- Hi, in this film we're just going to consider
one way of going about composition.
And we're going to think about how to start
from a given chord scheme.
Because one way of going about the job of composing,
whatever style you want to write in,
is to come up with a melody,
and then to think about
what the chords might be that fit it.
But another way of doing things is
to start the other way around,
come up with the chord scheme that works
and then work out what you're going
to do with the chord scheme.
So just as a straight forward example of this,
I've got a chord scheme on the board.
We'll work in C major for the time being, as well,
just because it's the easiest key to think in.
But of course you could transfer this
to any other major key,
or to any other minor key.
So, chord I followed by chord VI,
followed by chord IV, followed by chord V,
followed by chord I.
Or to put that another way,
a chord of C, followed by a chord of A minor,
followed by a chord of F,
followed by a chord of G,
followed by a chord of C.
And you'll notice that, in the light of the earlier films
on this topic, we've got three chords on here
that are primary chords.
I, IV, V, I.
They're quite strong chords.
VI is one of our secondary chords,
because in a major key, VI is one of those minor chords.
You'll remember that in a major key,
I, IV, and V are major chords,
but chords II and III and VI are minor chords.
Hence this is an A minor chord.
So you might just want to begin
by just having a think about what these chords are.
I've purposely chosen this chord scheme
because it's one that some people might be familiar with
if you've ever done something like this.
And so on, because that is this chord scheme.
So here's chord I, a chord of C,
so that's C, E, and G.
Here's chord VI, the A minor chord,
so that's A, C, and E.
Here's chord IV, the F chord,
F, A, and C.
Here's chord V, the G chord,
G, B, and D.
And then back to chord I again,
C, E, and G.
Now having found these basic chords,
of course you can do anything you like with them.
So let's have a look at this chord I for a moment.
There's the chord I,
the C chord.
Now obviously you could strum this chord on a guitar,
that's fine, if you're doing it on a keyboard
you could think, well there's my basic triad,
and I can turn that into a chord
as long as I'm using those three notes.
So I can have a chord I that goes like this.
Now you notice this time I've got four notes on the go.
But all these notes are C, E, or G.
In other words, they're all notes
that belong to chord I.
So at the bottom I've got a C,
then I've got a G,
then I've got an E,
and then I've got another C at the top.
But I could just as easily organise the chord like this.
So now I've got a C at the bottom,
then another C,
and then an E,
and then a G at the top.
Or I could organise it like this.
So I've got a C at the bottom,
then a G,
then a C,
then an E.
And it doesn't have to be a four-part chord.
I could have a mch bigger chord like this.
Lots of notes on the go there,
but you notice they're all C, E, G, C, E, G, C, E.
So they're all built from the notes of this chord.
So once you've got the notes C, E, G
for that first chord,
you can have three notes, four notes, seven notes.
You could spread them out.
You could do anything you like with them,
as long as you're using those notes.
If you use other notes,
then of course they will clash with that chord,
and then the music takes on a much more dissonant
kind of characteristic.
When you want to move on to the next chord,
you do just the same.
So here's chord VI,
A, C, and E,
or a chord of A minor,
and as long as you're using those notes,
A, C, E, you could have that chord arranged
any way you like.
Here's different examples.
And you can hear as those chords are used in different ways,
they create a slightly different musical effect,
so you have to decide what kind of effect you want to do.
Now in the example that we started with,
all I was doing there was using these chords as my baseline.
So I had C, A, F, G, C.
And that's what we're going to do for the time being,
because obviously those are
the bottom notes of those chords.
Now when I played this.
All I was doing was taking the chord,
the basic triad, in my right hand.
So there's I,
VI,
IV,
V,
back to I.
Or C,
A minor,
F,
G,
C.
And I could just present that
in its absolutely basic form like this.
Here's the C chord,
the A minor chord,
the F chord,
the G chord,
the C chord.
Now what makes that piece that we've started with
slightly more interesting is that the right hand chords
are broken up and they're given just a bit of rhythm.
So instead of just having plain chords,
I break up the right hand chords.
Makes it sound slightly more interesting, doesn't it?
Just to break up the chords
and to have that slightly dotted rhythm.
And then, of course, if you ever did play this
at school maybe, you might have done something
slightly different with it the next time around,
changed the rhythm but to have the kind of chords
in there neat form.
And so on.
And then of course, somebody might have improvised a melody
over the top of those chords.
And so on.
So it's possible, isn't it, to use the chords
in their straight form,
it's possible to spread them into four parts
or seven parts, to have the chord high,
to have the chord low, to put some rhythm into it,
to break up the chord, to improvise a melody
that goes over the top of that chord.
You see this is the basic business
of how we work from a given chord scheme.
And of course you can create any kind of mood you want to,
or write in any kind of style that you want to.
So for example, if you wanted to use that scheme
and you wanted to write something that maybe sounded
like an earlier piece,
maybe from Baroque times or something,
you could use this baseline
and have this sort of chord outline,
and maybe have a melody in the right hand
that's got a few twiddles and trills,
ornaments and things, to make it sound a little bit Baroque.
So you could do something like this.
That's using the same chord scheme,
but it sounds rather different in that style, doesn't it?
You could have a system where you have something
called an Alberti bass.
Now this was something that was very common
in what they call the Classical period.
So composers like Mozart and Haydn and people
did this kind of thing,
where you take your chord,
here's your C chord, your chord I,
and you break it up like this.
So you go bottom, top, middle, top.
Bottom, top, middle, top.
And so they might have done this by going like this.
Chord I,
VI,
IV,
V,
I.
And that's called an Alberti bass.
So you could use something like an Alberti bass,
and then maybe come up with a melody
that goes over the top of it.
Now that sounds completely different
to the tune we started with,
but it's still using exactly the same scheme.
You could decide you're going to use those chords,
but you want to change the time signature.
We've been working in four beats
in a bar so far, haven't we?
Well, you could organise things with three beats in a bar,
and have something that sounds a bit more like a waltz.
How about this?
So that's using exactly the same scheme,
and I'm kind of using block chords
with a little bit of a melody at the top there,
but I've organised it with three beats in a bar,
so you've now got something that's a bit more waltzy.
You could have something that's got a slightly more
punchy rhythm in it,
that would give you some basis for
a more sort of upbeat composition, you know.
That would be a very different kind of style, wouldn't it?
And again, you could float some kind of melody
over the top of that.
Or you could have something that's much more relaxed,
that creates a calmer mood that maybe has got
a slightly more of a kind of ballad feel to it
simply by slowing down the tempo
and using the same chords.
So I could do something like this.
So you see you can make the music sound
so completely different in its style
and in its character simply by changing the speed,
by changing the metre,
in other words the number of beats in a bar,
and by organising the texture in different ways.
In other words, the way we use these chords
in different formations, either as block chords,
or broken chords,
or possibly Alberti, that we've talked about,
or by spreading the chords out
wide across the keyboard,
all things that would completely change
the mood of your composition,
be it an instrumental composition or a song.
But this is just explaining the whole business
of how you would work from a given chord scheme.
So if you want to compose in this way,
the starting point would be the chords.
So you might decide which key you want to be in,
do you want to be in a major key or in a minor key,
you might organise all the chords for the key
that you've chosen, just have a little think
about which are the primary chords,
which are the secondary chords.
So you're probably going to use a few more primary chords
than secondary chords, but then you might organise
some kind of scheme like the one we've got here
as the basis for something.
And it won't sound like much in the first instance,
but just get used to the progression of chords,
and you'll discover that when you kind of do this by sound,
that some chords progress to others rather better
or you might particular like a particular progression
from this chord to that chord that you want to work with.
And from there, once you've got the chord scheme,
work out what you want to do with a melody.
Work out what you want to do with the chords,
whether they're block chords, broken chords,
and the sort of characteristics that
we've just been thinking about.
So I hope that gets you started on
how to compose from a chord scheme.