III: Writing Variations---When Creativity Fails

A) Darnit John, what the heckaroony is a variation?

A variation of a song is basically a song based on that song. Back in my yesteryears, I bought a book called "Complete Variations for Solo Piano." It was by the man himself, Ludwig Van Beethoven. There were only 21 songs in the book, but each one had at least nine different variations, some had 20 variations or more. And each variation sounded like a completely different song. I could barely tell that they were all based on the same theme. So in fact, Beethoven could have written a few variations on one of those songs, and then sold them as his own songs.

Many composers do this. They take a good song, and write a variation on it. Sometimes the variation on the song sounds very similar to the song, because the composer wants the listener to recognize what it is a variation of. Sometimes, the composer makes it sound so different that it is a completely different song.

And that my friends, is what you can do. When you just can’t get your creativity to work, just write a variation on a song. Be warned, however: make sure it sounds different! If your variation is very similar to the song it is a variation of, and you make money off of the song, you could get sued by the original composers!

Now here’s a sample. You all know the song "Mary had a little lamb", right? Here’s a variation I threw together, by just adding some broken chords. Click here to listen to it, it’s midi5.mid.

That’s a sample of a variation. From that variation, I could actually just take that and make it into a song that I could call my own. How can you tell if a song is a good enough variation? Well, tell a friend to listen to it. If your friend can name the song that it’s a variation of it, then it’s not good enough. (Unless your friend is one of those people who have that super memory.)

Then comes the next question. How do you write a variation?

B) Writing a Variation

A variation, although you might not like it, requires creativity. Just think of a song that you think sounds good. Play it over and over in your mind. Find out the notes to it on the piano. Play it over and over. Now, think of what you want to change it to. If you want to change it into a sad, slow song, then think of adding long, minor chords. Maybe, if the song is in a minor key, change it into a major key. If it’s in a major key, try the opposite. If there’s a part of the song where you play notes going up, try changing it by playing those notes going down instead. Add some sharps and flats just to make it sound different. Change the speed of the song.

Remember, composition is freedom. You should be able to keep what parts of a song you like, and discard what you don’t like.

After you’ve changed it, sit back and play back what you’ve got so far. While you’re listening to it, try to forget everything and clear your mind. If the song sounds very different from the theme you started with but it still sounds good, you’ve just hit gold.

The basic secret to writing variations is to change the harmony and rythym. You can make a song sound completely different by just changing the harmony (all the broken chords and rythym, etc.) and leaving the main theme alone. I’ve seen it done before, heck, I’ve done it before. You just have to remember the importance of patience. After reading this entire series, you can’t expect to just sit on the piano and then compose an award-winning symphony. After reading this entire series, you should sit on the piano and then just do what you’ve learned. You wait, and over time you’ll develop talent. You’ll be able to recognize it. Really. No kidding. Really.

Some people consider writing a variation of a song and then calling it your own to be cheating. Sometimes even I don’t like to do it, because it feels like cheating. But subconsciously, that’s what we’re doing anyway. I don’t want to get into the subject, but....okay. I don’t know if I’ve already talked about this, but when we think of a new song, our mind creates the new song from parts of some old songs that are in our memory. So really, our mind is creating a variation of a song for us. Sometimes our mind changes it so well we can’t even recognize what song it came from. Sometimes not. Well, whether or not you want to use the variation method to come up with songs, just make sure you’re able to defend your reasons for doing it.

That section was shorter than you probably thought it would be, eh? Es cool o no?

Leftovers