How to improve my composition skills?

[Thiefinger]

 

To improve your composition skills, do something practical. Write some music. Often. If need be, read up on some theory, but then make some music with that theory.

Actually yes, that's the best advice: write something every day.

 

 

 

Yeah. A broad generalization but: making music makes you better at making music. Studying theory makes you better at understanding theory.

[LimpyLoo]

I think the big problem is the misunderstanding of Theory: what it does, what it doesn't do (and isn't meant to do), and where it comes from.

 

Yes absolutely make music everyday. Absolutely. But there are things that you will simply never stumble upon on your own.

Luckily, certain people have spent their lives sifting through The Canon in the pursuit of understanding. (And of course The Canon is simply what musicians throughout history have brought to the table.)

 

Unfortunately, most musicians think that Theory is this cold dead academic wankery that has nothing to do with artistic expression (and this insidious idea gets perpetuated everywhere you look).

 

There are Expressive Tools that you can learn and understand in 10 minutes that you would never ever discover on your own: Dynamics, accents, grace notes, appoggiaturas, the ineffable lilt of Brazilian and African percussionists, bitonality, Carnatic ornamentation, polyrhythms, glissando, the "tresillo" at the root of nearly all Western Music, voice-leading, recursive non-diatonic functional harmony, how to develop a motif, ideas about looseness and timefeel, counterpoint, etc etc

 

These are all beautiful, powerful tools that nobody uses, because everyone has been sold this idea that Theory is this sterile, stodgy old nonsense that has no purpose outside of Academia.

 

This whole "yeah sure learn Theory as a sort of intellectual exercise but the real learning comes when you open up dat piano roll" attitude needs to die a painful death, and soon.

 

 

(Sorry, but this shit rustles every last one of my jimmies)

[TubularCorporation]

I was going to recommend Instrumentation and Orchestration by Alfred Blatter as a good way to learn more about traditional orchestral composition techniques that are also relevant to other kinds of arrangement and production (even though it doesn't cover that directly) but it turns out it's gotten a lot more expensive since I got it in college. Still, if you see a copy that's actually realistically priced or can get it from a library it's worth checking out. I think the first edition is cheaper, too.