I listen to a lot of music. As a musician there are a number of things that you learn to pay attention to, but as a listener you don’t get much guidance for what you can pay attention to in a song. I’ve noticed this often leaves listeners unsure of how music is constructed or how different artists put together their songs. It also leaves listeners unable to express specifically what they like about a specific song.
This last part is one of the most important things to me. Being able to point out exactly what you like about a song (regardless of genre) is an important skill to have. It helps you be better describe what type of music you like. It helps you figure out what types of music you might like and might not like. And it helps you better appreciate a number of different genres of music.
But if you’re unsure of what you can listen to it can leave you unsure of why you like the specific pieces of music that you like.
There is one huge caveat that we should mention however. Sometimes a piece of music reminds you of a specific memory and that’s the main reason that you like it. That’s fine too. But for this post we’re talking about songs that aren’t attached to a specific memory.
So what can you listen for?
There are four aspects of music that you can listen for. They’re linked below. Each one has it’s own dedicated blog post here and you’ll be able to learn more about each different aspect on those posts:
Each of these different aspects can change depending on the genre of music. Certain ideas within these aspects might not be things that you enjoy.
For example I listen to a fair amount of heavy metal and atonal classical music. Both of those genres are harsh. They have fairly harsh harmonies, especially in atonal classical music, and they have fairly harsh timbres, especially in the case of heavy metal. The harmonies in atonal classical music are often incredibly dissonant. There also isn’t one note or chord that feels resolved or “like home”, which is often used in tonal music. This might mean that you, as a listener, have to pay attention to something else to get that same sense of resolution or “home.” Sometimes there isn’t even that sense of home anywhere. All of these different things will make that specific genre sound harsh.
That might not be an idea that you enjoy listening to. Knowing that will help lead you to find music that is more enjoyable for you to listen to.
Often in heavy metal there is tonality, but the timbres are harsh. The guitars have a lot of distortion and the vocals might be growling or screaming, which adds a kind of distortion (in an analogue way) to the voice. These instruments will sound more harsh compared to a clean guitar and clean vocals. The rhythms may also be fast and intense because they are playing at faster tempos or playing a fast subdivision of the beat.
You might enjoy those ideas. You might not. Again knowing specifically what you enjoy about a piece of music will help guide you in finding new music and it’ll help you communicate both with musicians and with non-musicians about the specific music that you enjoy listening to.
Go check out the other posts to learn more about different aspects of music.
One thing I’ve been trying to do in my own music is to listen to it as if it’s not my own music; listen as if I’m just a listener, not the composer/producer.
This is a hard thing to do sometimes, for me at least, because I am the actual composer and producer. I did in fact write all of those melodies and harmonies and create the synths.
But if I can listen as a listener it helps me judge the music more objectively. I end up not caring as much about tiny details, but end up looking at larger structures. Did the feeling or emotion I wanted to convey come across? Was it follow-able? Did I get lost half-way through because the sections sounded too unrelated? Did it sound even or was I left wanting to hear one idea be fully developed?
These might be simple questions and sometimes not necessarily ‘musical’ questions, but they’re important to the construction and structure of a piece of music. Most listeners are not listening for the mixing or mastering or the synth construction. Most listeners are listening for broader ideas. And those broad ideas are just as important as the individual ideas.
The main question it helps me answer is “did I achieve my goal with this piece?” That might seem like a vague question, but it’s an important question to answer.
One thing I did while writing music at Berklee was write a piece of music that was almost wholly texture.
No melody.
I, like many other composers, have a tendency to focus my efforts on writing melodies and writing music that is melody heavy. This doesn’t need to be the case all of the time.
This limits what you’re writing and what you’re able to write. As a way to get out of this habit I tried to write music that was only texture. I even wrote a full orchestra piece that was entirely textural, and one of my teachers made a comment about it. You can hear it on my Soundcloud being performed by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. They noticed that there was no melody. Which I took as a mission accomplished.
That piece actually ended up being performed by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, conducted by Krist Kondakci, which was an amazing opportunity as a new composer at Berklee.
But I also like to think of it as validation that music can be very interesting as just textures. Depending on how you create those textures you can create some very interesting music.
One way to create textures is by layering small lines. Make one line only quarter notes. Make another line eighth notes. Make one more line that’s another rhythm; half notes, eighth note triplets, or dotted quarter notes. These lines should be simple, not melodies, and outlining some type of chord. That way you can create textures for some type of harmonic progression. As an idea have them alternate a chord tone and then a tension. Here are a few ideas; the root and the ninth, the third and the ninth, the fifth and the sixth, or the seventh and the sixth.
With major chords this will create a colorful sound.
There are tons of other ways to experiment with textures and creating different textures.
Slash chords are chords that look like a fraction. The numerator of the “fraction” is a chord and the denominator of the “fraction” is the bass note. Sometimes my students think of these as being polychords, which are two chords layered on top of each other. Slash chords are not polychords.
Slash chords are chords with a bass note different than the root of the chord. People often “read” them as, “C over B”, or “G over A” or “F# minor 7 over Bb.”
Let’s take an example.
C/B
This chord is a C major chord. The bass note is a B. So you have a C major chord with a B in the bass. That’s it. C over B is how you’d read this chord to someone else.
Let’s look at another example.
G/A
This is similar to the above chord. It’s a G major chord with a A in the bass. The numerator (G in this case) is the chord that is being played. The denominator (a A in this case) is the bass note. G over A is how you’d read this chord.
Now let’s look at a more complicated example.
F#m7/Bb
This chord is an F# minor chord with a Bb in the bass. There’s a full F# minor chord with all of the notes in that chord (F# A C# E) with a Bb note in the bass. F#m7 over Bb is how you’d read this one.
Slash chords can be a great way to spice up a chord progression because they’ll add some more color. Even if you just change the bass note to a chord tone (like the 3rd or 5th) it can change the color and sound of a chord and give it some more spice.
These chords often confuse my students at first because they look really strange, but if you can remember that people read these chords as “[top chord] OVER [bottom note]” it can help you remember that the numerator is a chord and the denominator is a single note in the bass.
One other thing to keep in mind if you play a chordal instrument like piano or guitar is that you don’t necessarily need to play the bass note if you have a bass player. I impressed one of my teachers at Berklee College of Music in an ensemble once because I was playing guitar. I just played the numerator chord. He asked me what I was playing and why and I explained that our ensemble has a bass player so I don’t need to play the bottom note because they’ll have it. I only needed to play the top part.
He was impressed that I realized what type of ensemble I was playing it and how that specific ensemble effects the music. He was also probably a little more impressed than he would be because that chord tricked up a few other people in the ensemble. I was just familiar with it because of other groups I’d played in.
So next time you have a college ensemble rehearsal with a slash chord and a bass player, remember you don’t need to play the bass note if they have it.
I was once given the advice, related to planning lessons, of “plan out what each student will be doing at each minute of class.” This is an incredibly simple and straight forward way to ensure that your lessons go smoothly and work well with your students.
However.
It takes a TON of time. Image doing this for a full school day from 8:00am to 3:00pm. That’s 7 hours of time and you’ll have multiple students. That means planning out 420 minutes of the day for multiple people. A TON of time.
But when you’re able to plan out things in this way you’ll be surprised at just how well they go.
When creating melodic lines often I get stuck in the idea that the next note has to be different than the previous one. Notes shouldn’t be repeated. Very few of my melodies have repeated notes.
But repeated notes can make fantastic melodies.
“If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes is a perfect example of this. “BOY” by Charlie Puth also has a number of melodic lines with repeated notes. “thank u next” by Ariana Grande has a number of places in the melody with notes that are repeated.
Clearly repeated notes can make some great melodies.
This post is just as much a reminder to whoever may read it as it is a reminder to myself; use repeated notes to make some melodies. It’s another option to make melodies.
I remember being in a film scoring class at Berklee College of Music and we were re-writing the music for How to Train Your Dragon. It was the big project we worked on in that specific class.
We started by writing three themes. One for Hiccup and Toothless. One for Hiccup and Astrid. And one for “battle.”
My theme for Hiccup and Astrid went down. It ended on a lower note than it started and throughout the melody was a downward motion.
I didn’t notice this until my teacher pointed it out and said how it was a strangely sad love theme, specifically because it went down.
Then I also noticed that it was a bit of a sad theme, and it was a sad love theme. It didn’t fit a budding love story as happens in How to Train Your Dragon. It would’ve fit an ending love story.
So next time you write a melody and you want it to express a specific emotion, check the direction of the melody. Make sure that the direction of the melody and the emotion it is meant to express line up with eachother.
One of the things that I wish I’d done sooner was create a portfolio of work that I’m proud of. I definitely did this at Berklee College of Music, because it’s a requirement of both the film scoring program and the composition program there.
However I never made a portfolio of performance work. Many of the gigs that I’ve gotten since graduating from Berklee have been performance related in some way. I’ve subbed on piano at churches. I’ve music directed choirs and for three years a youth theatre program. I’ve recorded guitar for short films. I’ve taught music in both classes and private lessons on piano, guitar, and ukulele. I currently conduct a youth orchestra and direct a jazz ensemble.
I’ve also written music for short films and indie video games, but I had portfolios for those two things before.
But create one as soon as you can. Record yourself playing whatever instrument you play. Make an .mp3 of that song you created in Garageband. Whatever you have, make a finished version of it that you can send to people.
One great way to create a portfolio is by making a website, but if you don’t have the ability or funds to do that you can simply create a YouTube channel, Google Drive, or a Soundcloud.
Each of those is free and allows you to upload videos and/or audio.
The reason I think this is incredibly useful is it removes a step when sending your information to someone. If someone asks to see your work, and eventually someone will, you want to be ready. So get ready as soon as possible. Make that portfolio as soon as possible so that you’re ready whenever you need to be. Because it will be much worse if someone asks and you don’t have anything, than if you have something that they don’t like. But even if they don’t like whatever you show, and you’re proud of it, it’ll feel good (at least somewhat) to have shown your portfolio.
I’ve gone in for a few interviews that are teaching gigs and even they have mentioned, “I checked out your website and found your music and portfolio.” Some of them have mentioned my YouTube videos.
And I’m almost 100% sure those same people would’ve interviewed me had I not have a website or a YouTube channel, but I’m also 100% sure that it helped.
So go make a portfolio. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be something you’re proud of.
This is an idea I first heard from the video game composer Disasterpeace. It was in an interview of him talking about his music for the game Hyper Light Drifter.
He mentioned that he used reverb as a way to create a synth texture.
He put the reverb effect farther up the effects chain, like before distortion or delay or chorus, and that completely changes the sound.
I’ve used this idea a few times and it really creates a spacious sound because the whole reverb tail is having effects added onto it.
Normally effects have a specific order to them and reverb is almost always last because the reverb tail that it creates, the extra room noise, isn’t something that people often want to add effects to.
But if you do add effects to it, it’ll create a completely unique texture that is very rarely used.