The Composing Cube

Created by Vanessa Wilson Best

The Composing Cube

Heart

AROUND ME

Music concrète as a starting point is a way of composing through your own personal journey. Use your phone, or any other recording device, document sounds from your everyday life – for example brushing your teeth, a cat purring, traffic on your way to school. ach snippet of sound can be imported to a tool such as Garageband.

You can then manipulate the sound for example by:

1. Looping it
2. Pitch Shifting it
3. Adding reverb
4. Exploring other processing

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Top tip

You could use this approach alongside a visual image (a film short or animation), which provides a great opportunity to explore foley art.

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MY FEELINGS

Write from your heart and sketch some lyrics. This could be an opportunity to express your feelings. Start with a simple hook line. Once you have a few lines, pick two chords and just close your eyes and improvise a melody.

“When you try your best, but you don't succeed�When you get what you want but not what you need”

Fix You by Coldplay

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Collective Cause

Once you have processed how you feel then you can look at a collective cause.

“It's been a long�A long time coming�But I know a change gonna come”

Sam Cooke (Civil Rights Movement)

Protest, be the voice of others

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HARMONY AND TONALITY

Consonance and dissonance is the soul of music. To clash and resolve can really connect with the listener's heart. Blue notes are a really good example of this. Here are some ideas for bringing ‘heart’ to your composition:

• Add a single line melody of long, slow notes, above or below using only the notes in the chord
• Add passing notes that are dissonant (notes between) and always resolve
• Choose a contrasting instrument to suit the new melody
• Extend your chord with the occasional 7^th – this can really bring something exciting to your piece

Patterns

MUSIKALISCHES WÜRFELSPIEL 

Using a musical dice game or a game of chance is one way of generating a composition structure. This can remove anxiety around taking a risk.

Here are two online tools to help you with your random music generation:

Roll the dice

Spin the wheel

You can be as creative as you wish and assign a range of compositional tools to each set of rolls. For example:

1. Chords/motifs. For example 1 = C major, 2 = A minor, 3 = G7 etc
2. Instrumentation/Dynamics
3. Assign all 12 notes of the chromatic scale to two dice, or onto spokes of the wheel

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MELODY MAKER

Using Chrome Music Lab try experimenting with patterns, with the focus on conjunct, disjunct and sequential patterns.

Chrome Music Lab Song Maker

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MAJOR TO MINOR

Take an existing chord sequence and experiment with switching from major to minor or vice versa

Here is an example of a major song that has been switched to a minor key:

Someone Like You: Adele

And here is an example of a minor song that has been switched to a major key:

Smells Like Teen Spirit: Nirvana

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Words

What is a literary device?�A literary device is one of many techniques you can use to make your songwriting/compositions lively, have catchy lyrics, easy to understand, and entertaining. A literary device can also help to hold your listeners’ interest. Here are some examples of literary devices you may try using.

A simile is a comparison that uses like or as to show similarities between a person or thing and someone or something else for example:

�"How does it feel, To be without a home,�Like a complete unknown,�Like a rolling stone?”

Bob Dylan

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A metaphor states outright that someone or something is the object of comparison for example:

“Why does it always rain on me, is it because I lied when I was seventeen?”

Travis

“You can stand under my umbrella” Rhianna

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Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like the person, animal, action, or event that the word describes for example:

“Zing! Went the strings of my heart” The Skyliners

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Words

More literary devices

Epizeuxis is the repetition of a word for emphasis or to communicate strong emotion for example:

“Shake it off shake it off”

Taylor Swift

“Happy, Happy Happy”

Pharrell Williams

Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words in close proximity for example: 

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“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Joni Mitchell

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Assonance is similar to alliteration, but instead of consonants it uses similar vowel sounds in closely-placed words, for example:

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He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out�He's chokin', how, everybody's jokin' now”

Eminem

Hyperbole makes use of exaggeration to make a strong impact but is not meant to be taken literally, for example:

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“Take another little piece of my heart”

Janis Joplin

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“Killing me softly with his song”

Roberta Flack

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Hear It! Feel It! Explore It!

Explore a range of compositional devices by going on a journey through a range of pieces in our listening quiz!

Meet the Composers:

Thomas White

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Writing from the Heart

Meet the Composers:

Dr Simon Katan

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Writing with Patterns:

Rule-based Composition

Meet the Composers:

Roshi Nasehi

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Building Compositions Through Words

The Composing Cube

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