Even before the post has started, I hear the voice of resistance out there. "But wait," you say, "I don't know anything about music. I took two years of piano lessons when I was a kid and they didn't stick. I didn't like music class --"
I'll stop you right there and tell you that I'm not talking about writing a symphony. I'm not even talking about writing a small handbell piece or a piano arrangement. I'm talking about playing around with some notes and seeing what happens.
When I suggested in previous week that, as a way to expand your creative muscle, you play around with writing in a journal or trying some haiku, there may have been a bit of reluctance, but ultimately, it's easy to give in. Why? "Because I speak the language. I've been writing things down my whole life."
Even with drumming, as I suggested last week, it wasn't too far of a stretch. Many of us tap our feet when we're impatient or knock on a friend's door in rhythm. This was just the next stretch.
But composing??? All those black dots and lines and funny shapes ... really?
There's the first problem -- you're thinking of writing music. I'm talking about composing.
What's the difference? Composing is coming up with the music, the actual sounds in the air; writing music is about notating those sounds in a form that another musician can duplicate. I think Richard Dreyfuss' character said it best in Mr. Holland's Opus: "Playing music is supposed to be fun. It's about heart, it's about feelings, moving people, and something beautiful, and it's not about notes on a page."
We confuse playing music with reading notes, and we confuse composing with writing notes. There are people in remote villages scattered across this planet who can't read a lick of notation, yet who make amazing, moving, and beautiful music. Don't let the fact you can't read music or write music deter you from trying this.
Here's a simple way to play around with coming up with your own music, and all you need is a piano -- yes, even the piano app on your smart phone will do.
We're going to take what we tried with rhythms last week and apply it this week to notes by using a foolproof, sure-fire way to get music that doesn't sound awful. We're going to use something called a pentatonic scale.
Huh?
Look at the keyboard -- you have white keys and black keys. Look closely at the black keys -- there are groups of two and groups of three, and each group repeats the same notes, just in a higher or lower range. A set of two plus a set of three gives you five notes -- penta = five. You are going to compose using only those black keys. ANYTHING you play using just those five notes (and any of their counterparts in different registers) is going to sound good (unless you hammer all the really low ones all at the same time).
Just play around with it a bit -- play them one after another; play two at the same time; three; all five. Try different combinations. Hold notes in one hand for a long time while you change notes faster with the other hand. Switch it around. If you find a combination you like, play it again. Do it in a higher register, then a lower one. Try variations on the combination. There's no wrong way to play with a pentatonic scale -- in the end, it will all sound good to your ear.
Technically, you can pick any five notes to make a pentatonic scale, though if you branch out into this, I caution you not to pick two notes that are immediately next to each other (notice there is a white key in between every black key, so none of those notes are right beside each other).
If you're feeling really brave, abandon pentatonic scales entirely and try playing with all the white keys to see what you come up with.
Remember, the point of these exercises is not to abandon our current art, or to become an expert in a new art, but rather to play and expand and grow as Creatives -- if you're used to thinking in a purely visual or a purely linguistic medium, letting your brain play around with pitch and rhythm and dynamic can help you improve in your chosen field.
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