Making Music Made Easy As Soup

Musical Synthesis

This is the practical aspect of making music. We know the basics of how each element of the soup works, now lets try making some music. Firstly, let's open a new project in our sequencer, or get a blank canvas, as I like to call it. This where we gather our creative energy; this is the calm before the storm.

Think about what your are about to create. Try to get your thoughts and feelings together. Concentrate. Now there are three ways you can begin your piece of art:

• You can start by making some cool ideas and then trying to fit them together,
• You can plan out the whole song including what your trying to say, how it's structured, which instruments you will use, or
• You can do a bit of both.

Cool ideas

For me, this means sitting down at the piano and just playing whatever comes to my finger tips; usually mostly rubbish, but sometimes, just sometimes, there is a grain of magic. Your job is to identify an capture that magic. Whether you sing, play violin, or even drums, you need some little bit of magic. It can be a bit of a melody, a bit of a harmonic progression, a cool rhythm, or even just a feeling - anything.

Structure

There are several things that you could do here:

• Choose how many verses, chorus', bridges, interludes, etc. you will have e.g. Verse Verse Choruse Verse Chorus Bridge Chorus Chorus Outro (A typical Song)
• Decide the harmonic progression e.g. C C C C F F C C G F C G (A 12 bar blues)
• Decide which instruments you will have an what purpose they will serve e.g. Rock drum kit for rhythmic drive.

Composing the Parts

So, you've come up with some ideas, or you've planned out the whole song...now what do you do? You start composing the parts. This may sound scary to some of you, but all it takes is practice. I don't know many people who can play 33 different instruments well enough to be able to compose a good part for each instrument. I don't know many people who can play 33 different instruments, full stop.
So, what this means, is that you are going to need to learn how to write for different instruments. This is most definitely the hardest part of making music. There is no easy answer, however there are a few basic tricks that you can use as starting points.

Next: Learn about Drums.