Quote tweet from Rami Ismail:
“OK, Twitter, I have a curiosity for you: reply with your job/discipline/creative medium and one highly specific and concrete piece of advice/wisdom/experience/reference that you feel might help someone like you one day. Please feel free to go super niche or specific.”
My reply:
“Game Composer [wave emoji]
It’s ok to write I-IV-V chords [playful tongue out emoji]
Serious note: focus on cultivating a healthy relationship between yourself and the process of composing. Writing complex chord progressions / new styles will come when you are comfortable and gone through the ‘basics’ process.”
The use of I-IV-V (or I-V-IV) chord progressions is often laughed and looked down upon in a lot of composer groups and circles when it comes to deconstructing a composer’s writing quality and level, which I feel is really unfortunate.
Seeing a lot of these comments as a composer who’s quite young in the field can be really off putting and encourages the mindset of ‘in order to be good, I must write complex chord progressions’. This mindset also trapped me in a low-self esteem loop of trying to force myself to write more ‘clever’ chords, and for it not sounding right for the longest time. The process of composing wasn’t as enjoyable as I once found it, and it became another struggle and barrier to write.
Another way to look at it (thanks to @_nabeelansari for wording it in this excellent way!):
“Musicians who can write complex stuff aren’t “smarter” than me, they’ve just evolved from the basics where I was refusing to start.”
Your own take of more complex chord progressions will come naturally once you’ve stewed in the I-IV-V chord soup long enough!