How to compose piano music in 5 simple steps

With the possible exception of music for the voice, piano music is the most important, accessible and widely played body of work in the world. It’s at the heart of the classical and jazz repertoires, and is hardly less fundamental in popular music and a wide range of folk genres. 

The piano is the instrument in countless living rooms around the world. It’s there in the corner of pubs and bars. It’s by the stage during choral performances and musical theatre rehearsals. When and where there were pianos available, there’s barely a composer in existence who didn’t write for it. 

In other words, if you want to try your hand at composition, you’ll have to learn how to handle it. That’s why you’re here.

Aiming to help you achieve this in the clearest, easiest way possible, this article outlines an approach to composing piano music in the form of a step-by-step guide. The five steps it involves are based on the general principles of composition explored in the post on how to compose music. Here they've been adapted with the specific challenges of writing for the piano in mind.

It goes without saying that piano music comes in all shapes and sizes, which means that there’s no one way to compose it. A piece exploring how to write an R&B ballad in the style of Alicia Keys will differ wildly from one that tackles how to compose a sonata like Pierre Boulez. 

So while we will consider some stylistic approaches, we’ll mostly be focusing on technicalities to bear in mind when writing for the instrument - in other words, how to write ‘pianistically’.

How to compose piano music

1. Plan your work
2. Compose at the piano
3. Write like a pianist
4. Cultivate the piece
5. Add the final touches

1. Plan your work

The most important thing to stress is that anything goes. As we said, there’s no right or wrong way to compose for the piano. Keys’ songs and Boulez’s pieces are poles apart, but both bodies of work are filled with great compositions. 

What they have in common is 1) that they demonstrate understanding of what the piano is capable of - they’re idiomatic, technically sound and they exploit the instrument well. 

And 2) they achieve what they set out to do, artistically speaking. In their respective arenas, they play the rules of the game, and break them - just the right amount.

Keys writes soulful numbers utilising catchy tunes and coherent structures. She utilises harmony functionally, and she incorporates her accomplished piano-playing into a range of genres connected to the rich traditions of African-American popular music. She expresses herself through her art authentically, and her fans love it. 

Boulez, meanwhile, was a classical composer - and a Modernist at that. Classical music is for the most part all about compositional intricacy, technical proficiency, and pushing boundaries. And as far as 20th-century Modernists like Boulez were concerned, the last of these was critical.

That’s why their music is overwhelmingly complex, challenging, intellectual, and ultimately not easy to listen to. But connecting with audiences wasn’t necessarily the point. It was all about experimentation, and Boulez experimented hard - particularly with a complicated compositional system known as serialism.

It’s horses for courses, in short. Very different approaches, but both have yielded great piano music. Your first task as a composer is simply to decide what your approach will be. What kind of piano music is it that you want to write? 

First these questions will concern the tradition you want to engage with, because that will not only determine the scope of your composition but also likely steer numerous specific creative decisions.

Get listening, analysing, researching. As much as we all want to believe that composing is a spontaneous, intuitive creative process, it has just as much to do with craftsmanship and hard work as it does with artistry and inspiration, and as with any craft there’s a range of principles and techniques for the craftsperson to learn and hone.

Figuring out the compositional conventions that govern your preferred styles and genres will help you to translate answers to those questions above to specific musical decisions. Draw influence from your favourite composers, songwriters and bands. The shelves of all great composers - even the most rebellious - are lined with the scores of the masters. 

Learn how your greatest influences did it and let that guide you on your search for your unique voice. Finding, establishing and honouring that is the most fundamental task that every composer faces.

By narrowing the scope and defining the context of your composition in this way, you’ll be in a position to move on to the next stage of the planning process.  

A huge misconception about composition is the belief that it’s all about musical specifics - harmony, melody, rhythm, and so on. As the raw building-blocks of a piece of music, these are of course important, but in a great work they’re always governed by a larger purpose and logic.  

In many cases, this takes the form of an established structure, like sonata form in classical music or verse–chorus form in pop. These models will lend a framework to your work, dictating the layout, characteristics and interplay of compositional sections. These are examples of conventions, as discussed above, and can be a massive help during the planning phase of composition. You can read more about handling form in section seven of the article on how to write a song on guitar.

But even in works that assume the most rigid structure, there will still be an overarching principle that defines the material and its development, and this can often be articulated in loose and abstract terms. A work might be characterised by its exploration of texture, for instance, or a particular set of intervals. It might feature a persistent and unresolving clash of disparate tonalities, or a dialogue between two musical gestures. You could simply choose to explore a particular concept or mood. It can be absolutely anything. 

Spend some time conceiving compositional objectives and strategies - a plan, in other words. You’d be surprised how much you can achieve before you even write a note. Once you’ve laid the groundwork in this way, the actual musical ideas will flow much more easily. A plan will help to steer you in a particular direction, make a blank page look far less intimidating, and form the basis of a great piece of piano music. 

If this work is going to serve a particular function in a particular context, then that’s worth considering at this stage as well. Is it being written to be performed? Is it going to feature in a film? These considerations will likely offer some kind of formal or stylistic guidelines, and it'd be good to integrate these at this point. Asking and answering such questions can usher you from a nebulous conception to a working blueprint.

To a greater or lesser extent, the composition process is conceptual at the outset. This is especially important to remember if you find yourself struggling to get started, or perhaps when you have a musical idea but aren’t sure where to take it. 

Try to give your work purpose. We’re dealing with art, after all. And even the most deliberately meaningless art inevitably acquires some sort of meaning. Establish what that is, and let it lead you through the creative process.

2. Compose at the piano

Many composers - with good reason - will totally ignore that first stage, simply because it doesn’t suit their creative process. They’re at the top of their game when they get straight down to the keyboard and begin messing around with ideas.

If that resonates with you, then you’re welcome to do likewise and ignore that first stage. After all, this article is just a guide, designed to get you to the top of your own composing game. You’re encouraged to discard it as soon as it stops serving you.  

That said, it’s very often the case that composers have to work their way up to this stage. It takes a certain degree of experience to organically develop music from the inception of an idea to the completion of a work. You’ll probably need to have a bit of compositional experience under your belt to do this. That’s why we stress the value of planning.

At any rate, plan or no plan, ideas will arise at some point. When they do, let them. Trust in them, expand them, vary them, combine them with other ideas. If it’s a nice-sounding chord, string a few others into a growing progression. If it’s a tune, envelop it with some harmony. In time, it’ll naturally evolve and expand. Just make sure that you keep note of everything that you think of. 

It should go without saying that, particularly as you’re writing for piano, the optimal way to bring out and nurture ideas in this way is by playing at the keyboard - if you have access to one. 

If you’re an aspiring composer, you’ll no doubt be familiar with digital notation software - Sibelius, Dorico, MuseScore and the rest - and you may well be using it to notate your pieces already. Unless you’re skilled enough to compose in your head, straight to the page, then there’s a good chance you’ll be using it to develop your ideas, too.

That these programs exist is a technological marvel. They empower you to produce sheet music of a professional standard in no time at all, and to work on composition practically and quickly. But be wary of placing too much faith in digital MIDI playback. 

Any music teacher worth their salt will agree: writing at the keyboard is far better than writing with software. Particularly in the early stages of writing, or if you’re new to it altogether. It encourages you to develop music in a natural and nuanced way. This is what puts the ‘soul’ in. It facilitates inspiration and spontaneity. It widens your creative horizons. It steers you clear not only of the mechanical approach that MIDI leads to, but also of the demoralising feeling that your music doesn’t sound that good. Playback is there to support, not lead. 

Trust your ear. If it sounds good to you, then that means it is good, for your personal quality barometer is all that matters. The long and the short of composition is to create, and to do that successfully you’ll need have faith in your ability and recognise the potential in everything you do create. Get into the habit of maintaining this and you’ll encourage your very best ideas. This is why it’s crucial to rely on your playing and avoid MIDI playback as much as possible, especially at this stage. 

In time, you’ll gradually work out the optimal way to get in touch with your inner creativity. There are no right and wrong answers here, only those that work and don’t work for you. A huge part of this has nothing to do with music, rather psychology. You need to get good at believing in yourself, at persevering, at getting in the zone. Establishing a location dedicated solely to writing, and working out a composition schedule or routine, will work wonders when it comes to finding your best creative headspace. 

And if you ever find yourself doubting that you’re cut out for composing, feeling as though your ideas aren’t good enough, just don’t give thoughts like that the time of day. Close the lid. Come back later. Things are guaranteed to sound different with fresh ears.

For extra tips on nurturing material in the initial stages of the composing process, take a look at steps three to six in the article on writing a song on guitar, mentioned previously. Although it approaches composition from a guitarist’s perspective and focuses on popular songwriting, it still explores a range of creative steps that you can take when approaching your piano compositions.

As it's focused more specifically on songwriting, it's able to go into more detail on the theory, exploring how to write chord progressions and melodies, develop phrases and structures, and so on. If that's the kind of support you're looking for, give it a quick read. 

3. Write like a pianist

As we emphasised before, composing idiomatically for the piano is of highest importance. Pianistic writing is the one thing that all good piano music has in common, making it one of the few things that this article’s really obliged to walk you through.

Composing at the piano will address so much of this. The sole fact that you’re developing ideas organically at the keyboard means that your intuition as a pianist will enforce the natural expression of your ideas - another big reason why writing at the instrument is so vital.

But, if you’re not an experienced player, and especially if you don’t play at all, it still helps to bear a few principles of pianistic writing in mind. 

One quick thing before we consider those, seeing as we’re going to be handling notational concepts more directly in this section. If you aren’t yet confident when it comes to writing sheet music itself, then you might find the article on how to write piano sheet music a useful read - it covers similar ground, with more of a focus on the notation process. 

First off, the obvious: pianists have two hands and ten fingers. Each hand and, to a lesser extent, each finger has independence, meaning that it’s technically possible to create and manage ten separate musical events at once. Already this puts the keyboard way beyond most instruments, and this is a major reason why it’s so versatile.

But as ever there are still limitations. All five digits will only be able to play individual notes that are reasonably close together, so include five notes per hand only rarely - four fingers can spread out well, though. Also ensure that you don’t exceed a thumb-to-pinkie span of a ninth - a tenth max - and only when there’s not much in between those outer notes.

It’s worth mentioning the caveat that you’d be pretty surprised what concert pianists are capable of, not just with regard to hand acrobatics but playing ability in general. Take Unsuk Chin’s Piano Etude No. 2, for instance - shown below and discussed alongside nine other practically impossible pieces in the article on hardest piano songs. 

You’d do well to write music that’s more complicated than this.

That said, it’s unlikely that your piece will be played by a concert pianist, so you should probably temper the complexity a touch. If a particular player is to perform it, you really must consider catering the difficulty of the piece to their skill level.  

Still, you shouldn’t fear adding more substance to the music, especially when composing beyond your playing capability. You might feel limited by this, which is totally natural. When composing music that you're unable to play yourself, you’re going to be composing mentally and in a sense speculatively, without a safety net. 

That shouldn’t be intimidating, though. If it is, just let pieces like Chin’s - or maybe some slightly less daunting works - help you to move through that. Trust that it’s playable, and bear in mind that digital playback software will help you to make sense of material that's beyond your technical threshold. 

Further to the above, don’t be afraid to lean on pre-existing pieces in this stage, exploring precedents in pianistic composition that have been established by others. Plagiarism is something to be avoided at all costs, of course, but you can absorb a great deal of influence before you reach that point.

In most genres of music, the left hand generally exercises a harmonic function, while the right handles melodic material. Pitches in the lower register - i.e. the bass - have been the most structurally pivotal in Western music for the last four centuries. Conventionally, the bassline drives and defines harmony, determining the way that all the material is framed. 

On the other hand - literally - the melody line is usually the prevalent part, cutting through the texture to draw the listener’s attention. Although the bass might be doing the work, it will very often go unnoticed, working to support the star of the show.

Somewhere between tends to be the rest of the harmony - the real colour and substance. But this can really be played anywhere on the keyboard, and whether it’s played by one hand or the other largely depends on context as well as convenience. Ensure you don’t try to colour your harmonies in too low a register, though - it can get muddy. But if muddy’s what you’re after, go for it.

Unless you’re playing block chords in a fairly closed position, it’s pretty difficult to play bass, harmony and melody all at the same time, so you’ll have to switch things up in terms of both pitch and rhythm (this relates to texture, which we’ll touch on soon). The nature of this interplay between the left and right hand is usually a definitive feature of a piece, and of an established musical style.

A few tips when it comes to arranging your material: parallel octaves in the bass sound great, but don’t always use the root of the chord (B in a B-minor triad, for example) as the lowest note - try inverting chords by using the third, fifth, or even a non-chord tone in the bass.

When handling bigger chords, you might want to omit notes to reduce their density while ensuring that the quality of the chord is still clear. In these cases, retaining the third and seventh will maintain a chord’s quality. Try not to double the third in any given chord, too. Also consider articulating chords in a broken manner, using the squiggly vertical arrow.

The avoidance of parallels by inverting your chords will create good voice leading, which leads to smoother-sounding flow from one chord to the next. But that might not be what you’re after. In rock music, it’s all about these parallel fifths - i.e. power chords - and that might be just the sound you're looking for. 

Further to that, don't forget that you're allowed to subvert absolutely any convention you want to. In fact, breaking all the rules might define your compositional plan.

While basslines often sound really solid when there are fairly large leaps from one note to the next, melodies tend to be more effective when they utilise smaller intervals. A well-placed leap can really make a tune, though - think David Bowie’s ‘Starman’. Using parallel octaves is a great way to beef up a melody, too. Rachmaninoff’s music is full of them…

The piano is slightly more limited than, say, string instruments when it comes to colour or timbre. Unless we’re talking about avant-garde music and prepared pianos - another time - pressing a key will always yield the same sound. All that can be really changed is the intensity of the sound, and the manner in which you transition from one note to the next. 

Careful handling of pedals can, however, greatly expand your piece’s sonic palette. Ensure that you add the appropriate pedal markings to any passages that you would want to sound smooth and sustained.

Texture is another important parameter to consider when composing piano music. The term broadly refers to how the various vertical layers of a passage of music interact and function - the musical extracts below demonstrate the primary textural categories.

It’s a particularly useful thing to manipulate as you expand your work and look to imbue some structure. Changes in texture can provide music with a sense of contour and development, which are concepts that we’ll encounter soon in step four. 

As long as they’re not shoehorned into a work, changes in time signature can be a great device in any kind of composition. Because it's possible to play two, three, even four ideas at once, an advantage of the piano in particular is that it lends itself to the simultaneous handling of conflicting rhythms and metres. It's not necessarily an easy thing to play, but always an interesting thing to include. 

All these concepts are heavy on the theory. Although it might not seem very ‘creative’, it’s a good idea to spend time with music theory if you’re looking to up your composition game. It’s certainly not a prerequisite, but learning about concepts like harmony and counterpoint can help you recontextualise your ideas and approach them from a different angle. 

Learning about the mechanics of tonality, for example - chord types, the relationship between tonic and dominant, modulations, and so on - can really transform how you handle your harmonic progressions. 

There’s a range of articles on the blog that can help you out in this area. To find them, simply click Blog at the top of this page, scroll down to click All categories and check out the Sheet music and Music education options. 

Also click Piano in that drop-down to find the 101 guides to piano-playing - you can find some particularly helpful theory there. And it's worth iterating that the guide to composing for guitar offers some great content in this regard, too.     

4. Cultivate the piece

It’s difficult not to approach this as the most pivotal, substantial phase of the process. It demands the most focused and sustained effort from the composer, and the work you do during this stage can determine your piece’s overall character. Many would argue that this is where the very heart of composition lies.

Your task now is to bring together the various musical ideas that you’ve written and integrate them into a complete musical artwork - a self-sustained, organic entity with an inherent musical logic. You'll need to cultivate your creation, combining its fragments, sections, gestures in the way that best suits the natural flow of the material. Often the true quality of a piece of music, piano or otherwise, can be measured by how it progresses on this particular part of journey.    

Recall our clash of the titans - Keys vs Boulez. One of the few traits that their piano works have in common is that they rise to the challenges posed by their own musical form. That may sound a bit philosophical, but try to grasp the abstract truth in there. 

As we said, the works achieve what they set out to do. When they start, these pieces unleash musical forces that need to be managed, questions that need to be answered. As the pieces progress, they then respond successfully to these challenges. Your job is to identify them, envisage their solutions, and construct a piece that effects those solutions.

A key aspect of this isn’t necessarily musical. It’s better to think of it as artistic. The skilled composer senses what their work needs, what kind of events should occur and when. These questions often don’t call for technical knowledge or ability, just an artist’s intuition.

The technicalities come later. They become important when you need to actually effect in music the vision you perceive, the scheme you want to apply. But it’s far easier to exercise these nuts and bolts of composition once you’ve already considered the bigger picture. 

This stage of the journey is less about inspiration than it is about perspiration. Particularly in classical circles, there’s a well-worn image of the creative genius, composing effortlessly with God-given talent. But anyone who has experience of composition knows that it demands serious craftsmanship and psychological labour. It isn’t called a ‘work’ for nothing.

Anyone can come up with a functioning chord scheme or a catchy hook, but developing a fully fledged musical work that combines those constituent parts - that’s another matter. That’s composition. 

Identify ways to join your ideas, and sculpt them into a larger form with a deeper sense of musical purpose. Ensure each passage justifies the direction that it pursues, the material it comprises, and its place in the overarching structure. By fulfilling these criteria - from your personal standpoint - each part will serve the whole, and the piece will be better for it. 

Respond to the music’s needs as you perceive them. Recognise the innate, underpinning logic as it emerges, bit-by-bit, through the evolution of your initial ideas.  

Long-term musical strategies, which might have been a part of your plan from the outset, come into their own here, helping you to respond to those challenges that arise. They can answer the questions you should be asking, such as: where should the piece go now? Should that section be repeated? When should that melody return? Do I need to introduce a new theme here? How should I round this off? Does the piece really feel complete? All these answers will vary depending on the shape of the music you create. 

This approach requires you to, again, think about your piece in a more conceptual way, as a piece of art, even a story, rather than an exercise in pitch, rhythm, harmony and expression. The work needs a fundamental sense of cohesion, and that's difficult to understand and execute using theory alone. 

Revisit your plan and apply it to the ideas that you’ve composed. Use it as a supportive framework to expand what you’ve come up with. But don’t be afraid to change the plan as your composition develops. Frequently, and frustratingly, the seemingly natural contour of the material contradicts the plan you envisaged at the start, but even on these occasions it can still function helpfully as a North Star.

Established formal models such as sonata form (above), the 12-bar blues, and verse–chorus form can offer a helping hand, providing a structural skeleton for you to flesh out with your ideas. You may well want to strike out on your own here and produce something more original, but it isn't necessarily derivative to use templates such as these - even if you do, you’ll still have to fil them with unique material. 

A crucial dimension of all the forms named in the previous paragraph, contrast is a major compositional asset that can establish momentum and purpose in a work: explore a different key in each section; follow loud and busy arpeggios with a gentler combination of left-hand pedal notes and right-hand melody; juxtapose rapid, overlapping rhythmic gestures with slow-moving, homorhythmic chord - whatever. 

Existing in general opposition to contrast, repetition, can also instil structure. Familiar content grounds the work and the listener’s response to it, while helping them to make sense of new ideas relative to that primary material. 

Consider manipulating, always with a sense of purpose, all the musical parameters, just to see if there’s something you can develop with interest or explore to a certain creative end. 

Ensure that you don’t neglect dynamics as a compositional tool until its too late - which this article is guilty of doing. Deliberate handling of dynamics, even on the smallest scale, can really vitalise a piece of music, and even digital playback usually pays attention to dynamics. Just ensure that you don’t make these kinds of changes just for the sake of it.

As you fill in your compositional canvas, you may well find that the work begins to compose itself as it inevitably acquires certain attributes, and starts to assume and exert a structure. If you suddenly - or gradually - feel this happening, that’s an encouraging sign that you’ve handled this key stage of composition well. Ride with it.

5. Add the final touches

Cultivate and cultivate, and at some point you’re bound to step back and realise that after all your effort, your piece finally assumes a fairly definitive musical form. In terms of the raw notes on the page, the pitches and rhythms, the composition is all there. 

You’re certainly on the home straight, if not quite at the finish line. Even when you’re satisfied that the actual substance of your piece is now determined, there remains a number of things still to consider, which can entail some important decision-making.

The first of these concerns articulation - how you want the pianist to play your notes on the page. Markings such slurs, staccato and tenuto as pertain to this, and relate ultimately to the aspect of musical practice known as expression. Performers bear a lot of responsibility when it comes to this, but that doesn’t mean that you should sacrifice too much of your power as composer. 

This is because it’s a critical aspect of how music is realised. It shapes the way the material presents itself - expression is so strongly aligned with the fundamental character of a work. No doubt it's already been playing a central role in the composition process, even if you haven't been fully aware of it. If you’ve been playing your piece on piano, then you’re guaranteed to have been articulating it in a certain way as you’ve been composing. This will be intrinsic to the piece as you understand it, so if you would like a faithful expressive realisation of your music, ensure your articulation markings are explicit. 

It’s not rare for composers to neglect dynamics until these late stages. As we covered, they’re a tragically underrated dimension of music, and really do possess the power to bring that je ne sais quoi to a piece. Make sure that any dynamic characteristics that you've intuitively played or envisaged during the composition process are reflected in dynamic markings in the score. Without them, performing musicians may not realise your the music the way you intended - they won’t have the same instinctive grasp of the work as you.

Then it’s all about housekeeping. Make sure it’s all presented clearly and accurately. Are time and key signatures correct? Shouldn't that F-sharp be a G-flat? Have you set the tempo? Are rhythms notated in line with the correct beat groupings? Have you added pedal markings? Are complicated gestures voiced in the clearest way? This last one is a dangerous pitfall in piano music, as illustrated by the graphic below. See if you can guess which bar constitutes proper practice.

Presentation is imperative. 

In the end, these considerations pertain to the performing pianist’s ability to interpret your compositional instructions, which are transmitted through the notation you lay out in your score. This should be a core consideration throughout the composition process, for what endgame is there for someone who writes music other than having their art realised and heard in performance? Aim high. You have what it takes.

Unlock a world of piano music

Going right back to step one, every composer embarks on their creative journey astride a foundation of musical experience. They will have influences, a genre they want to engage with, and a style they want to emulate. To take the first step, you’ll have to figure out what kind of piano music you want to write.

So what’ll it be? Romantic-era piano? Anglo-Irish folk? Rhythm and blues? Stevie Wonder? Joseph Haydn? Piano music poses an infinite array of possibilities, and the optimal route to figuring out which is right for you is to discover, research, play, learn, and get inspired. 

A digital library packed with the world’s most inspirational piano music is just a click away - thousands of works that teach lessons in piano composition by example. Expose yourself to the greatest music ever written for the instrument and accumulate all the tools you need to start adding your own music to this monumental collective of music. Start your free trial now.