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Morayo Balogun

Professor Malcolm Campbell

WRDS 1104

07 April 2022

Writers and Composers: Two of the Same

When people think of a writer, they think of someone who writes, of course, but

usually only for people who write books, articles, poems etc. When people think of composers,

well personally I think of Beethoven and Mozart, but what they do is they write music by

arranging notes in whatever ways they think sounds appropriate. What I wanted to do is see how

the 2 compare.

If G# and Ab are played on a piano (or any instrument really), the same pitch is heard.

This is because they are the same note, but if you don’t know where a G# is or an Ab is, then you

can’t play it. Also, if that was tried to be written on music manuscript paper, then a proper

knowledge of music is needed. This relates to writing because if one does not know the correct

words, you can’t use them. Writing and music are similar.

Mark Benis, composer, has written an article about his experience with comparing

writing and music. Benis tells the audience that his greatest influence on his composing comes

from writing and not music. And that influence was when he started reading Game of Thrones

the series by George R. R. Martin. I have never read Game of Thrones, but I have heard a lot of

good things about the series. Benis has a music education that allowed him to analyze the film
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score, but he had no education in writing fiction, so he decided to learn. He decides to start

learning by reading books about writing fiction. The book called 100 Ways to Improve Your

Writing by Gary Provost stuck out to Benis. Provost claims “Writing is not a visual art any more

than composing music is a visual art. To write is to create music. The words you write make

sounds, and when those sounds are in harmony, the writing will work… Read aloud what you

write and listen to its music. Listen for dissonance. Listen for the beat. Listen for gaps where the

music leaps from sound to sound instead of flowing as it should”. I agree with all the points said

in the paragraph; Provost almost perfectly captures what I think about music and writing. When

most people read, they read at a certain rhythm or pace. And when music is created, it is created

at a certain rhythm, pace, or beat. When reading, the punctuation helps distinguish the rhythm.

For example, if you read ‘Let's eat Mom’ you would think my sibling and I would be eating my

mother; but if I say ‘Let’s eat, Mom’ you pause after let’s eat and that means I am eating with my

mother most likely. Because of that one comma the pace at which you read is slowed by the

pause. Provost also states “Listen for sour notes. Is this word a little sharp, is that one a bit flat?

… There are no good sounds or bad sounds [in writing], just as there are no good notes or bad

notes in music. It is the way in which you combine them that can make the writing succeed or

fail”. In music there are minor keys, which usually sound like a halloween soundtrack. Minor

keys are usually anything that sounds scary, but just because the keys are minor does not stop

people from using them to create great music. I think that most directly correlates with Provosts

saying of “there are no good sounds or bad sounds [in writing]”. When comparing writing and

music, choosing a word is like picking a note, writing in the introduction is like writing the first

verse, reading a chapter is like listening to a movement, and constructing a sentence is like
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forming a phrase. Benis says “One can represent characters changing throughout a story as

melodies developing throughout a piece, both conveying the emotions that lie at the heart of the

work” and I immediately thought of the song “Stay” by Rihanna.

In “Stay”, Rihanna is the female lead who is in an abusive relationship, but stays

because she loves her lover so much, but is not really sure why. Mikky Ekko comes in as the

male perspective and they go through the same circle of emotions: arguments, tears, breaking up

and getting back together. But they want each other to stay even though they are not in a healthy

relationship. Mikky agrees that they are in a destructive circle, and that you can not just take love

you also have to give it. When they come in together for the bridge, they both are singing in

harmony; but when they get to the word caving, there is a bit of dissonance (again with the word

saving). They do this to show the conflict between the two. I believe that they both think they are

the victims in this song. With the way the song is conveyed, you can clearly find the storyline.

Both writing and music deal with communication of emotion or ideas, only one is

through visual means and the other is auditory means. So regardless of if you are a writer or a

composer, your first job is to communicate. To make a song or write a story that does not get

your point across is going to be confusing for the listener or reader. Some other parallels that

connect music and writing are vocabulary, tone, context clues, diction, and form. Music has a

great number of vocabulary words, some being crescendo, staccato, adagio, falsetto, legato, or

andante. If you do not study music, it is unexpected of you to know what these words mean or if

you see them in music, you are not expected to know what to do. Just like if you are writing an

essay for biology, and you are using words like heterotroph, endocytosis, prokaryote, eukaryote,
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or photosynthesis, you need to be able to understand the words (as well as knowing when to use

them versus using another word).

At the end of the day, all art forms are going to have similarities and differences. I just

happened to find more similarities than differences for music and writing. However, they are not

exactly the same, but it was very interesting to research and see how the two were intertwined. I

cannot wait until the next time I read music, and try to read the music as a complement note

instead of what I am supposed to. Or the next time I try composing music, maybe I will try

choosing a story from my life, and trying to translate it into a song.

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Works Cited

Alper, Eric. “How Does Good Music Develop Your Writing Skills?” That Eric Alper, That Eric

Alper, 24 Feb. 2021,

https://www.thatericalper.com/2021/02/11/how-does-good-music-develop-your-writing-s

kills/. Accessed 22 Mar. 2022

Benis, Mark. “Is Writing Stories so Different from Writing Music?” Medium, The Startup, 8 Mar.

2020,

medium.com/swlh/is-writing-stories-so-different-from-writing-music-ca557344e01c#:~:t

ext=To%20write%20is%20to%20create,Listen%20for%20dissonance. Accessed 22 Mar.

2022.

Bernotas, Chris. “Connecting the Dots: Storytelling Similarities in Music and Literature”Alfred

Music, 8 Feb. 2019,

www.alfred.com/blog/connecting-dots-storytelling-similarities-music-literature. Accessed

22 Mar. 2022.

Rihanna, “Rihanna - Stay (Lyrics) Ft. Mikky Ekko.” “” YouTube, YouTube, 09 Apr. 2022,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKQ9iTue8Sg. Accessed 09 Apr. 2022