How Do You Continue a Musical Composition?
- Diana Mascari
- 18 minutes ago
- 7 min read
In my previous blog, How Do You Start a Musical Composition?
I explored several ways a composer can begin a new piece.
In this article, I’d like to look at practical ways you can continue your composition after discovering how to start it.
In many ways, it doesn’t really matter HOW you begin a composition.
What matters most is how you continue it.
Once you begin experimenting with rhythms, motives, phrases, scales, or accompaniment patterns, the real composing process begins.
Important Decisions Before You Continue Too Far
Before moving too far ahead, it helps to make several important decisions about your piece.
Decide What Instruments Will Play Your Composition
One of the first things to decide is instrumentation.
Will this be a solo piano piece?
Piano with another instrument?
A chamber ensemble?
I strongly recommend starting simply.
A very effective approach is to begin with piano and one melodic instrument
You can set up your score easily using Muse Score Studio, Sibelius, or another notation software program.
Keeping the piano in the score is extremely helpful because it allows you to hear harmony clearly, experiment with accompaniment patterns, and support melodic material.
Decide on Tempo
Another important decision is tempo.
Ask yourself whether the piece should generally feel slow, moderate, or fast.
You can later refine the exact metronome setting using your notation software.
Adding both a tempo term and a numeric metronome marking helps make the musical character clearer.
See my blog about musical terms:
Understanding Musical Terms: What They Are and Why They Matter
See my blog about metronome
Example: Andante — quarter note = 80
Single Movement or Multi-Movement?
If you are just starting out as a composer, I strongly recommend composing a short single-movement piece keeping the duration around three to five minutes. This makes the composing process much more manageable
If you eventually want to compose larger works, multi-movement pieces are an excellent direction to explore.
Different movements can have contrasting moods, different tempos, a variety of styles as well as different emotional atmospheres.
Working with a Scale or Collection of Notes
One of the best ways to create unity in music is to work with a particular scale, a mode, or collection of notes.
This unity of material creates consistency of sound and coherence.
Using the Pentatonic Scale
The pentatonic scale is especially useful because its limited collection of notes naturally creates unity.
If you are unfamiliar with the pentatonic scale,
See my blog devoted entirely to the pentatonic scale. What Is the Pentatonic Scale and How Can It Help You Improvise or Compose?
Pentatonic material can provide melodies, accompaniment patterns, motives, and harmonic color
You can also transpose pentatonic material into another key while still preserving the overall character of the music.
Listening Is One of the Most Important Compositional Tools
One of the greatest advantages of notation software is the ability to hear your music played back immediately.
When I first started composing, I worked with manuscript paper, a pencil, and the piano.
Although I could play through my music manually, I could not hear what the piece would sound like in a performance at the exact tempo and the specific instruments until I heard in three to six months later.
Now, notation software allows composers to compose, listen, revise, and immediately reassess their ideas.
Seriously Consider: Building listening directly into your composing process.
Listening for What the Music Wants Next
One of the most important parts of continuing a composition is learning to listen for what the music itself seems to want next.
Sometimes your opening idea naturally suggests continuation, repetition, contrast, expansion, or a point of rest
As you listen repeatedly to your opening phrase, ask yourself:
Does the music feel settled or unfinished?
Would repeating part of the phrase strengthen it?
Would changing direction create contrast?
Does the music seem ready for a new section?
Sometimes ideas arrive while you are away from the computer, walking, driving, or simply thinking about the piece.
Over time, composers gradually develop an instinct for how musical ideas naturally continue.
Continuing Your Composition
Your initial musical idea may only be two or four measures long. That is perfectly fine.
Here are several ways to continue your opening material:
repeat it
repeat it higher or lower
change one or two notes
alter the rhythm slightly
transpose it
reverse the direction of the line
Small changes often produce surprisingly strong results.
Adding a Left-Hand Accompaniment
Hopefully, you’ve already added some kind of left-hand accompaniment to support your melodic idea. If you have, we’ll just continue. If not, start simply.
You might use:
single bass notes
open fifths
open fourths
stacked fourths
or basic chords
The goal at this stage is not complexity. The goal is support and continuity.
As always, listen carefully to what works musically.
Enlarging Your Score Beyond Piano Alone
Once your accompaniment begins functioning well, you can start adding a melodic instrument to the score.
Typical melodic instruments are flute, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, and violin.
I recommend that you copy and paste your right-hand piano melody into one melodic instrument while temporarily leaving the piano part intact.
This allows you to hear the difference in tone color, texture, balance, and emotional effect.
Extending Your Opening Section into a Phrase
At this point, your opening idea begins turning into a phrase.
The next step is learning how to continue the phrase until it reaches a point of rest.
Creating Contrast and Movement
One of the most important aspects of continuing a composition is creating movement, direction, balance, and contrast.
Think of the phrase as going somewhere.
Even changing only two or three notes or the direction of a line, you can reshape the entire phrase.
So, start by creating movement by:
changing melodic direction
varying the rhythm
transposing some of the notes
or creating a contrasting accompaniment.
Using Direction to Shape the Phrase
If your original line moves upward, allow the next idea to move downward.
If the line descends, allow the next phrase to rise upward.
Directional contrast helps create motion, balance, and musical shape.
Creating a Point of Rest
Eventually, the phrase should arrive at a point of rest.
This does NOT mean the piece is finished. Instead, it creates a place where the music pauses, breathes, and prepares for continuation.
One effective technique is allowing the melodic line to gradually move downward toward middle C. This often creates a feeling of temporary resolution.
Here are two examples of word phrases:
When we turn the clocks ahead, the days get longer.
·When we need to buy food, we go to the grocery store.
Bartok refers to this as "question and answer" in his piano method called the Mikrokosmos. Meaning that your first section is stating an idea in an open-ended way, and the second part of the phrase is answering the question or resolving the idea in a way that the complete phrase comes to a point of rest.
Using ABA Form
ABA form is a way to organize your musical ideas, because it provides structure, contrast and allows for repetition of your initial ideas.
Developing the “A” Section
Once you have developed your first phrase, you can enlarge the A section by:
repeating material
transposing notes
varying accompaniment
changing melodic direction
extending phrases
Creating the “B” Section
The B section should introduce contrast by doing one or more of the following:
changing key
changing tempo
changing accompaniment
changing register
changing texture
You can also use notes from the pentatonic scale while transposing them into another key. This preserves unity while introducing freshness.
Returning to the “A” Section
After the B section, return to the original A material
You may repeat it literally or make some changes in the A section.
Then create an ending to conclude the entire piece.
Listening Is Critical
Use the playback function of your notation software constantly.
Listen:
after making changes
after extending phrases
after revising accompaniment
after creating new sections
Listening helps you refine ideas, improve judgment, and strengthen your music while composing.
One of the wonderful things about notation software is that playback itself often inspires new ideas, new sections, better accompaniments, or entirely new directions.
Final Thoughts
Continuing a composition is really the process of listening, experimenting, refining, adjusting, and gradually shaping musical ideas into something coherent and expressive. In case you were wondering: You do not need to compose an entire movement in one sitting.
Develop a Composing Routine to Keep You
Inspired, Motivated and Improving
Spending five or ten minutes a day five or six days a week can gradually help you strengthen creativity, improve listening, develop compositional skill, and enjoy the process of composing more deeply.
And once this process begins, you may find that the music itself often starts guiding you toward what comes next.
Interested in Exploring Composition or Playing the Piano?
If you are an adult student with some musical background and have ever been curious about composing, I would love to help you begin. If you played the piano in the past and want help reawakening your musical interest, I'd like to help you do that.
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