Beginning compositions

[Jazzophone]

Does anyone have any tips for beginning composers, stuff to dabble with, tricks to try, inspiration? I've been trying to both create some good (hah) musical stuff as well as add music to some of the lyrics I've written over the past while -- I know already that I am better at writing the lyrics half of songs than the musical half. In our jazz class we experimented and wrote that classic -- twelve-bar blues -- and mine turned out alright, but I'm no good with most aspects of composition. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Riff]

A good excercise for learning to write melodies is to structure your melodies so that the first beat of each measure emphasizes either the 3rd or 7th of the current chord. This helps to train your ear to hear not only melodic progression, but harmonic progression as well.

Once arriving at the 3rd or 7th, be sure to resolve it to it's appropriate target. 7ths usually resolve to the third of the next chord while 3rds often resolve to the root of the next chord. In between these resolutions you're pretty much free to do what you want.

Some traditional melody rules are:
1: No leaps larger than a 6th.
2: No leaps of a tritone (difficult to avoid in the blues)
3: After an ascending leap, fill in the gap with a descending scale and visa-versa.
4: avoid repeating short motifs more than three times in a row unless you modulate it in some way either by transposition or rhythmic augmentation.

These rules harken back to pre-Baroque music but they still work well today. Of course contemporary composition really has no rules but the above at least provide a minimal framework.

[The Saxon]

I have a problem trying to just "find" something melodic to play. The thing is, I know the scales and the chords, but I don't know what melodies to pick from. Is this just from lack of being a jazz sax player (or any classical composer) for a long period of time?

[Cameron Wigmore]

Learn Harmony. Learn piano. Learn the harmony to standard jazz tunes on piano. THEN write your own stuff. Good luck. Don't give up!