Composition is Easy
2 05 2008[ .. reprinted courtesy The Adventures of Bloggard .. ]
Lyon Street, San Francisco, 1987: I loved the synthesizer, and found it easy to read the manuals, to fiddle with the sounds.
Playing the keyboard was something else.
I took two lessons, to learn how to move my hands on the fretboard. I began learning to read, but it was slow.
Then I happily discovered that composition is easy.
First, chords. Staying in the key of C, you just play all the white keys. If you play four notes, skipping every other white key, you get some kind of a seventh chord. If your lowest note is on the C or F note then you’ll get a major chord, which sounds very rich. If your lowest note is on the D, E, or A note you’ll get a minor chord which sounds haunted. If your lowest note is on the G or B note, you get a real sour chord.
So, for starters, you just plunk around with these seven chords, and find a series of them that sounds good. This is pretty simple. The next step is even easier.
Categories : Composition, How-to, Keyboard, Writing songs
