The Everyday Musician

One especially good example of this is writing “variations on a theme”.  That phrase does not dictate that the music must be of a classical style, even though that phrase is used as the title in many classical pieces.  The technique of writing or improving variations is a basic technique of jazz musicians, for example.  The piece typically starts with a fairly simple statement of the theme—one you’ve written or have borrowed.  Then you work the theme different ways, keeping some parts of the theme the same, while changing other parts.

For example, in the first variation, you might keep the harmony and melody of the theme, but change the rhythms and possibly the meter.  In another variation, you might also speed up or slow down the tempo.  Change the harmony while keeping the melody the same.  Or, completely change the melody while keeping the harmony the same.

In writing variations you are constrained.  You don’t start each new variation with a clean slate. Rather, you must keep some elements of the theme the same—melody, harmony, rhythm, meter, etc.—while varying other elements.  The paradox here is that by constraining yourself in some ways, you’ll find yourself liberated to experiment more in those other dimensions of music that you have not constrained yourself to.

Writing variations, constrained to a theme, is just one example of how you can free your composing by constraining it.  There are many other examples, which perhaps readers of this blog might share in comments below.