Compositional GPS

How does GPS work? Why do you care? What could that possibly have to do with composing?

There are stories of some composers who simply hear the music in their head and write it down as if music only they can hear is coming from some external place. Perhaps we’ve all had moments in dazed and lucid half-sleep we’ve heard music in our dreams and perhaps also been able to recall it long enough and accurately enough to write it down. But by and large, most of us are probably rarely or never touched by this kind of inspiration. Nevertheless, some of us feel the urge to interpret and reinvent the sounds we are exposed to, to internalize them and then to re-externalize them, to change them and massage them until they are our own. It is our way of coming to terms with the ideas, to make sure we understand them. We are also motivated (hopefully) from a more emotional place inside of ourselves, the need to express some feeling, how it is to experience the world from within ourselves, to connect to other people and make them feel the world the way we feel it, in a way that words leave us constantly falling short, exasperated and unsatisfied.

So we compose to share our view of the world in some deep emotional way that words cannot, and our understanding of musical concepts becomes the medium through which we are able to express these feelings. With that said, if we are composing in a sophisticated language and writing it down for others to play, their is an urgency in getting down the initial kernel of inspiration, the melody or vamp or progression or who knows what that sets the mood, the first puzzle piece, the foundation or seed from which an entire beautiful organism will grow. But once this is done, once we have laid down that portion of ourselves into sound, how do we flesh it out so that it becomes what others recognize as a developed, stimulating and complete experience? Moreover, if we don’t literally hear the music we’re writing played by a band in our minds, but are rather CONCEIVING in a more abstract way what a band might sound like playing what we write, even if we have a computer play it back to us, or if we’re sitting down at the piano and trying to piece it together as well as our keyboard skills will allow for, then how can we break down this process into an explainable and generalized strategy?

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. How does GPS know where we are? Well it works according to a mathematical principal called trilateration. The definition of trilateration according to Wikipedia is: “Trilateration is a method for determining the intersections of three sphere surfaces given the centers and radii of the three spheres.”

What this means is that your GPS device sends out a signal to 3 different satellites, and depending how long it takes for the satellites to receive this information, it can figure out it’s location based on the location of the 3 different reference points. What this means for composing is that while the sound of the whole might be elusive, it can be deduced with a great amount of accuracy based on concrete knowledge of other information. Put another way, let’s suppose that our composition is lost somewhere and we need to find it. We can slowly figure out where it is by sending out signals from various reference points. HUH?! This is a lot easier to explain when I can use my hands.

Let’s divide what we do know about our composition into different categories. There is melody, harmony, and how the two affect each other. There is rhythm and counterlines and orchestration. These are all concrete devices which have been thoroughly analyzed and written about and can be talked about and thought about with great technical precision.

Every song, as mentioned earlier, has to start with something. A melody, a progression, a bassline, a chord. If the first element is weak then the whole thing is doomed to failure. There’s no point in covering up weakness. Still, sometimes a melody only makes sense in the context of a harmonic environment which is why it pays to develop both simultaneously.

Let's imagine a situation. Maybe you discover a rhythm that you want to develop as the central motive of a song. Your first step is probably going to be to put pitches on this rhythm. Perhaps you will realize that it doesn’t work that well, and since you haven’t done a whole ton of work based on this rhythm, you will be more willing to change it. Once the two seem to be mingling effectively, it is time to bring in harmony. At this point you might find a chord which is so beautiful and ALMOST works with the melody, but the melody needs to be tweaked to make the chord work. And so since you love the chord so much you tweak the melody, or perhaps you decide the melody should take precedence and relinquish the chord for another situation at a future date. Now what you end up with is a strong starting point, and you’ve already taken care that each of the three components on your mind at this point in time are mingling in a friendly way before pumping all kinds of effort into them. Who knows if this material belongs in the beginning or middle or end of a piece?

So what next? Time to finish that melody and then move on to the chords? Hell no! Keep repeating this process of inching along every aspect of your song as a unit. You might find you get hit with a brilliant melodic gesture that takes you ahead four bars. Before asking yourself where this will lead, take care to catch up rhythm and harmony.

Of course, I hope I don’t have to point out but will anyways, this is just one of the infinite ways of creating a final product. Starting with rhythm, and then moving on to melody, or any other kind of dogmatic or rigid, routine or overly systematic approach to creation is the worst thing a person can have. I’ve been talking about Rhythm, Melody, Harmony as if they are actually distinct entities, and in some ways they are, but this is an oversimplification for the sake of education.

There are always other ways to go about things. One obvious example of not doing this is when you are putting music to preexisting and fully formed lyrics, which is a very plausible scenario. Or sometimes inspiration does hit and we feel the need to just play a whole bunch of chords and then we’re stuck wondering for days, months or years wondering what to do with them. C’est la vie.

So this is the first step of triangulation that takes place so as to locate your finished product. But in fact, this is only one leg of an even greater triangulation that involves orchestration and emotion. You know have something that looks like a lead sheet.

That’s great, but that’s still not a composition. A composition is a thing of beauty, an interpretation of the material. Jazz musician’s often do this through improvising (although it’s a wonder that so few consciously use compositional tools when doing so). But as a composer/arranger, this means creating a sound, choosing voicings, perhaps inserting countermelodies and dividing up the material between various musicians or sections depending on the size of the group. And so begins a new form of triangulation.

Another example of a possible “satellite” to help you find your finished product, one that probably should take part in the process from the beginning, is if you’re working for a very limiting kind of instrumentation, for instance solo guitar. If your piece is going to be effective, it’s entire conception and execution must obey the guitar and all its complications and quirks. I’ve been quite guilty of working something out on piano and then transforming it into a completely mediocre or just downright bad guitar arrangement because it just didn’t belong on the guitar. No way to learn like the hard way.

Within the act of orchestration, there is another form of triangulation. Do I have a big band in my head? No. But I have things I’ve heard before as reference points. I understand how certain instruments blend, how certain arranging techniques sound, I understand how chords sound, and how certain voicings of even the most basic chords can actually create a fair amount of tension due to their intervallic content. All these things I use to judge the situation while arranging a piece, although how it will truly sound I don’t know until I hear it, I can only approximate using the knowledge I do have. And sometimes I will fail miserably while others will be totally amazing.

But what about modern music? Music which functions more according to timbre and tone and dynamics and who knows what? I’ve already created all kinds of artificial barriers for how my composition will sound by assuming that it will have tempo, rhythm, melody and harmony. There is lots of music, or at this point perhaps sound art is in some ways more accurate, which attempts to challenge these fundamental principles of what we traditionally consider music. Well, perhaps some day when I sit down to compose, I will be at a point where I can cleverly and effectively do so as well. But in the end, I imagine at this point in time that my abstract approach, my thought process about how different elements of a piece of art interact and need to be considered by the artist during the act of composition, will remain unaltered. Although perhaps a time in my life will come when I feel a need even to challenge this. But if I ever get lost, I’ll always have GPS to get me out of it.