My Own Piece

So when I write songs, it’s like how a five-year old would. I say to myself “I want it to SOUND GOOD!” then I play something that I think will sound good and match the emotion I want to convey. Usually I can come up with something pretty quick and that I’m satisfied with. My motivation for writing this piece was that my band director asked me while in high school to write these little pieces for tuning chords and stuff. I forgot what they are called but whatever. Normally they are played in church and stuff. Anyway, so when we got this assignment I originally wanted to just do a bunch of stuff and improv but then I realized that was dumb so I didn’t, instead I did the thing that I did when performing. The piece after a while doesn’t match what I had in mind for the piece, but I blame that on time restraints, but not because of the two weeks. My time restraint was that I decided to change my idea like two days before we had to perform it, so I wrote it in one day and practiced it the other. I plan on making revisions for the final piece, if I ever get the motivation to.

What I would do differently in the piece is I would, for a piano…concerto?… is I would not just have piano arpeggios in the bass. I think they are too easy and stupid. But I did it anyway because time constraints. I LOVE using accidentals. The more accidentals in a piece within reason, the better the piece is…sometimes. I would use more accidentals in this piece if I did it again, which I will…someday. Also something that I would do differently is color my chords better. Add 6ths or major 7ths to chords and it’s a whole new feel. I did it a couple times and it might have been enough but I just really like doing that. I might also consider changing keys somewhere. I’ve studied how to change keys in a piece. You can transition to a key with a similar amount of accidentals by using a pivot chord (ie. in the key of D, you can use G to get to C or G or any key that has G. Maybe you could even go to C minor if you colored the chords nicely. I’ve never tried that but I’m going to and this is where I’m writing it down). Or you can make your key change super spontaneous. Also I have to work on transitioning between parts. Playing the intro and then playing a D minor chord into the next part isn’t good enough.

I liked my melody, but I don’t like how I shape my chords around my melody. Makes sense right? Who in their right mind finds chords that matches their melody well or vice versa? I’ve had better compositions just being in math class and writing random notes as a melody and then asking a bunch of people in calculus for letters between A and G, and then I would color the chords based on my melody. I just think it’s more fun and unpredictable. Ooo something else I liked was that I ALWAYS use the borrowed major 5th chord in a minor key (in Dm, an A major) because I think it sounds interesting, but now I’ve done it so many times that i just hate using it a little. I like it in other pieces, but I’m glad I didn’t use it in the piece.

What was easy in this piece was writing it because I did nothing spectacular, it was basic stuff that doesn’t surprise people at all. If I were better at the piano, it would have been nicer to listen to, but I’m not good so R.I.P. that idea.

Something that’s hard for me writing a piece is finding the motivation to actually take time and focus on what I’m doing. I tend to write something, say “good enough”, and move on even though I know I’m capable of writing anything I want.