Forming Ideas on Piano
- Finlay Johnston
- Apr 9, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 9, 2020
For my 4th year portfolio, I was initially unsure of what I wanted to do. I was stuck between writing a collection of duets, or doing my own take on typical Musial theatre styled songs. Since I had these two ideas but needed to make a start, I knew that either way I would be writing a duet. This was where the writing journey began, and whilst the duet was being created, I decided that I was going to go ahead with a musical theatre styled portfolio.
My writing process usually begins sitting at the piano. I play for hours on end, until the music sounds like everything is in the right place, with each section flowing into each other and making sense in my head. However, sometimes nothing can come of the piano sessions and I walk away defeated. I am pleased to say that the basic writing process for the musical theatre songs have been surprisingly painless.
Duet (I Don’t Know Why) - I spent most of the time focusing on getting a chord progression in the verse that I really liked and was less focused on the melody. The only melody that I came up with at that time was the 3 note hook and the chorus. The song started to naturally build. When the time came for me to write a bridge, I wanted it to be kind of ‘souly’ sounding and I was trying to incorporate these chromatically descending chords that I had come up with.
Then, when coming up with melodies for the verse and pre chorus (and writing lyrics), I realised that I didn’t like the basic pop sounding chords that I tried to put into the pre chorus. Since I couldn’t think of anything original sounding, I added a section where it kind of modulates to the major submediant which made me like it again. Not much changed from then.
Link to demos (https://soundcloud.com/finlay-johnston-music/sets/i-dont-know-why-demos/s-Cph5Vq8nPRp)
Bunch of Bits (Until The Dawn) - This was written in 5 stages. Stage 1 - I was playing around with this chord progression that I had come up with, which had this G pedal that had an up-beat sound.
Stage 2 - I then realised that this was starting to sound like a finale song. I wanted it to have brass, so I decided to transpose it to Bb, as it is a better key for brass instruments, and came up with a little hook that sounded brassy.
Stage 3 - whilst playing between G and Bb, I really liked the sound of the modulation when you use the common tone of D to relate them, so I came up with a introduction for it to go from a sweet melancholic emotional sound to build up to the up-beat finale.
Stage 4 - I made half of the structure of the song and stopped there because it felt like it needed another section that I couldn’t come up with at the time.
Stage 5 - came when I was writing out my piano part on my computer and realised I had forgotten to write the rest of the song. So, I listened back to my original recordings and wanted to incorporate the pedal bass that I had forgotten about, but I chose to use chromatic runs to do lots of key changes whilst have a lydian sounding chord progression for the bridge. I then thought I could do the same thing to get back into the chorus, but modulate a tone higher for the last chorus. From my experience of playing in musicals, I have listened to and analysed characteristics of musical theatre finale songs, allowing me to use this knowledge in my song writing process.
Link to demos (https://soundcloud.com/finlay-johnston-music/sets/until-the-dawn-demos/s-1BzF7Ek9BAY)
I want (The Chance) - This piece was heavily inspired by all of Alan Menkens I want songs, such as ‘Part of Your World’ from the Little Mermaid or ‘Somewhere That’s Green’ from Little Shop Of Horrors. I originally came up with the melody for the verses of my song when I was in the shower and made sure to keep singing it until I got to a piano. I then drew inspiration from ABBA’s more emotional songs and started playing a melody in 3rds and adding secondary dominant chords to get to new places. I really wanted it to end with the big belting notes accompanied by these chords which are not used at any other point in the song. I knew before I got to the piano that it was the 'I want’ song, but I wanted it to have a bit more tension and drama than the likes of ‘Part of Your World’. I wanted it to have a big dynamic range and I knew that I wanted to have a big ending,but the song still had to portray uncertainty in the music/melody/lyrics.
Some Tune (Toughest Type) - This piece was like a stream of consciousness that all happened in under an hour. I just new what I wanted it to sound like and could tell that it was going to be influenced by 'Break It Up' by Foreigner and 'Run Like The Wind' by Christopher Cross. This started with me playing about with this lovely dissonant D Maj7 b5 chord and messing around with it, playing it in different timings. I settled with 18/8 (just 6/4 but that’s not as cool sounding). All the rhythmic and harmonic dissonance made me decide there and then that it must be the kind of cool bad guy song. After that section, I started writing a chord progression that goes between D major and F# Major and then decides that it’s definitely in F# minor. The only bit that I had to think about was getting into the bridge, but I had recently watched a video of Jacob Collier talking about diminished chords (https://twitter.com/jacobcollier/status/1176163369612709888) and it made me want to try something that modulates to somewhere completely different. I went for Eb Minor. The only other adjustment I made was adding a different more fun ending to it.
Comentarios