more familiar with than the classical piano player and vice versa.

Writing intentionally can help a lot with these things. If you’re using the instrument in a way that will likely be unfamiliar to the musicians, then ask yourself how necessary it is for the instrument to be used that way. It can be useful to consult a piano player and ask how common or uncommon a specific technique is and if there’s an alternative that is more common and will get the same effect.

Knowing specifically the sound you want is the goal here. If there’s a common technique to achieve that effect that’s great. If there isn’t then make sure that the effect adds something to the music because it may cause some trouble for the piano player.

At the end of the day you should write the music that you want to write. And one way to better do that is to learn more about the instrument for which you’re writing. There may be techniques you didn’t know existed that you want to use or techniques that get the effect that you’re trying to write. Whatever music you’re trying to write, knowing more about the instrument can only help you better achieve that goal.

ISJ