Music Composition

My ideal career is to write music for video game or movies. A lot of the jobs in video

game music require you to be a musician, along with being technologically inclined. You have to

be able to write, then create the music on a computer.

My project focused around composing an original piano piece. My facilitator was quite

close at hand. Mrs. Wallace, my chorus teacher, has played piano for over 25 years, and is an

astonishing musician. Even after four years I am surprised by her piano abilities on an almost

daily basis.

As soon as I sat down to start composing, I realized that Mrs. Wallace wouldn’t be able

to help me as much as I had imagined. My song started out as a couple of seconds of piano that I

personally thought sounded nice. I also realized quite quickly that, whenever you write a song, it

becomes much more difficult to write purposefully. Inspiration was key to every single second

that I spent at a piano. I could sit down to start writing and be stuck there for hours, but if I was

suddenly struck with inspiration and I got to a piano fast enough, I could write a large portion in

less than a few minutes. But seeing as how the song had to be completed for Senior Boards, I

could not sit around and wait for the entire song to come to me. I ended up having to write a few

small sections with no inspiration whatsoever, and you can hear some sections of the song that

seem weaker and less emotional than the bulk of it.

My reason for composing music is to someday write music for video games. It has

always fascinated me that the music from video games can so fluidly change from calm,

“travelling” music, to fast-paced “fighting” music. Most games use repetitive loops that tend to

get stuck in the player’s head. Some music gets so ingrained in a player’s brain that they will

instinctively start to expect something dangerous, without any other signs, often times without

even consciously realizing what they are waiting for or why. When composing a song, especially

for video games, you have to pay very specific attention to every detail. There is a reason for

every note’s placement. Music is meant to influence people’s emotions, both positively and

negatively. There are basic techniques behind creating every kind of mood imaginable.

You can start by choosing either a major or minor scale, which is what the whole song

will be based around. Major scales are generally happier, while minor scales are sad or creepy.

You can be even more technical to change the song in a more subtle way by the way you shape

your chords. Some chords are naturally happier sounding, but when you change one note the

slightest bit, it can change the whole chord drastically. Another thing to take into account is the

fact that not every chord is singular. Previous chords have an effect on how the next chord

sounds. A series of major chords will sound happy, while a few major chords with some minor

chords thrown in can often start to shift the feeling towards a creepy mood.

One of my biggest problems was my lack of piano ability. I was a guitarist previously,

and when I decided to write a piano song, I was completely out of my element. Though

throughout the experience, I have discovered that I like playing piano much more than guitar. I

started with an extremely basic knowledge of music theory, so I tried to read up and educate

myself on the subject. I could hardly remember what I read until I put it into practice; using a

piano while reading helps a lot when learning about music theory. Since I had never played

piano before, I decided to find a song to try to improve my playing; which led me to a Modern

Classical type of music. I learned to play a song called I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi. His style

of music actually inspired a lot of my own song, the odd shifts and the long pauses in between

different sections. The Modern Classical feel really spoke to me and made me feel that my music

was much more expressive. After completing the song, though it was much shorter than most

instrumental pieces, I felt that it was true to the style that I had envisioned it as being.