Music is indeed a broad and exciting area to explore. It ignites creativity and juices up your curiosity when you finally have that momentum, especially if you’re a beginner violin player who wants to improve. However, it’s true that there’s always plenty of room to grow, and in music, one thing you need to focus on is developing your musical ideas. The musical idea refers to any of your thoughts regarding composition, melodic arrangements, and writing phases. And in order to improve your musical ideas, the first thing you need to do is to make sure that you maintain the quality of your musical instrument. Ensure you always clean and store your instrument on a bam violin case to avoid getting scratched. Having high-quality and maintained instruments will help you in enhancing your skills and develop your musical ideas. There will come a time that you might get lost in the process, which can be frustrating and to overcome this or at least lessen these instances, you can try these ways to develop your musical ideas.

Make sure to improve your cognition and develop your musical ideas by considering the ways mentioned below. 

Modal Interchange Technique

The modal interchange technique is a way of borrowing notes from different scales to create new chords that aren’t initially included in your home key. This is where you’d create non-diatonic chords to establish contrast. 

For example, you started a piece on a scale of C. The next thing you need to know is the different diatonic chords that you can use within C such as Cmaj7, G7, EMin7, FMaj7, and more. To create a more sophisticated and creative piece, you might want to get away with the C and contrast it through the use of non-diatonic chords such as B. 

Putting Countermelodies

For you to build a memorable and incredible hook in music, you need to avoid using a single melody. It would help if you’d put or add countermelodies in your piece, which has the power to play your first melody and then reinforces it along the way.

For example, you can utilize electric guitars in maintaining low dynamics in your verses, then just switch to a full chordal position in the chorus. 

Another option you can try is to use a ‘call and response’ right between your main melody and the new one. In this way, you can successfully create a counter texture in your composition. 

Making Variations

Creating varieties in your piece could be achieved in different ways such as the following:

  • Start modulating to a related key. 
  • Transpose your composition into major key or parallel minor
  • Put a 4 or 8 measure intro or outro before or after you introduce your thematic material. 
  • Make a first and second ending. 
  • Arrange your composition in a minimalist layered fashion.

Motivic Development 

After you choose your main motive or theme, it’s time to manipulate it into your entire composition. However, you need to make sure that you don’t go too far with your original theme. You can do this by:

  • Playing the motif backwards. 
  • Doing an inversion on melodies. 
  • Playing the melody backwards then inverting it. 
  • Omitting any excess notes and putting them in different sections. 
  • Transposing your motif to various scales.

Summary

As a musician, it is essential to get hold of your metacognition and playing skills so you could improve your performance. By knowing the different ways to develop your musical ideas, you can discover more that could lead you to a real break in your career. Developing your music ideas does not have to be tough, so feel free to consider the tips above. 

By Swati