7 Advanced Tips For Solo Piano Writing

Compared to music production, writing pieces for solo piano seems simple on the surface. Piano composition involves one instrument and 88 notes to create music, while for music production there’s a limitless number of instruments, plugins, and effects to choose from.

When you dig into solo piano writing you realize that the constraint of 88 notes can actually make it more difficult to write music. The fewer your options, the more you must get creative– especially when trying to emulate the different sounds, timbres and moods you want to create. Even more, you have to write idiomatically, so that your piece can be read and interpreted effectively. Finally, as solo instrument, piano generally sounds less filling than a band or an orchestra. It can be challenging to get that “full” sound we’re often looking for.

However, this very constraint is part of the reason I love writing piano music. There are many creative decisions you can make to overcome these limits. With effective writing, you can emulate a full orchestra with just a single piano. There is also the flexibility of being able to arrange the same song for piano in a hundred different ways that all feels unique and valid. Nonetheless, piano composers can still feel overwhelmed because of all the options and paths available for piano writing.

So in this blogpost, I’d like to share some of my tips I’ve learnt over the last 10 years of piano writing, written from a classical perspective.

1. Identify your audience.

Who are you writing for? Who will play this piece? Who will listen to the performance?

Every time you are writing an original piece or an arrangement, you should set out a rough brief for yourself (if you aren’t commissioned that is, in which case you probably already have a clear brief). It’s important to set this from the very beginning as it can impact the overall direction of the piece, and once you’ve written it down it’s very difficult to change later. 

Depending on who you intend this piece for, this will affect the piece’s difficulty, length, structure… everything. Try to think of the various scenarios: is it an encore piece? Or for background music in a bar or restaurant? Will it be performed in the street? Is it an etude/exercise, or to be performed by young musicians in front of their parents? Possibilities are endless.

2. Have at least one good overarching concept.

Whether it is a leitmotif, clear rhythmic pattern, or any kind of structural idea, a piece needs something throughout the piece that ties the piece together and makes it stylistically consistent. A big lesson I learnt over the years is trying out too many ideas at once in a single piece, such that it becomes incoherent and unclear of my musical expression.

Having an overall concept helps you to be much more selective on which ideas to use. Be comfortable with discarding good ideas, melodies and motifs which don't fit within your piece. Often letting go of good ideas can be very difficult. Save these for another piece!

3. Make every note count.

“Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall”

• Salieri from the movie Amadeus

Every note you write down should be of purpose and intent. Of course, a ‘perfect’ composition does not exist since music is wholly subjective. However, whenever I study compositions from Mozart or Bach, it really does make me think of this quote very frequently. The great classical composers are often extremely efficient with their notes - they treat their notes like a valuable resource, using as few notes as possible to create the intended musical expression. Less is more!

This applies not just horizontally (moving in time) but also vertically (chords/harmony). Try avoiding having the same note names within a chord to reduce redundancy so you can create more rich harmonies.

An excerpt from my piece called Thingymajig. Notice how note names are generally not repeated vertically.

I often like to think writing music bears some similarity to solving Sudoku. Which ties to my next point. . .

4. Avoid repeating yourself (exactly).

By this I do not mean sequences or leitmotifs. Those are in fact important compositional techniques to keep the listener engaged. “Don’t repeat“ refers to the overall structural ideas. Listeners crave for interesting ideas that are constantly being developed in an innovative manner. When you repeat a structure exactly with the same melody and harmony without good reason it can risk sounding same-y and monotonous.

As an arranger who has to deal with pop-song structure with many verses, I always have to come up with new variations of ideas with every new verse I’m adapting.

Excerpt from my arrangement of From the Start by Laufey. Adaptation of verse 1 and 2 respectively.

But why do all of this? This all comes down to creating contrast in your piece. Repeating exact ideas in a piece can lower its overall contrast. The music sounds flat, which means listeners will lose attention.

Regardless, if you are still going to repeat exactly, make sure it sounds deliberate. A helpful tip would be what Adam Neely likes to say: repetition legitimizes.

5. Study counterpoint.

For a classical music score, you can often tell the skill level of a composer simply by looking at the sheet music. Generally, beginner composers will write their music with one ‘voice’ in each staff (nothing wrong with this, by the way). However, in the majority of the case, the piece would’ve been better if it had a little bit of counter melody and counterpoint writing.

This doesn’t mean that every piece should sound like a fugue, but rather you should always strive to have the mindset of creating harmony based on interweaving melodies and layering of lines. This helps to create flowing chord progression and rich harmonies.

6. Do not rely on playback features to compose. Only use them for proof-reading and sanity checks.

It’s that lovely triangle.

When you write music, the composition is in fact only half the work.

Wait what? Isn’t composition itself… music?

It is, but not quite. While writing your composition, you also need to figure out interpretation, i.e. how you will perform or ‘interpret’ your composition. Figuring out the interpretation part is essential in writing a successful piano piece. 

Whenever I browse YouTube and come across a score video of an original composition, the majority of the time it uses simple MIDI playback. Quite often, even though the composition itself might be great, if the presentation, performance and interpretation is lacking I often lose interest quickly and even perceive the composition not so favorably.

It is clear why this is the case if you imagine this: play a famous classical piece from any of Chopin’s Nocturne or Debussy’s Claude de Lune with MIDI playback, and the piece will sound terrible even if the composition is a masterpiece. From my experience, how you perform a piece will either break it or make it.

So, if you want your pieces to be more appreciated by others, you have to do the due diligence and try to perform and record your own work. Learning how to interpret pieces is also an important skill you need to learn. Which ties in to my last point…

7. Always try to write pieces you can actually play.

There is very little point to piano music if one cannot play it.

There are exceptions of course, like player piano music. But those pieces are deliberately written for player piano in a way it’s pushed to the limit and are straight up impossible to play by a human being (Circus Galop, works by Conlon Nancarrow, Black MIDI, etc).

Circus Galop by Marc-Andre Hamelin

The key difference here is intent. If you’re writing for piano that you want it to be played by another person, the composer should generally be able to play most of the piece at least competently. Only then will the composer know how to create a pianistic and idiomatic arrangement that flows well with the hand.

The composer should know precisely which part is too difficult or awkward to play, if it’s too tiring for the arm and requires too much stamina, or even whether this passage is too tricky when turning pages. 

There is a lot of nuance when it comes to writing piano music, especially virtuosic works. Your music should not only be idiomatic, but also fun to play. The only way true to excel in this area is just to be good at playing the piano. Only then will you learn all the nuances of what goes into playing virtuosic piano pieces.

I am also very guilty of writing music harder than I could play, and it’s something I still struggle with often. I’ve realized over the years that I used to rely excessively on MIDI playback to compose. So don’t be like early-me and write crappy, unidiomatic music that only sounds good with MIDI playback.

An excerpt of my piece Short Collection no.1 from 8 years ago. Who on earth would want to play this?

That said, sometimes there may be situations where you must write passages beyond your skill level, but you’re confident that it is still pianistic and playable for greatly skilled performers. Generally, keep this to a minimum and only for a couple bars, never for the whole piece. 

Conclusion

These 7 points are my personal tips for writing good solo piano music. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list, and unfortunately I had to gloss over certain points for brevity sake. Regardless, some of these tips are applicable to other instrumentations and genres, and useful for a wide range of musicians. Thank you for reading!

- HS