In musical compositions a theme is how to#

In musical compositions a theme is how to#

You learn how to make the most of limited material and develop technical fluency, becoming able to direct a given set of notes to express anything you want them to. Practicing variations is also great for your composing chops. Repeating those themes over and over in the exact same way can be boring, however, so learning about how to create variations can give the themes new life. Film music, for example, often uses a limited number of themes to identify particular characters or ideas. Theme & Variations has many practical purposes even in contemporary composition. In this next tutorial we'll go a step further and learn about Theme & Variations, a valuable form that has been around in some way or another for as long as there has been music. We started out by coming up with ideas, then learned how to expand those ideas into themes, and most recently discussed how to expand those themes into short ABA compositions. If you have been following along over the past few months, we have been gradually expanding from the smallest musical ideas into larger and larger pieces of music.