Music Composition DUMmIES

In short, different rhythms convey different moods, and learning how to

corner and manipulate those rhythms is the first step to getting your musical

ideas across to another person.

Sculpting Time into Music ............................................................................

A composition can be thought of as the sculpting of time.

Time is relative. Einstein once explained his concept of relativity by saying,

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit

on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour.”

Rhythm is a large part of music’s ability to sculpt time and produce different

moods. The right rhythm can sculpt a five-minute piece of time to convey a

sense of urgency and hurriedness — or to make the listener feel laid back and

relaxed. These are examples of the mood messages that can result from

rhythmic choices in music composition.

Let’s say you’re scoring a film. You wouldn’t use a slow, pensive, loping

rhythm to score a crowded party or a parade scene, and you wouldn’t even

think about an exciting 2/4 march for a funeral scene — unless, of course,

your intention was to create an unnatural mood or feeling. Just like how your

heart beats faster when you’re happy or excited, lively rhythms to lively

scenes just make sense. In music, lively rhythms convey a happy, excited, or

just plain agitated sense, whereas slower rhythms can’t help but invoke feel-

ings of somberness, sadness, or even drowsiness.

Rhythm in music is more than just a regular, clocklike pulse chosen at

random. When used wisely, it can set the tone of your composition and

convey moods and mood changes throughout a composition.

The Feel of Different Rhythms ......................................................................

Look at the following list of moods or emotions and try to decide the general

tempo (the speed or pace of the underlying pulse) that might best convey

these moods. There are no wrong answers, and you can just say “fast” or

“slow” for now, although there is a fairly sophisticated musical language for

different tempos.

Fear

Anticipation

30 Part I: Basics and Rhythm