I have a 4-part choir song, with chords. Does anyone know any reference material or courses I could take about writing good piano parts? I've written them, but they tend to be too "monotone" - just basic chord notes. I would like to make them more melodic and, well, something someone would want to listen to. Thanks!
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1This question is too general IMO (it's pretty much asking "How do I write better music?") but try this: find some choir+piano songs that you like. Figure out what's going on. Try to imitate it. Rinse and repeat.– user19146May 20, 2018 at 11:06
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2 Answers
Look at the sheet music for other songs for similar forces. IMSLP is a very good web resource for PDF scans of scores of public domain music. Here's the results of a search to start you off:
If you want to refine that search, you could start here:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:CategoryWalker/For_4_voices,_piano/
- Select one 4 part song you like, probably a couple of your favorite songs.
- Find the sheet score for those songs.
- Analyze and understand the pattern of the songs, and the movements that makes it nice for you.
- Go through the 4 part writing basic rules most of them includes "no parallel 5ths, octaves, and unison movements, try to use all three chord tones in upper voices and try to double root,Never double leading tone,..."
- Go through advance rules which includes rules like "double fifths when root doubling is not working fine, avoid doubling Alto and Tenor voices, try triple roots in cadences, ..."
For references, try lessons like this
For example, take a look at hymn The head that once was crowned with thorns - SATB
