Musical Forms - Do You Consciously Use Them?

I must say, I am impressed and delighted by the depth and thoughtfulness of these posts! It is clear that many folks here care deeply about their art and I take considerable comfort in that.

 

For me, part of what fosters the creative process is the dialectic "play" between seemingly opposite poles. A first stab at describing some of the more common dichotomies might include (with some overlap):

 

constraint vs. freedom

tradition vs. originality

respect vs. rebellion

predictability vs. surprise

logic vs. intuition

planned vs. spontaneous

sectionalized forms vs. narrative (through-composed) forms

the artist at the center vs. the music (art) at the center

simplicity vs. complexity

vernacular vs. unfamiliar

sensational vs. subtle

"purity" vs. eclecticism

visceral (body-based) vs. intellectual

cultural filters: one's own "in-group" (tribe) vs. outsiders

head vs. hand vs. heart

 

Just a start. What think you?

I consciously try to stay away from forms. Well at least that's what I set out to do, but more often than not I end up coming with something that will relate back to them in some way.

 

You can pretty much break almost any song down to the fundamentals and this will reveal that they in fact do relate to the basic forms of composition.

 

But in essence, at least they can be disguised to sound a bit different.

 

If I'm attempting to write a commercial song, I will use the basic form as a start point and try to branch from there, but not to far since i want something commercial. But any other type of composition is usually based on the concept of..."lets see if I can do something I haven't done before."

Form is really important to me.

An idea or inspiration emerges from my journal and becomes a number of (hopefully) uncensored phrases. The phrases can then be shaped, teased, cajoled into a Form that is natural to the themes, their progression, and tone of the work at hand.

I play with the concepts until I have a good solid reference track or two ( or as needed). Each phrase is visually accessible. One line, one phrase - pen and paper . One phrase, one region - colored in Logic.

The "Form" frees me creatively and in production. Creatively I know where to clarify or toss and re-examine. Sometimes I find the basis of new projects. Sometimes it reshapes itself right before my eyes. Form really helps me to approach my music with intuition. I can "view" the potential whole with words like receptivity, metaphor, attune to, relaxed focus...

I have a music coach. Providing him with a clear Form gets us on the "same page" for our conversations. He'll sit with something and then phone me.

I have a production coach. Ditto.

The Form keeps our perspective clear and allows us keep a project "alive".

 

I study a "tune" by writing a response to it. The reference the form provides helps me scope out my perceptions and experiences, and hopefully dialogue intelligently.

 

However I have yet to set out to write a Rondo or a Sonata. I likely won't write a Haiku or a Sonnet. It feels like I am trying to presuppose the outcome and force it.

 

I love this ...

 

cheers.

Nublu:

 

Thanks for your very eloquent post. I think you've summed up the real-world usefulness of form in music as beautifully as I've ever read. Bravo.

 

 

A couple of unrelated thoughts:

 

1. Composer Erik Satie was once criticized for writing music that lacked discernible form (I think by Debussy(?)). Satie's response? A short work entitled: "Piece in the Form of a Pear". You gotta love a guy like that!

 

 

2. A friend and I are collaborating on an improvised electronics (Kyma)/trumpet duo for a performance in January. Oddly enough, after two "rehearsals", we've played/composed rather few notes to date. What's taken up the most of our planning time so far? Why, form, of course!

 

To be sure, we could just do an open "free" improvisation, but in this case, we want more control over the length and the dramatic shape of the piece. Consequently, we've spent a fair amount of time sketching out different concepts, shapes and structures in which to pour the musical content. (We also try to imagine the "mood" and dramatic unfolding of time each section.)

 

At our last session, we finally came to a form and contour we both liked: it seems to have the dramatic possibilities we've been after. Now we're both hard at work, independently developing musical and timbral ideas for our next get-together. From there, we'll try out different things, share opinions, see what works -- and what doesn't. After we start putting the material together, we may well find that the musical ideas we've chosen have their own ideas about how they'd like to be arranged!

 

I bring this up because I think musical "form" can be applied for different purposes. (Nublu reminds me of this fact.) I think many creatives fear that imposing "form" will automatically stifle their creativity & freedom.

 

Yes, trying to shoehorn your ideas into some predetermined form can easily kill a good musical idea. Used wisely, however, a form can serve as starting point from which you can branch in an infinite number of directions.

 

I honestly can't think of a piece or essay I've ever written that didn't eventually discover its own form. Yet, each began with some a priori structural skeleton that held everything in place while I dabbled with the details.

 

 

Does anyone else work like this? I'm curious, do any of you who work primarily by intuition ever find, after you've finished, that you've also created an interesting form as a byproduct? If so, do you ever find yourself re-using elements of that form in other songs/pieces?

Nublu:

 

 

2. A friend and I are collaborating on an improvised electronics (Kyma)/trumpet duo for a performance in January.

 

Hey, this sounds cool, i'd like to see this. where are you playing? probably not near cincinnati huh?

 

I love this thread, I feel like I'm back in college. nice intellectual conversation about music.

probably not near cincinnati huh?

Nah. We'll be quietly interacting in the ever-present moisture of a Pacific Northwest winter. (Probably indoors though. Easier to find power outlets.)

let us know where and when!

let us know where and when!

If it doesn't suck, maybe I'll post a recording afterwards. (If it does suck, I'll just describe it here.) The live performance is part of a quirky little Monday afternoon concert series we have here in Eugene for (mostly) jazz and "classical" music geeks. True to contemporary attention spans, the concerts are scheduled from 11:54 am to 12:08 pm (although have been known to go over the time limit on occasion. Strangely enough, we get pretty decent little audiences. It's fun way to try out new material.

 

If this ever blossoms into a full-blown concert tour to Seattle (and various I-5 rest stops) I'll be sure to alert you and put you down for a T-shirt. Size?

While I'm not denying the importance of forms, what I did neglect to say earlier is I often use them as my starting point and then try to push boundaries from there on.

 

My goal isn't to simply regurgitate ideas that have been around for the last several hundred years, but to explore, and try to innovate new ideas.

 

But stray too far and it does more closely resemble chaos, so there is some practical limit of how far you can deviate from form acceptably.

 

I'm just not interested in doing the expected, like millions of composers before me, I want to explore new ground create new directions and evolve as a writer rather than become stale and simple stick to what I know.

 

Beethoven was radical in this sense as were a lot of Jazz musicians. And while there was a fundamental core stringing ideas together to make them more palatable, there were also undeniably a lot of innovation done on their behalf.

Well I don't write classical music, so I'll never use Rondo or Symphony or Fugue forms....

 

i guarantee that even if you don't know you do.... you do

 

Personally - i wrote music in a band when I was in high school, and we would always use form in a sense of - where does this song need to go, and when do we need to restate what we've already said (musically - lyrics always came last).

 

And then i went off to get my Bachelors in Music Tech and Classical Guitar.... lo and behold I learned all about form and ran through thier hoops only to come our at the end and realize that I still write the same way. To me it's all about what the music wants to say and not some form. Most things in Music Theory are discovered after the fact - any composition student will tell you that because thier composition teachers are able to pick things out of thier music - in harmonic structure, macro/micro form, melodic motive repition, etc... that they never CONCIOUSLY put there in the first place.

 

But man knowing the form can make writing a piece of music a little bit easier when all you have to do is fill in the blank

I totally agree on this. You really need to use your emotions and instinct to get you to the right chord, note , crescendo. I think the stuff that's written down as "the rules" is an inevitable outcome due to years and years of research and experiment on what works and what doesn't work. However, when it comes to say, film & TV music, you can't sit in front of your keyboard to score for a drama sequence and first say: "well, I'll do this in rondo" , you need to score to picture, the story of the film, show or what ever it is leads the music.

 

Sorry for going on about film music.

As a musician, I've always wondered about the death of creativity.

 

Eventually, I imagine someone will be able to write a program that follows a form and a key, while randomizing rhythm and progression... etc.

 

What happens when computers write the songs for us?

 

::foot in mouth::

What happens when computers write the songs for us?

 

They won't.

 

1) There is way to much submission in the thought. I know too many alive, smart, and simply cognizant people. No way. They showed up to play. What kind of Mastery are new tools going to garner? What kind of participation?

2) Creativity, fun, passion, alertness, magic, don't"work" that way. A smile doesn't work that way.

3) Consciousness doesn't work that way.

4) The art lives in what one brings to the instrument, which then finds a new home in one's audience. (oh ya, them guys)

5) You won't get laid that way.

 

Its simple really.

Definitely. I can't imagine any scenario in which it would be beneficial to have computers write songs for us. For artists or fans. Just takes all the fun/meaning out of it.

 

I just wonder as computers make "music composition" easier and easier.... what will happen. For example....

 

1)First there is a drummer who plays a drum set.

 

2)Then there are programs where drums can be played through midi keyboard

 

3)After that comes the ability to program drums one beat at a time, so you dont have to even be able to play an instrument. (Although it is still very much a creative process)

 

4) We have software such as ultrabeat... that can randomize gate and velocity of say, 16th note hi hat patterns, basically composing this aspect of the beat for us.

 

5) Groove templates, ability to copy and paste rythmic patterns to different instruments, advanced quantization and swing applications, loops, samples.

 

I guess the real answer is that when we do too little of the work and computers take over.... you get these boring songs we hear every day, composed entirely of overused apple loops by someone with no real musical talent.

 

I think my real question is, if there is truly a "science" behind music, and these general formulas can be applied to a program... how good can/will computer generated music become?

 

Although I can't imagine machines will ever do a very great job at writing lyrics, and without that...

 

Sorry If I've rambled.

I disagree, I think people will become computers