The composition process: from an idea to a song.
Over the past few weeks, I have worked alongside my classmate, Alyana, to compose two pieces of music in our music class. We created one song in the Lo-Fi genre (this is somewhat of a new genre), and another in the pop genre. To explain how we created a Lo-Fi song, let me take you back to the lockdown that we all, unfortunately, experienced back in March. With the fact that I was stuck at home, with nothing to do besides schoolwork (and admittedly, Netflix), I was curious in delving into the compositional side of music. I listened to many different genres and styles, and suddenly a genre had captured my attention. This so happened to be Lo-Fi. Lo-Fi is a style of music that is generally classified as a 'study' type beat, where there are no lines that are sung, instead, the emphasis is on the instrumental aspects of the piece.
I began listening to Lo-Fi songs and decided that I would like to attempt to create my own piece. Over the course of the lockdown, I managed to generate five Lo-Fi-themed pieces. Quite honestly, I never thought I would turn one of these compositions into an assessment once the barriers were lifted. Once we were all settled back into our school-life routines, our music group had a talk about compositions and Alyana and I decided to pick up this standard. It must have come spontaneously in class, but I mentioned the fact that I had created some Lo-Fi pieces over the lockdown. This mention would soon become a completed composition. I chose the best song I felt I had created over lockdown, which had a vinyl-type synthesizer, bassline, and some effects I thought really suited with the overall Lo-Fi feel. Alyana had a listen to it and then added in her own ideas to the piece. She had implemented her own drum beats, instrumental loops, and added in an overlaying vocal commentary (which I felt really improved the song). We tweaked the song bit by bit, and eventually, we came up with the Lo-Fi piece that is below.
Link to the song:
The second piece that we decided to work on had a pop style and I implemented some 'jazzy' chords to make this stand out from the common pop song. I started off by finding a key that sounded nice. This ended up being Ebmaj (E flat major). I then built a chord progression based on the chords that are in this key (don't worry, I won't go into music theory here). I then came up with a progression I liked and added a chorus and bridge to the song. I also added string instruments to the piece and tweaked some chords to not make it repetitive and boring. Alyana then created her own melody and added her own lyrics to the piece - which she then recorded with the original music. This song has the story of a lover who is leaving another, and after realisation, the friend that is left behind eventually 'let's go'. This song was inspired by the song Lost in Japan by Shawn Mendes. The jazz-type chords stood out to me, so I decided to try and compose a pop song with jazz chords in its structure. The completed second song is below.
Link to the song:
I am pleased with how both of these compositions came out, and I really enjoyed the process of creating and 'moulding' the pieces into the final songs that can be heard through the two links. As a bonus, we will hopefully be attaining six credit towards NCEA level 2 music, but I would compose anytime regardless if credits were involved! This process has made me enjoy composing more and I am looking forward to the future pieces that I will be creating in the future.
