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. 

Listening and Analyzing

Create a playlist of the music you would like to emulate. 

Pandora Radio is a great place to find new music that sounds similar to the instrumentation and mood you are capturing. So if you only have one piece or song in mind, that is a great place to start. They have a project called the Music Genome Project which allows their radio stations to easily find related music. Type in a song or an artist that you want to emulated. With the thumbs up and thumbs down capability, you can curate a station suited to your taste. 

Find the music scores or chord charts for the pieces that capture the mood you want. Analyze those scores for chords, melody structure, phrasing, and harmonies. Free sites include IMSLP and Ultimate Guitar Tabs, however, if the music is copyrighted, please buy the music and support the artist. 

Often, tears or pain are evoked by small intervals such as a minor or Major 2nd. Pitch is important as well. Lower notes can be used to stir emotions of anger or fear. Higher notes might evoke happiness or playfulness. 

Tempo and simplicity vs. complexity are also important factors. Some very popular pieces such as Interstellar's soundtrack and Build a Home by Cinematic Orchestra are actually very simple and sparse with their opening themes. While upbeat music uses a quicker tempo and detailed rhythms that are often syncopated. 

Write down the chord progressions and make written notes of structure, harmonies, tempo, meter, and rhythm.  

Improvising

My main instrument is piano, but this can work for any instrument. 

Turn on a recording device so that you don't lose any ideas. You can use something as basic as the “Voice Memo” app on your phone and transcribe later. If you are using a digital keyboard with MIDI capabilities, record directly into a DAW which will create a piano roll, music score, and chord analysis, which makes transcription much easier. I often skip this part and regret it later! 

Experiment with chord progressions, melodic lines, and melodic harmonies, especially the ones you have picked up from analysis. 

Chord Progressions

A great place to get started improvising with chords are four chord progressions in the key of C/A minor. 

For happy and energetic music, try C major and looping

1. C G Am F 
2. C Am F G 

For sad and angsty music, try C major with the non-diatonic chord, Fm, or the key of A minor and looping

1. C Em F Fm
2. Am F G C

Melodic lines can use the C scale in these cases, and I suggest a pentatonic scale C D E G A or the major scale, minus B in most cases. For Fm, make sure you avoid A as the center note of F has changed to A-flat. 

Another easy option is using all the black keys with pedal. Use open fifth chords in the bass and hold down the pedal, clearing when it gets muddy. I promise all the notes sound great together without any risk of unpleasantness. Listen to Willow Tree by the Brook for an example of this scale. 

Advanced ideas:

Emotions: Wonder and Contemplation

Use the Lydian mode. It is hard to stay in this mode entirely. 

I use C Lydian in The Lord is My Shepherd (Psalm 23). 

The scale is C D E F# G A B C

The chords are C major, D major, A minor, and rarely, Em and G major. Venturing to E minor and G major can change the tonal center to those more recognizable keys, Major and Minor. However, I do what I can to reorient the ear back to C Lydian by oscillating between C and D chords at the end. I also mix the final C chord with Gmaj7 as the final chord drifts up the piano, growing quieter. 

Emotions: Comfort becoming Uncertainty

In Peace Be Still, I use D mixolydian. 

This scale is 

D E F# G A B C D 

I change the C to C# at the end of the B and C sections to create an A major chord. 

I think this is a really beautiful mode. 

When centered around D major, I use Dsus4 and Dsus2 frequently. I use a descending bass cliché which sounds peaceful, and when the A minor section happens, it starts to sound stormy and uncertain. 

Melodic Lines

For melodic lines, repetition is a key part of structuring music. So when you come up a with an idea, consider repeating that same idea in variations. You can move it up a third or down a third, play it backwards, upside down. This is how you create unity in your compositions and is very helpful with keeping improvisations simple and easy to remember. 

Keep a journal with manuscript paper and write down your favorite ideas. 

Solidifying a Composition

Review your recordings and manuscript paper and narrow down your ideas. 

Repetition is very important, so consider reducing to 3 ideas for melodies. They can have a common idea or be completely unrelated and organized into a form. 

There are various forms that you can follow such as sonata-allegro, binary, rondo, strophic, and song forms. 

Oftentimes, my recordings are not based off of finished scores. 

I have a general sketch of melody and chords

Examples: Romance and Monaghan

 or I have memorized and repeated an improvisation many times that I am confident in creating a recording

Examples: Broken for You (In Remembrance of Me), Eagle's Wings, Peace, Be Still (A section was memorized, B and C sections are improvised), Sorrow 

Sometimes, I have published an unedited improvisation that I had never played before. 

Examples: Hold on to Hope and Patience

Recording and Preserving Phrasing

Avoid running off a WAVE file from notation software. Sometimes the VSTs can be very convincing, but for piano music especially, play it live. It's okay if you record a MIDI version, since those are often easier to edit. But try to avoid Quantizing and modifying the velocity of the notes because the imperfections in tempo and attack make your music relatable. 

This idea relates to phrasing, in which you “sing with your instrument”.  Vary the dynamics and create breaks to breathe, even if you are playing piano. This emulates the human voice which often grows louder as higher notes are reached and taper off as breath is spent. This adds to the human quality of your recording. 

A Note on Imperfections in Recordings

I have always been a nervous performer and recorder. Each one of my recordings has some imperfection that may or may not be noticeable. I have made peace with that part of me. In the age of AI and over history perfect renditions of music via MIDI, my personal opinion is that the humanness behind music and our mistakes as performers make us unique and even relatable. I have tempo issues, I have memory issues, and I sometimes panic when I'm improvising and I have gotten too far in a recording to want to re-record. I admit to splicing Romance and We Follow You after many re-records. I know that it is the practice of many musicians to take the best takes and fade them together. However, it was so hard, that perhaps re-records would have been the better option. In some cases, I ignored my pickiness and the imperfections remain. 

I think that the hesitations in Patience evoke the emotion in the title perfectly. As it can often be hard to wait. 

Hold on to Hope has a few melody notes and double notes that perhaps add to the feeling of stumbling as you are trying to stay hopeful. 

So don't be afraid of not being perfect because that can add to the relatability. 

This is a collection of my process. It is less solid and objective than other “tutorials” I have read. However, this is truly how I create my music! I have ventured to provide solid examples of where you can start or what you can try out if you are more experienced to create my sound. 

Please let me know in the comments if this was helpful for you! 

Jenny Laine

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