Biscuit Trolley

Fair enough that seems reasonable. I apologise if this sounds inflammatory, I promise it is not meant to, only I'm having trouble conveying it without. I personally would not want to cut myself off from the different source of inspiration that is composition to fit a brief, and I feel that it's something of a shame that you feel you aren't able to find something personal from out of a framwork given by someone else. Of course, you are correct here. I did not express myself properly; what I should have said is that it is pointless to compose music solely with one's own satisfaction in mind because music is a social thing; it is validated by others experiencing it. It is not truly (in my opinion) music until it is experienced by someone else, whether or not they like it. Otherwise you might as well just listen to it in your head and never go through the compositional process. The satisfaction comes from the fact that we have created something that we can share with others. Entirely true Not so true. Without knowing the program of a piece of music, you could have many different stories attached to it, and in fact you could even miss the intention of a program entirely and perceive it as a non-programmatic piece. Also because emotion is a part of experience, the two are inseperable, so it is illogical to make that distinction between an emotional interpretation and an imaginative one. One could pereceive a program in a piece not intended to have a program, and similarly, one could entirely miss the program of a programmatic piece, because music is an abstract. No musical molecule has specific meaning - as you say, it is all interpretative and based on emotional experience, cultural expectation etc. Not true. Originality is a slippery concept, and a subtle one to see. I do believe in the possibility of true originality; in principle, it is a creation that has not been influenced by anything at all. An example of this would be a painting done by a person who was blind from birth. They have never seen anything and therefore what they painted cannot have been influenced by anything and is therefore original. I would argue that an ability to "fantasize and role play events and circumstances that we have never experienced" is in fact impossible. Any imagination is an amalgamation of past experiences. I support this claim with what I have gathered from kids I teach. Kids who don't read books find it very very difficult to imagine any situation outside of their own reality, because books stimulate our minds to imagine new things, whereas kids who do read alot have much more propensity for creativeness in terms of story-telling and imagining situations that they have not literally experienced. Thus, the ability to imagine a new situation comes from being stimulated and experiencing alternate realities in books. When you have a wide range of real-world and non-real-world experiences, it does create an almost miraculous ability to combine those influences into something that seems original. However, I will also say that that doesn't rule out the possibility of real origniality, it's just that whatever facet is truly original will be intertwined with the other influences. Newton said "If I see further than my predecessors, it is only because I stand upon their shoulders." This holds true as Newton did make original steps, as does every person who creates progress, but he was not able to do so without the framework of influence from his predecessors. Again I agree. It is self-evident that we have propensity for originality, otherwise development would never happen. However I would argue that such an ability as you describe does not exist, because of everything I have just argued. It would be impossible to write a symphony without ever having heard music. My argument is not that there is a "loss of understanding/empathizing and/or emotional connectivity due to not composing music to fit with an external stimulus" but that any composition comes from external stimuli, whether it is emotional or programmatic. You do not feel emotions simply from within yourself. You feel emotions as a reaction to the world around you, and therefore I do not distinguish between an emotional stimulus and a programmatic or job-based stimulus. In fact, I would say that a job-based stimulus is simply a funneling of possibility; when you are able to compose on a whim, the world is your oyster: you can use any emotional, programmatic, experiential stimulus. When you have a brief, your horizons must be narrowed, but to me, that does not alter the fact that at its core, the music is still created from emotion and experience, it is simply that the emotion and experience from which you can draw is limited. I didn't mean to give the impression that that's what I thought you were saying, however, I would say that it might be possible for you to write to a brief and yet still include all the emotional content that you feel it should have. Just as a kind of disclaimer, I'm not trying to say that your feelinf is invalid, I'm only asking you to question and trying to give some logical basis from which to do so. In reply to the rest of what's been said, as I mentioned above, it is impossible to have any irrefutable meaning in a piece. E.g Debussy's Girld With the Flaxen Hair could be perceived as a hopeful love song that expresses the artist's hope of his love being requited, or as a bittersweet soliloquy for a woman he loved. It could also be perceived in a mutlitude of other ways, but I chose those two to illustrate how diametrically opposed interpretations can be. As you say, Phil, part of the beauty of music is the openness to interpretation. On the discussion of the starving artist mentality, for me, the most important opinion is my own. If I don't like it, why would I have created it? However, the idea that a performer or group of performers would see it as worth performing would be incredibly moving for me, and by the same token, if people thought it was worth their time to see my piece being performed (particularly if they then enjoy it) would also be incredibly moving. It just seems mildly ridiculous to write music only for yourself to listen to, because then you might as well just keep it in your head and not bother creating it in a real format. Is it not inherent in composing (as opposed to just listening to the music in your own head) that it is done for other people to hear, whether or not they appreciate it? On the subject of whether or not people "get" your intention in the music, as I said above, unless you give people a meaning which they can attach to the piece (as happens in game or film composition, or an opera or a ballet etc.) because musical cells do not have meaning as do words, interpretation is never guaranteed. Edit: sorry about the essay . . .

Well said. . . much more succinctly than I managed. . . :veryunsure:

I couldn't agree more Phil, my point is not that expression is pointless, but that to compose with only one's own satisfaction in mind is pointless. The impression I got from the previous posts was that Jawoodruff was of the opinion that a composer shouldn't have to write to music to conform to expressing an idea formulated by someone else (as in the situation of music for a game). However, when a composer writes a piece to express their own emotions, it is a way of communicating that emotion to other people, to share the happiness that inspired them, or to look for solace in sharing the sadness that inspired them, or whatever other reason to share whatever emotion the piece conveys. In this sense, I'm kind of coming from the same point of view as VoodooChild, that private emotional portrayal has no distinction from portrayal of any other idea (for example what happens to a faun in an afternoon, including any emotional content that becomes evident in that faun's afternoon) in terms of composition. From a slightly different angle, I find composing to a brief given by someone else to be useful as a spiritual tool as it is a way of practicing empathy and searching for emotion and meaning within ideas that you might not necessarily have immediately been inspired by. For example my A-level composition brief was to write music for an airline advert. Seems extremely soulless at first glance, but with some thought I came up with a piece that in my opinion expressed both my own personality and still fitted the brief we were given, and it turned out to be a piece that I still enjoy listening to. I think what I'm trying to get at here is that in my opinion, if you rule out the idea of composing music to fit with an external stimulus (something not inspired solely by your own thoughts and emotions) you rule out a whole world of potential understanding and emotional connection.

Hi sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this question, it just like a convenient place to ask; does anybody (particularly Ms. Phillips) have any advice on how you'd go about getting a job as a composer for games? It seems like quite an impenetrable profession from where I stand. Also, is there lots of competition for game music composition jobs, and do you need to have a degree or similar qualification? In response to the conversation that's been going on, my personal opinion is that because music is a social thing (even a solo piece is intended to be performed to an audience) the idea of music written solely for the composer's own emotional whim is pointless. I am putting this in a very black and white view here, but to me the idea of a brief with a specific purpose in mind for a piece of music is inextricable from the idea of composing. The distinction i think you're making (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's more valid to compose something when the brief comes from within yourself than when the brief is given to you by someone else. To me, because of the fact that I view music as a social thing at its core, where the brief comes from is irrelevant.