How to Communicate Emotion Through Music Composition and Recordings

What are my techniques for evoking emotions in music? For composers of any skill level, this is my process for expressing emotions in my piano music. 

Mindset

For any artistic endeavor: visual, language, dance, theatre and music, you must internalize the emotion first. What are some images or events that you associate with happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and the many sub-emotions that further modify these categories? 

If you have trouble identifying specific emotions, a feelings wheel might be a great place to start for adjectives. 

Put yourself in the place of feeling the emotion you want to capture. Sometimes it might be related to your current situation, so this might be easier to tap into. 

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My Tools for Composing Music

 

1. Manuscript Notebook
   • Nothing beats good old pencil and paper.  As you experiment with motives and chords, jot down the general outline of the melody and write chord names over top. I always leave room for the bass clef as well, but typically fill in the patterns later. 
2. MuseScore Studio 
   • Free software that has recently gotten a huge makeover. I am really enjoying the upgraded instruments and the regular updates. This program can be used with your computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard. 
3. Recordings
• Regardless of how many books you read about how to compose or how many scores you study, you must be listening to lots of music.  I actually bought a 65 set of classical music cds that I used to receive by mail order as a kid. I found it on eBay. It's called "In Classical Mood". I essentially learned orchestration simply by listening to this huge collection of classical composers.  I can hear the tone quality of each instrument in my head and decide when I want to apply in my own music. 
• Streaming services work too! But I am definitely in hard copy mode as of late. 

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Accomplishing a Long-Term Goal

 Recently, I found a card stock star with my junior high school photo in the center. Around my smiling face were goals written on the arms of the star. Some of these goals were short-term or habit goals. But there was one long term goal that I only just accomplished. 20 years later. 

For many years since I wrote this goal, I carried around a lot of shame. Shame lived in my head in a cacophony of “not good enough.” Some of this was even reinforced by teachers and professors. It felt very real and very true. So of course, why would I think my long-term goal was reachable? I wasn't good enough! 

Enter the book Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I learned that failure is necessary to success. I learned that vulnerability and leaving oneself open to the possibility of failure is necessary for creativity to thrive. The stress and constraints that I had been crushed by for so many years started to loosen. No longer would I take people's snide remarks about my pride keep me from being a composer. It's not wrong to be creative and to believe and hope that other people will enjoy it and be blessed by it. 

This was a life-changing lesson. 

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