Carve Out Theme

にほんご ▶

Jan. 2, 2022

I don’t think everyone does, but I need a theme to compose a song. However, finding a good theme is not always easy. The most difficult thing for me to compose is to find a suitable theme for making a song.

Here, I will write how do I find the theme and why I need the theme for composing.

It’s the rather lucky case when I can start composing a song powerfully as soon as looking at a photo, like Sunflower Hill. I often have to wander to find “What do I want to make”.

The themes for songs are not free to choose. For example, “A sailboat runs in the wind” seems to be fine, but even if I try to make a song with the theme, I don’t feel I can do it well as a classical guitar song. There is a restriction of ‘It can be made into a song’ for composition, and it’s the stricter condition than ‘I want to write it’. So I sometimes look for ‘phrases’ that could be made into a song, before the theme.

Sitting on the sofa and I make various phrases on my guitar. I don’t have a theme yet, but I can make some phrases with some mood or seasonal feeling. The phrases below are what I just made. They are not clear because I’m playing while looking for the sound, but my composing starts like this.

I cannot improvise songs like a professional musician. But these are good enough for composing. 🙂

Mood of Joy
Mood of Quiet
Feeling of Spring
Feeling of Autumn

Then, can I make such a vague phrase into a proper song? If I continue to connect phrases, I think that it will become a song of some kind. But I’ve never done it successfully.

This is because I only have ‘mood’ and ‘sound’, not ‘theme’. If I don’t have a theme in mind, I don’t know if the sound I’m making is really good. So I cannot continue composing.

But it is possible to come up a theme from such a sound without a theme. In the case of Coffee Song, how was the theme decided? At first, I wanted to make a song with “mood of calm”, and I played the following phrase.

Mood of calm

And I made various phrases to follow it, but I couldn’t decide which phrase was the best. If I play the next phrase further, leaving multiple options like that, I will have even more options and I must be lost the way.

But as I listened to the sounds I made over and over again, I began to remember a certain coffee shop I had visited on a trip and the aroma of the coffee. So I set the theme of this song as “the coffee shop” and “the coffee aroma”, and I could choose one phrase from other phrases.

A coffee shop with calm lighting that I entered while a trip.

When I played this phrase after the first phrase, it sounded a little assertive to listen to while having coffee, and I wondered if this was really OK? So I decided that this song was to be a “song to prepare before having coffee”, and after the relaxing phrase, I connected the phrase of the expectation of the coffee aroma, and could finally complete the song. In this way, when the theme becomes clear, it becomes clear what kind of phrase I want.

Coffee Song : Stuff Notation ↗️

I don’t know if this song, which was created in this way, is a good song for the listener or not. But for me as a creator, it makes sense that I myself know what was created. And it’s not always easy to find a theme that I want to make into a song and I can actually do it. I have to seek it like carving an unseen statue out of a log.

On the other hand, even if I set the theme first, I often can’t find the sound matches it. In these cases, the song is often completed by expanding the theme.

At first the theme of the song Bougainvillea was literally flower of Bougainvillea. But I couldn’t create a song on the theme well, so I expanded the theme to “Santorini, the island of brightness and relaxation, where the bougainvillea blooms”, and was able to finish the song by expressing the whole island.

Bougainvillea : Stuff Notation ↗️

Another thing I always do is look for photos. To make the theme more concrete, it would be nice to have a photo that can express the theme well. Looking at the pictures while composing will stop the sound from drifting away from the theme. So I often make songs by repeating the three things; looking for sounds, looking for themes, and looking for photos.

By the way, do you have to have a specific theme to compose? I think the answer is different for each composer. The most common titles for classical guitar pieces are “Minuet” and “Waltz”. These are just indications of the type of dance. “Habanera” is also just a rhythm. Many composers may not need a specific theme like I do.

Maybe one day I’ll no longer be able to come up with new themes. At that time, I might simply make a “Waltz” or “Habanera”. Or I might stop composing. But for now, I will enjoy finding a theme while worrying about it.

I wrote I’m always looking for sounds, themes and photos. In the next article, I’ll write about photos.

In the article ‘The Making of Tyrrhenian Coast‘, I described the process of how the theme was decided and how the theme drove the composition. It may be a good example.


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Photo by Nati Melnychuk on Unsplash