One of the best ways to become better at making something is to study good examples of the thing(s) you admire in order to learn what makes them work. If your goal is to build a better car, you could look at (by which I mean take apart!) good cars, and try to understand the function of each part as a way of learning how cars work. If your goal is to become a better composer, you could study good compositions (by which I mean take apart!) in order to understand how they work.
In both cases, the objective of learning how things work is partly general interest (if you love something, learning more about it is its own reward), and partly self-interest (you are hoping to discover and understand aspects that you can borrow, improve, or otherwise modify in your creations).
An aspect I enjoy most about my job is that I get to analyze music on a regular basis for various courses that I teach. There are different types of musical analysis, but I think they all revolve around the fundamental question of how a composition works. Or, more generally, how does music work?
There is no single answer to this question — the reasons that any composition works are many, and different compositions work in different ways — but it seems to me that there is at least one thing common to all good music, and it is this (drum roll, please):
In both cases, the objective of learning how things work is partly general interest (if you love something, learning more about it is its own reward), and partly self-interest (you are hoping to discover and understand aspects that you can borrow, improve, or otherwise modify in your creations).
An aspect I enjoy most about my job is that I get to analyze music on a regular basis for various courses that I teach. There are different types of musical analysis, but I think they all revolve around the fundamental question of how a composition works. Or, more generally, how does music work?
There is no single answer to this question — the reasons that any composition works are many, and different compositions work in different ways — but it seems to me that there is at least one thing common to all good music, and it is this (drum roll, please):
Good music plays with our expectations.
(To enhance the dramatic effect of the above, play this short clip immediately!)
By "playing" with our expectations, I mean that the music sometimes does what we expect (and how does it do that?), and sometimes doesn't, and the ways in which expectations are created, fulfilled, and thwarted, constitute an essential part of the reason we are drawn to the music. Understanding how this works can be an extremely valuable skill for a composer.
It is easy to introduce unexpected elements to a composition, but this, by itself, does not produce compelling art. Really good compositions somehow set-up expectations and leave us guessing as to which will be fulfilled and which won't be, as we go along for the ride. How do they do this?
More to follow in parts two and three.
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20 comments:
Interesting blog! I love music composition so I was very glad when I found out about this blog. I write about composers in my weekly series "Composer of the week". I'll probably write more about music composition later. :)
Some music may have a title clearly stating the intentions of the music and when heard with knowledge of this title, the emotion is easily conveyed. Conversely, music could have a more open ended title raising ambiguity in the music. This allows the listener to create their own experience and interpret the music how they see fit. Parallels can be drawn to a movie with more than one possible ending after its close. The composer like the filmmaker allows the listener to become part of the music giving you the choice for your experience. It is not one definite thing but could be many things to many people. There is no right or wrong answer.
I definitly agree with you on this. Playing with expectations is a huge part of composition and can be the brick wall between good and not so good compositions. There are a few compositional techniques that I have recently added to my compositional style which I think help play with the listener's expectations. Set up a chord progression that seems like it's going somewhere expected, but at the right moment, throw a curveball at the listener by using a different chord than the expected. Another idea is to first introduce an idea or phrase. Then, repeat the phrase. But the second time, cut it short and dive into a "subito" new idea (with new dynamic). These are but a couple of ideas which can have cool effects while playing with the listener's expectations.
I'd be curious to see the parallels and differences between musical expectations of different time periods. We do study them in Theory classes and History courses but it'd interesting to have a large list of sorts.
One aspect of music that has always interested me is how our brains cognitively process music. Our musical expectations grow with us from the time we are very young, and we learn what sounds "right or wrong" by listening to music every day. If we are constantly listening to music, which most people are in today's noisy world, we quickly become bored with music that always sounds the same and avoids exploiting any expectations. I find myself feeling unfulfilled when listening to pop music on the radio today, mostly because of the extreme predictability in the nature of the genre. This predictability is one of the defining characteristics of Western Classical tonal music, but yet hundreds of great composers still manage to find creative ways to play with our expectations. This is one of the most amazing things about great works, that they have a comfortable level of predictability with just enough surprises thrown in to make it worth listening to.
Playing with expectations is an art that suggests a certain degree of mastery in composition. It's always that one part in a piece that gets you so excited to hear/play it because it seems to come from nowhere, but perfectly so. It can be a turning point in a piece bringing intrigue, elation, subtle profundity...
Throwing curveballs is definitely essential to an interesting composition.
I really believe that the best way for us composers to get better ideas is by understanding the music we enjoy, and doing at least some study on it.
One of my favourite composers is Eric Ewazen, a man still composing today. One of the reasons I love his compositions is because he has created a very unique style throughout his career, and also, his music is so fun to play. His writes amazingly for brass.
I have done very basic study on his music (most of it is by ear, while I'm playing it). Earlier on I thought this guy was simply a compositional Demi God of some sort, and his music was just good. However as I play more, I am finding out that his music is all based on expectation.
He often has a very prominent theme in his music (like most music does) but adds very precise details to dynamics and harmony, which keeps listeners on their toes. Constant use of subito pianos and modulations which can occurs in sections, or multiple times in a single phrase.
This gives me great ideas into how I can use expectation in my music, and makes me want to find other ways to use it as well.
Being able to play with expectations says great things about a composer who does if effectively. To be able to play with expectations, one has to also recognize understand familiar idioms--rhythmic, harmonic, I don't care, you choose--and then be able to creatively contort it. An example might be writing, a brilliant, complete 5 measure phrase that later can return as something 7 or 8 measures long still sounding organic and whole.
I say this because sometimes playing with expectations can be done not so well: hearing a soaring, diatonic violin melody interrupted by an amplified car crash 20x as loud may create a provocative piece but, to me, shows a bit less compositional thinking that might manifest itself in subtler details. An example might be having familiar even occur on a weak beat though when we last hear it, it was on a strong beat.
Of course there are countless ways to play with expectation but I'd argue that some display brilliant compositional control, while others may show some compositional confusion.
I definitely agree with this. Obviously music that is the same thing over and over again will get very boring, whereas music that is changing too rapidly is hard too keep up with. I find that my problem is trying to balance the two. Sometimes I'm a little weary of playing with expectation too much because I don't want me music to be too out there. I also find sometimes the compositional process doesn't help. We'll sit down at a piano and plunk out a motive in a lot of different ways to try and create interest. I often find engaging in this process alone can give me the illusion that an idea is getting boring, whereas when a person listens to it once, they won't hear the 100 times I've plunked away at it. Trusting my own intuition is something that's a little bit difficult to judge in getting this balance.
The listener should never leave feeling that they are smarter than the composer. If the listener anticipates every turn and predicts every resolution, theywill leave feeling cheated; after all, they could have written the piece themselves! On the other hand, if a listener leaves with the perspective that the composer is smarter than their audience, or thinks they are smarter than their audience, it is just as dissatisfying. If the listener's expectations are never fulfilled, or if expectations are not created in the first place, the listener can never find solid ground in the piece; nothing can be particularly surprising because the listener has no basis of comparison. The result is an unhappy audience who either feels that they were not intelligent enough to understand the piece, or that the composer is condescending or a charlatan. From a listening perspective, the greatest pieces are those that create a meeting of minds, the composer's skill and vision matched by the listener's understanding and interest. In such pieces, the composer creates excitement through the uncertainty of whether expectations will be fulfilled, thwarted, or inverted. Fulfilment rewards the audience's attention, inversion respects their intelligence, and thwarting keeps them on their toes. The result is an audience who leaves satisfied, feeling that they were treated with a glimpse of the mind of a composer whose knowledge of their craft permits them to guide their audience through a meaningful and interesting experience, rather than resorting to laziness in the form of endless repetition or unmotivated shock tactics.
I find myself playing with peoples expectations a lot in my compositions, and although it is a relatively easy thing to do in composition when using proper technique and motive unity, it can have a large and significant impact on the quality and audience reception of a piece. I also realize (and it has taken me a while to do this) that one must not do it too much, and it should still be consistent with previous motives and ideas found in a passage of music, because if not, the music just becomes a series of undeveloped and incoherent ideas.
I also feel that this is one of the key components to making an engaging piece of art, and is something that I've found some difficulty in achieving on a larger scale. When deciding on the sound world in which my piece will exist, I often tend toward more dissonant, sharp textures. What I've come to realize this year is that when the primary sonic environment of your piece is tension, then consonance and release can become a significant and effective subversion of expectations when deployed with care. In my pieces, I've been trying to experiment with consonance as a subversion of the listeners expectations, and have come across many of the issues one would expect when dealing with primarily dissonant textures, primarily that it is much easier for the listener to 'gloss over' when exposed to too much unresolved tension for too long. I've tried to circumvent this issue by experimenting with unconventional performance directions, which I hope contextualizes the dissonances in a way that further plays with the listener's expectations of the piece.
I also feel that this is one of the key components to making an engaging piece of art, and is something that I've found some difficulty in achieving on a larger scale. When deciding on the sound world in which my piece will exist, I often tend toward more dissonant, sharp textures. What I've come to realize this year is that when the primary sonic environment of your piece is tension, then consonance and release can become a significant and effective subversion of expectations when deployed with care. In my pieces, I've been trying to experiment with consonance as a subversion of the listeners expectations, and have come across many of the issues one would expect when dealing with primarily dissonant textures, primarily that it is much easier for the listener to 'gloss over' when exposed to too much unresolved tension for too long. I've tried to circumvent this issue by experimenting with unconventional performance directions, which I hope contextualizes the dissonances in a way that further plays with the listener's expectations of the piece.
I have also found that how an expectation is resolved is at least one of the most important aspects of a piece. There have definitely been times when how I end up resolving an expectation completely changes my mind about how much I like the original set up. I think that fulfilling an expectation is actually one of the hardest things to do in composition. Trying to live up to what the listener imagined in their heads and with everyone having different tastes and wanting it to resolve in their own personal way, subverting it is usually the only option to not have to live up to what they were hoping for.
Balancing how you respond to expectations is a huge part of making music. Even those who have never studied music have expectations when listening, even if those expectations are not something they are consciously aware of. If you’re used to tonal music, even just as the average consumer of music, your ears expect things like the resolution of suspensions, authentic cadences at the end of a piece, and more.
The balance between fulfilling expectations and thwarting those expectations is where you draw the line between satisfying background music, or music that really grabs the attention of your audience. Always doing exactly as expected becomes formulaic and boring. It is not something that prompts thought or makes anyone remember your piece, because it sounded exactly how they expected and they just went on with their lives after the final perfect authentic cadence in the home key. Never ever doing anything expected makes pieces sound random, and gives people the impression that you just threw a bunch of ideas on the page. It seems incoherent and satisfying.
A balance between expected and unexpected creates a piece that is enjoyable and coherent, while keeping the audience on the edge of their seat. It is a difficult balance to strike, and requires a skilled composer to do that well, but when you get it right, audiences will be engaged and remember your piece as a great one.
I completely agree that the balance of expectations and breaking them is a large part of powerful music. Musical patterns in terms of the rhythm, texture, pitch and more is continuously studied and talked about in musicology and how the patterns create affect the listeners experience and interpretation of the piece. I am personally a big fan of minimalism in music and so there is of course many musical patterns that are used (and broken!) in these types of pieces. Creating patterns and expectations gives listeners something to hold on to and call 'home base'. It can even instill a sense of calmness or stillness depending on the piece. When a pattern is broken it peaks arousal and it draws in the listener. New emotions, textures, colours are added and explored before once again returning back to a pattern. This interplay between expectations and dissolution of them is a major part of what makes music so interesting.
- Peter Perez
Fantastic points made here! Sometimes in life, it's okay to stick with the basics, and sometimes, much less so. Same goes for composing! When I was composing a piece with added-value rhythms, and a mode created by Oliver Messaien, I decided for the piece not to have a concrete ending. I had placed accented cluster chords when musical ideas were finished, but I decided not to place one at the end of this specific piece. Why? That's up to the audience.
Taking music theory courses and pulling apart the music is beneficial when preparing to perform the music and understanding that specific composition. However, the point made in this blog about how understanding one composition can help you create your own is not far off either. Interestingly, I've used the knowledge I learned while breaking down other compositions while composing without even realizing it. Additionally, I looked back at these compositions and realized I utilized a lot more patterns than I previously thought. The musical ear's ability to recall patterns and techniques from music previously studied shocked me. While writing I thought I was writing a bunch of random things, but subconsciously, I relied on previous compositions to help shape a cohesive piece.
Playing with a listener's expectations is a balancing act, constantly treading the line between what listeners are accustomed to and novel ideas created by the composer, placed in deliberately unexpected places. If you lean too heavily into either side, the goal of subverting expectations is destroyed entirely. With constant changes in ideas, not only does the listener realize very quickly that they will be surprised for the rest of the piece, but they also may then become disinterested in the piece itself with no concrete idea or motif to latch onto. Sometimes writing things that the listener can predict can be good to an extent, as it allows for more connection between the piece and the consumer.
On the contrary, oversimplifying a piece so that close to everything written is exactly what the listener is expecting, a composition can fall flat on it's face with nothing to keep the listener engaged, let alone want to listen multiple times. When we as composers write things that can be expected to happen, we have to remember that it's only expected because the listener has heard it many times before. Therefore, if we lean too heavily into that aspect of writing, we are simply regurgitating things that they have already experienced to some degree.
In regards to playing with expectations, it is super fun to do, but not always nessicary. sometimes a musical work doesn't need any sort of change or mix up, it is perfect and attention grabbing the way it is, no matter how long said music is repeated. However, playing with expectations can really boost the music's potential and replay ability. for example, I am writing a piece for comp seminar where in the first section. I'm using strictly the whole tone scale and dotted notes. then in the next sections, the dotted notes are replaced with a more straight rhythm and it is entirely atonal. These sections sound like two completely different pieces but they work so well together. Their differences complement one another, and leaves the listener engaged.
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