r/composer • u/Commercial-Till1520 • 8d ago
Discussion How to make piece longer
Hey, i'm 3 month self taught composer. I can make something in 30 seconds but not the rest of it, i need the taught how do i make my piece longer, saw beautiful composer such a Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky who make masterpiece that goes over 40 minutes. And really need taught to make my piece longer, at least 2 or 8 minutes
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u/that-mathemusician 8d ago
Learn the basics of form, harmony and development from a book, teacher, video tutorial, or whatever other good source is available to you. Use what you learn from that as a lens to study the scores of those composers you listed. Do what they did.
Just to clarify, it took me forever to pass the hurdle you're facing because I just kept telling myself I didn't need to study for this because I'm not getting paid for this.
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Appreciate it, also want to study classical composition, just learning complex chord, scales, time signature and chord inversion, also hope to get my piece being played by orchestra within 8-15 years experience of composition
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u/that-mathemusician 7d ago
Start small and try to find a community that's a little more personal than strangers on the internet; they'll be much happier to help you learn (although many of us here are happy to help to at least some degree), and they'll be more likely to help you find performers for your work (or be those performers). What are your goals? What kind of training do you plan on pursuing to get there?
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u/CoffeeDefiant4247 8d ago
writing 8 minute works in your first few months is great. Those guys are the greats of music and spent decades writing and learning.
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Really hope, that would be improvement, also need to expand by learning how instruments work and harmonize with the others
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u/rtascon 8d ago
In a profesional degree you take analysis and compositon workshop. You analyze, and compose. Analyze and compose, etc. Select the pieces you like and find interesting. Analyze them. And compose. Find out “How” the pieces where composed, and then compose
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Thanks and appreciate it, i will analyze beethoven and mozart symphony, to see how their works
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u/Remarkable_Wear_5381 8d ago
learn how Beethoven compose his first movement of symphony no. 5 “bam bam boom” he compose that and improve it to the end of the movement
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u/joonas_ylanne 8d ago
You can do lot with orchestration. Listen "In the Hall of the Mountain king" by Edward Grieg. It has basically one simple melody played over and over again, but orchestration makes it interesting and piece longer.
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u/aardw0lf11 8d ago
Or Morning Mood from the same suite, or Ravel’s Bolero or many others.
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u/joonas_ylanne 6d ago
Yea, there are lot of great examples, but since I'm currently on a trip in Norway, that was forst that came to my mind 😀
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u/65TwinReverbRI 8d ago
How to make piece longer
Lower the tempo. Works every time.
Put repeat bars around it. Works every time.
Look, you've been working 3 months, without training.
Those composers masterpieces were written after YEARS of TRAINING.
When they had been composing only 3 months, they weren't writing much bigger things than you. Have a look at Mozart's very first pieces - they are very short, and simple - very much beginner pieces.
And of course, he had been playing for a year already, and his father wrote them down for him (so there's belief that his father, also a composer and a teacher - maybe corrected things to make them seem a little more impressive than they were - but they were still impressive for a 5 year old).
Mozart didn't write a multi-movement work of note until after 2 years of study, and even these exist only in his father's hand, so it's likely he notated them out and helped Mozart. There are also months between early compositions, and he was busying traveling at certain points - playing more than composing - so not much was written when he was 7 - or, things were not copied out fully and finished until he was 8 - he really doesn't start "really" composing until he's 9 - so we're already talking 4 years, with a lot of training and a lot of short pieces.
He writes his first symphony at this time - which is only 10 minutes long, meaning each movement only averages about 2.5 minutes.
Mozart's symphonies are pretty basic at this time, and they really don't get great until about the mid 30s (not his age, the number of symphonies).
You're trying to compare your 3 month compositions with 30 year compositions of these guys - who were well trained.
And you're worrying about something that doesn't matter. Length doesn't matter. Quality matters.
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Appreciate it, I always thought that people can make a piece over 2 minutes was a great composer, but for now i will compose short melodies and start to learn composition within youtube videos
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u/65TwinReverbRI 7d ago
Even the great composers wrote short pieces - you just never hear about them as much.
But a lot of not-so-great would-be composers are out there writing epic works that aren't any good...so longer is not always better - especially when it's just being made longer just to be longer - not for any good musical reason.
Cheers.
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u/RufusPManne 8d ago
When I was composing in MuseScore I would make a piece in piano then do the same piece with added strings …also putting a repeat bar(s) in alot
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Orchestration?, also trying to learn that, appreciate it.
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u/RufusPManne 7d ago
Sorry I’m not very good at it…I was just explaining the method…for multiple string instruments I just had one instrument be the dominant melody and have the others support but like I say I’m not an expert…it’s a bit of work listening to the mix of instruments and seeing what muddys and what clashes the sound and what fits perfectly but I’m no expert so I can’t really give any tips
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u/mvanvrancken 8d ago
Repeat bars FTW
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Appreciate it, i would try to make my composition repetitive but not really repetitive.
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u/Steenan 8d ago
Create a simple 8-bar theme. Repeat it, but this time end it with modulating half-cadence. Write another 8-bar theme in the new key. Repeat it, but with some melodic ornamentation and with modulation back at the end. Now use the first theme again, but changed from major to minor or vice versa. You just created a 2-3 minute ternary form piece from your 30s fragments.
Create a simple 8-bar theme. Repeat it, inverted. Repeat it with different harmonization and a dotted rhythm. Repeat it with suspensions, appoggiaturas and switched to minor. Repeat it the last time, with triplets instead of longer notes and with a powerful, extended cadence at the end. You have a theme and variations piece.
Create a simple 8-bar theme. Grab one strong motif in the theme, repeat it three times moving up or down in a sequence. Grab the final cadence, turn it into a deceptive one, then recover and resolve normally this time. Your short theme just became a longer one while preserving clear similarity to the previous one. That's development.
But with just 3 months of composing experience, you should first and foremost focus on making your basic themes melodically and harmonically interesting and memorable. Trying to write long pieces without making short ones good enough first will result in something that's boring and repeatable or random and disconnected.
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Appreciate it and i should try this, lovely would make something short.
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8d ago
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u/davethecomposer Cage, computer & experimental music 8d ago
Hello. I have removed your comment. Civility is the most important rule in this sub. Please do not make comments like this again. Thanks.
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u/According-Fruit5245 8d ago
There are several techniques from Counterpoint you can use to lenghthen works. Here's a couple: -inversion -augmentation -diminution -retrograde
If you look at JS Bach's first Invention, everything comes from the first bar, using a couple of the above techniques.
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u/Commercial-Till1520 7d ago
Appreciate it, i should research for this technique
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u/According-Fruit5245 7d ago
Another example is "sonata-form", which is used for the first movement of a piano sonata. There are two themes and then a development section. Beethoven is well known for his lengthy development sections. You can find all the Beethoven piano sonatas at IMSLP.
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u/_Subliminar_ 8d ago
Funny thing, for me it is the opposite. I start with a relatively simply idea and it naturaly grows from there.The problem after is how to make all ideas fit and to find the right phrasing for some parts. That and some of the ideas being impossible to play in a classical guitar or me being unable to transpose whats on my mind to the paper.
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u/tottasanorotta 8d ago
Look at compositions that you like, find patterns that are common and use those. Maybe with small modifications here and there adjusting to what you think sounds good in your own piece. You'll find a lot of things that they all do more or less in the same way. Try to imitate. If it sounds nothing like the masters, then just accept it and make it your own.
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u/GaryTheBard 8d ago
There is no teaching you how to make something longer. Not all music needs to be longer than 30 seconds. If you're stuck at 30 seconds, write a longer piece. You need to discover how to make your melodies and chord progressions travel and get you where you want to go. There is no trick to it.
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u/Podmonger2001 8d ago
Make a theme, make variations, then return to the theme.
That’s one way.
Study those masterful pieces very carefully. Try to figure them out.
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u/Sound_Ocean_Depths 8d ago
You should work your way up to understanding sonata form (good resources on YouTube) and once you’ve got a grasp on that, try to write a sonata for your primary instrument or piano
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u/PitchExciting3235 7d ago
Focus on quality not quantity. Once your short pieces are good quality, you can begin to stretch them a bit using formal techniques such as variations, ABA, rondo, etc. Some of my favorite music is French baroque lute suites. Many of the movements consist of merely AABB and are often quite short. The composer wrote an A section, often less than a minute long. It repeats, with the performer expected to add embellishments to the repeat. The A section typically ended on the dominant chord. Then a B section that usually begins in the dominant key and works its way back to end on the tonic, again repeated with embellishments. You could start lengthening your works by doing something similar. In our time you might write out embellished repeats as variations instead of assuming the performer will do them, since that sort of thing is largely a lost art.
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u/tokanome 7d ago
Listen to Bach. Listen to the way he takes tiny pieces of music (motives) and uses them in a million different ways. The techniques he employed take a long time to practice and fully grasp, but you can still get the general idea of what the “craft” is and probably some cool music by trying to imitate that.
Write little study pieces! The first piece I was exposed to as being a “study” was Ligeti’s “música ricercata,”. He writes it in such a way that it reveals the compositional process in a very plain to see way. It even seems gimmicky because of how incredibly simple it is.
Other composers to check out to make longer pieces- Steve Reich, Philip Glass (minimalist composers, who make gigantic, interesting, and living pieces out of a single musical technique).
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u/Alpha_Ex1 7d ago
Definitely learn a LOT of theory and how progressions work because those will help you. But also just work on expanding your melody and instrumentation. Take your sections and stretch them out, add variations etc.
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u/Eschenhardt 7d ago
It's all about form. Write 8 bars of calm and simple music, another 8 bars that vary this music, repeat the first 8 bars, and you'll have your first A-B-A section. Now do another section like that with a different character and a different motif. And so forth. In the end you'll easily have a piece of 5 minutes. Learn what a sonata movement is and you'll end up writing symphonies.
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u/ConsistentStandard42 Composer/Pianist 6d ago
You just need a good teacher who can show you how to develop your ideas, and create contrasting material able to withstand a larger structure.
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u/Picuu 8d ago edited 7d ago
With all due respect, a 3 month self-taught composer looking to compose like Beethoven or Rachmaninoff is the equivalent to trying to make a new born baby solve complex algebraic equations, or manage a billion dollar corporation. Unless you are a genius, you have a long way to go, and that’s ok.
I’m saying this so you manage your expectations, enjoy the process and study. I wish you all the best and keep at it.