Composition Tip: Reusing Old Material

As a composer, sometimes it’s difficult to quickly come up with new ideas. Especially because new ideas require lots of hard work to transform into something amazing! For today’s composition tip, let’s look at how to revisit and reuse your old material to make it better than ever.

Real Life Example: Heartbeat

Here is my composition Heartbeat. I originally wrote it as a piano solo in 2018, but since then I have revisited and expanded the material three more times!

When composing this piece, I was inspired to create rhythmic unbalance through the use of triplets. And after playing around with the harmonic progressions, I came up with the melody and bam – Heartbeat emerged. For a few months, that was it.

But then I was given an opportunity to put on a concert of some of my original pieces. They told me I could invite other musicians to play with me, so I decided to rearrange Heartbeat for woodwind quartet and piano. Here’s how I reused old material to give Heartbeat new life.

1. Take a good look at what you have already.

The first step in reusing old materials to make your compositions better is to take an objective look at what you already have. Be honest with yourself: is the material good? Is it interesting? Is there more you could have done to develop the theme? What are the strengths of the music? What are the weaknesses? How can you make it better?

The more you understand and connect with your original music, the easier this will be.

Composition tip: have a goal in mind. Why exactly do you want to revamp this composition? Do you want to arrange it for new instruments, or submit it to a competition? Do you just want to make it better, to develop the themes more? Is there a special event coming up that you will be performing this at? Knowing this will help you keep your new ideas aligned.

2. Use that analysis as fuel to move forward.

Once you have answered those questions, you can start creating.

Take the parts you really love and then expand those. Write new themes to fill in empty spaces. Add contrasting sections to tell a story or paint a picture. Find new ways to develop your theme. This takes a lot of experimenting and trial and error, but it is worth it in the end.

Expand, develop, explore, and push yourself. Here are some ideas to try:

• Change the key
• Cut the main theme in half and write a new ending
• Change the harmonic progression underneath the theme, and experiment with major vs minor sounds
• Layer a countermelody on top of the theme
• Contrast slow with fast, short with long, etc.
• Add new rhythmic textures
• Write a contrasting theme to go after the original one

3. Edit with a fine-toothed comb.

With any good composition, editing is key. Once you’ve started changing, expanding, exploring, and developing your material, get rid of anything that doesn’t work. Be objective; sometimes you have to get rid of something that doesn’t fit in this piece. (But don’t actually toss it! Save it for a new composition.)

Rewriting Heartbeat for Multiple Instruments

After deciding to arrange Heartbeat for winds and piano, I sat down with the music and gave it an overhaul. I knew that I needed to add at least an additional minute of material for the concert, so I created a new theme to put after the first main melody. After adding this new theme, I developed and expanded both melodies so they complimented each other.

I then started dividing up the piano music into parts, carefully selecting which instruments would play what line. And once that was done, I went back in and added texture in the other lines (lots of runs and riffs, counter-rhythms, etc.). And after changing the key signature last minute, this was the end result:

If you want to play this with some friends, get the sheet music here!

A New Piano Solo and Orchestral Arrangement

But I didn’t stop there! I liked the wind and piano version of Heartbeat so much that I made a new piano arrangement in the new key with the added sections and themes.

Get the sheet music for this version here!

Then I thought it would be fun to fully orchestrate Heartbeat, so I did in GarageBand. I first plugged my keyboard into my computer and recorded the piano lines. After selecting the orchestral instruments I wanted – strings, horns, flute, some percussion – I improvised with each instrument over the piano. I went back and fine-tuned the whole thing and created my first original film to go along with the music:

Today’s composition tip was about reusing your old material to make your music better. The next time you need to quickly whip up a new piece, try taking this approach instead. You’ll be surprised at how much you can push your own compositions.