How to go from short idea to full song? Repetition and Development discussion

General Music Discussion Songwriting
#1

EDIT: this topic is about working on a musical idea that you already have. I also opened another topic to discuss how to come up with initial musical ideas in the first place

Hey All!

In the last couple of years I’ve been more and more interested in trying to write my own music.

I don’t know if you can relate to this, but I can often come up with a 10-15s musical idea that I like (could be a riff, melody or chord progression). However, it takes me forever to expand this into a full song (I’m talking weeks/months, with many projects just being abandoned after a while).

As I look at music composition lessons here and there, the key ideas that keep popping up are:

  • Repetition - try to repeat the core idea (and variations thereof) in many places throughout the piece.
  • Development (AKA variation)- create variations of the original idea that are different enough to create interest, but similar enough that the piece feels cohesive.

Easier said that done of course :slight_smile:

I’d be interested in hearing people’s approaches to generate variations of an initial theme.

Some fairly basic things that come to mind:

  • Keep the rhythm but change the notes
  • Keep the notes but change the rhythm
  • Move the same idea through different chords and/or keys
  • Do call / response thing, where the first part of the idea stays the same, but different repetitions have different endings

Finally a couple of videos demonstrating examples of this:

Writing a full song from a simple riff (Gear Gods channel):

Writing a cinematic tune from a simple motif + constant modulation (Guy Michelmore channel):

They make it look quite easy… but for me this is still very difficult to do :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

1 Like
How do you get started writing a song?
Writing music with consistent feel (maybe not the right word)
#2

In keeping with the theme of giving yourself constraints:

I’m really into using AABA form, particularly because it can be “nested” – you can think of individual verses of a song as being in AABA form, but also can think of (verse chorus) (verse chorus) (bridge) (verse chorus) as an AABA form. It’s all over popular music. Choosing a structure ahead of time really helps provide, well, structure, and there’s nothing keeping you from changing your mind later if you decide you don’t like the structure you originally chose.

I also think that it’s more difficult to hold the listener’s attention with a long instrumental track than a song with vocals, unless you’re going full sonata form with fancy common-practice voice leading and all :sweat_smile:

1 Like
#3

I’m never one to throw away options, but if someone told me to pick just one compositional device in this realm, I’d pick this one. It was good enough for Beethoven

The entire first theme is just that “short short short long” motif.

Brahms was a huge admirer of Beethoven. It really shows here, one of the most beautiful orchestral pieces ever:

His motif is “long short long” and he gets tons of mileage out of it. I should tag this piece in that other thread on modulation technique because he is just killing it here.

This same rhythm, different notes approach also took us to a galaxy far far away

His motif is “short short short long long”. The theme that plays from around :08 to :17 seconds is composed of 4 phrases of this motif (though the final one is truncated…just short short short long). Phrases 2 and 3 are a complete repetition. After that, the entire 4 phrase melody is repeated, because…why change a good thing? :slight_smile:

And on the lighter side of things:

The first theme is pretty much all “short short short long”. To give it more motion at the end of the phrase (around 0:23) on the lyrics “I wonder why I didn’t see it there before” there is a clever trick of keeping the same motif, but immediately starting it over…so we don’t really get the “long” anymore. It’s still there though, we can feel it. But at that point it’s just 3 immediately repeating groups of “short short short short”. This gives the phrase a good forward motion, adding a little intensity.

I must be revisiting my child hood today, but here’s one more

The entire melody is the motif “short short short short long” - It. never. changes. That’s the whole tune.

Pretty brilliant. Wanna write something that sticks in people’s minds? Keep it simple and repeat lots of things :slight_smile: Obviously the more interesting things we do with the harmony will help, and structure is critical. But it all starts with a good motif.

3 Likes
#4

I ask myself, what is this? A verse? Chorus? Something else entirely

If it sounds like a verse that I know I’ll want vocals on, I’ll start thinking what sort of chorus do I want. I’ll experiment with chord progressions in the same key that sound… like a chorus.

Once I have the chorus, I’ll work on connecting the verse and chorus. Does it need a short pre chorus transition? I’ll keep experimenting until I have the parts connecting smoothly.

Once there is a verse and chorus, that’s a lot of the work for a standard structure song already done. After this I’ll experiment with variation in the verses etc etc

I’ll usually want a bridge/middle 8 section too.

If it’s not a standard structure song then I have to think a bit differently, but I always ask myself, what is this?

2 Likes
#5

I think the biggest thing people have to come to grips with is that they are not all going to be winners. Feel free to write a subpar or boring song if it means the difference between that and nothing at all.

5 Likes
#6

In a similar vein, I feel like it’s a good exercise to push through writing a complete piece when you feel like it isn’t going where you want it to. I’ve had a lot of ideas I like come from just forcing myself to continue working on a piece I feel like isn’t going anywhere at first, and that could either result in that piece coming together or I can use the portions I like as the basis of a different piece.

2 Likes