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Hi guys! All of us here are composers, whatever level we are in. However everything has its beginning (and hopefully not end). We all have our first experience of composing, and start to compose more by having that first experience as the basis and build ourself up, whether by skills, knowledge, experience or taste. I would like to ask, why and when do you first begin composing? What is your inspiration of it? How do you compose when you may not have adequate tool and theory to back you up? I wanna share my own experience. I started learning piano when I was 10 years old, a relatively late age. Then after months or a year or so, I suddenly had the impulse to imitate Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, since it was the first classical piece I had ever listened to, alongside his no.13 and noi.15 Piano Sonata. I remembered I knew nothing on composing and therefore just wrote some mess out, which might resonate with some of Beethoven's passage LoL, in a naive way. I didn't even have staff paper at that time, let alone PC and computer program to write the music out. I just wrote with the letter names on top and the note value under it like this: A G# Fx G# Crotchet Crotchet Semibreve Minim (in note, not words) I have already forgotten that piece, but that experience is unforgettable. There's no reason for me to begin composing, since no one has ever taught me so, but I still do that and luckily I am still composing. Really wish you guys can share your first moments of composing to us! Henry

I know I haven't finished symphony 2 or 3, but I was just so inspired by the material, I had to work on it. This is probably my most traditional (especially in structure) symphony so far, probably due to my analysing Beethoven symphonies and sonatas, reading sonata theory, and studying Fux's treatise on counterpoint. The movements are a sonata form first, followed by a scherzo, then the slow movement. There's a program, but it doesn't affect the music much, (introduction and exposition as well as the overall character of the inner movements are as far as the program goes). A rundown of the program: A few years ago, I found on my garage floor an abandoned, injured baby mouse. I wanted to rescue it, but my mom refused to do anything about it, and I was so distraught. I had never felt this way, knowing that I had the power to help the little creature, but being too afraid to go against my mother. I eventually disobeyed her, and I called a local animal rescue group. I sat with the mouse for hours to keep him company until she arrived. She took care of him and sent me update pictures until it was time for him to be released. She gave the mouse to me since I had found him, which I'm grateful for. I released him by an apple tree, and I sometimes regretted not keeping him, but I know he was probably content in the wild and my mother would not have approved anyway. The whole experience affected me deeply, even though looking back people have been in much more extreme animal rescue situations. And maybe my music is a bit melodramatic for this, but I sketched the intro and exposition immediately afterward, so the emotion was still fresh and raw. Specific program notes: The introductory crash represents my surprise when I first found him. The English Horn melody is the mouse, and the first and second theme are sad and then angered, because I was first sad for the mouse would likely die, and then angry because I was restricted from helping. The rest is absolute music and just develops the material. The middle movements are lighter because they represent the period where he was being taken care of. I have no idea what to do for the fourth movement, so I'll probably leave it for now and work on my other music. Also, sorry for the somewhat low-quality audio, I don't have too many opportunities to MuseScore 4, (it's on my parents' computer, my laptop can't handle it). (This is an expansion from a previous version linked here.)

Hi Composaboi, This is quite beautiful. I can clearly feel the anguish and torment in Mvt 1, brisk repose in Mvt 2 and compassion in Mvt 3. As Henry mentioned, I think you could possibly bring even more imaginative orchestral techniques and harmonies to develop your themes. I'd check out the "Omnibus" progression and expand your string palette with scores by sensei korsakov. Again, congratulations on this new work. Sometimes, I wish I had the grit and tenacity to accomplish something this large-scale but that is a question for another time. )

I did it like two and a half years ago, it was sort of an improvisation in c minor, I didn’t know how harmony worked so I stayed in the tonic for the whole minute that the piece lasted Somehow it wasn’t dissonant, just too basic I am embarrassed to say that I was staying in the tonic during 90% of the time the pieces I wrote lasted, and I knew nothing about harmony until seven months ago, when I started taking composition seriously

Since it was too bad or not? It was like an improvisation or you still remember the piece? I think most of our first compositions will be bad except we are Mozart, so nothing to be embarrassed of! Henry

Fortunately, my first attempt at composition was never written down

I think my first composition was not inspired by any particular composer or genre but by my having a computer and midi program which gave me the capability to hear anything I put in which to me just opened up the whole world of composing. My first piece was an impossible piano piece that could not be played because it had so many consecutive repeating notes (it wouldn't even be playable if one arranged it for four hands or two pianos LoL). As I learned music through learning Clarinet and Piano with my best friend in Jr. High and High School, eventually my Slavic/Polish roots came out in my music as I composed a Polonaise type piece without even really trying to write in nationalistic/folk music forms. But I like to think that a huge part of my attraction to music was because of my experiences of playing video games and listening to the kick ass music in classic Super Nintendo games from the 1990's. With my midi software I was able to search the internet to find midi's of VGM tracks that I opened up in my sequencer and tried to analyze/understand and then (of course) imitate that. I think a big part of my musical philosophy (which is basically that I believe that all music is playful) comes from those experiences of listening to really awesome video game music while having lots of fun playing games like Zelda: A Link to the Past, the original Star Fox, Sim City, Final Fantasy VI, and Chrono Trigger (all for the SNES). I also tried to imitate those musics through writing short incidental/programmatic imaginary VGM tracks with a limited instrumentation. All those old works are lost now but some of the melodies are still in my memory. Another kind of music I tried to imitate when I was first starting out is Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 - Pizzicato Ostinato. For some reason the string orchestra all using pizzicato all at once was a very attractive sound to me and I tried to write my own Pizzicato Ostinato piece which was one of my most chromatic and harmonically complex first compositions. It included harp and I was told by a Violinist friend in University that it was in fact playable (to my surprise LoL). But these days I feel like I've grown out of trying to imitate other composers. Maybe I might still imitate certain genres I am not particularly familiar with if there's a purpose for that (like if I need to write that kind of music for my own future video game I'm planning to make).

I was 11, and had some weird TV Show in my head called Demon Hunters. We were learning to play Pirates of the Caribbean in Orchestra so I decided to try and write a theme song for the show. I don't remember what it sounded like, but I listened to it a couple years ago and even though it was about 2 bars in length, it was rubbish. There were a few improv things I did earlier than that, but I dont consider them compositions.