# Can't quite achieve the sound in my music I want



## Manok

I know how to write in the baroque style, and even the classical style very very well, in fact any time I try to branch out into new styles, my music keeps going back to the two styles I've been playing/writing a lot in. I've always wanted to be able to write in the style closer to the late 19th/early 20th century, composers like Sibelius, Debussy, Vaughn Williams more that era of classical music, but even though I spend a lot of time studying the style, I just can't get the harmonies and melodies right. Part of the reason I asked for a harmony book was to help with that end. Is there something else I could do to get closer to my goal?


----------



## EdwardBast

You can study scores, preferably piano scores to keep it simple, by these and other composers and try to match the style. This might require some careful analysis and/or reading about the essential features of the composer's style. If you want to sound like Brahms, for example, you will need to know about modal mixture, common tone modulations by thirds, and be fluent with using seventh chords, and so on.

One theory professor I had as an undergraduate gave us excerpts of piano score with several measures left out and asked us to complete them in a way that blended with the rest. So we ended up trying to write Brahms, Schubert, Hugo Wolf, etc. It's also kind of standard to just pick a composer with a distinct style and try to write a convincing forgery that could be mistaken for that composer's work. 

Bottom line: Lots of score study and writing.


----------

