jim

Good luck with the 6hrs+ daily goal Wolf. Let me know how you do. Is that 6hrs for each of composition plus instrument practice (6+6=12hrs daily)? Or 3+3hrs daily, which is my set minimum per week? Re. those others who've said they object to composing other than when inspiration comes, I'd recommend researching the lives of great artists - musicians as well as artists in other mediums. You'll find that to achieve something great, regular work (and lots of it) is very important, (including for the "gifted"), even though there may be times when one does a great deal, and less at others. I've found that certain sorts of composition work requires a particular frame of mind, and there are ways of achieving this, such as walks in natural places and meditation techniques. Judith Wright said of herself that "The hunger to write grew with feeding". Henri Matisse said: "One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work. To prepare one's work is first to nourish one's feelings by studies that have a certain alalogy with the picture, and it is through this that the choice of elements can be made. It is these studies that permit the painter to free his unconscious mind." (p.107, Matisse on Art, ed. J. Flam). I've been doing such studies lately for a particular piece I'm working on by researching folk song lullabys from around the world, and writing my own "studies": lullaby-like melodies, and lullaby variations, not necessarily for the piece, but as "preparation" and "nourishment" as described by Matisse. Nourishing one's feelings leads to inspiration. Matisse says elsewhere that he took a horseride if he didn't feel like painting, and did feel like it when he returned. William Wordsworth very directly nourished his feelings to write poetry by long daily walks in nature, and Beethoven did the same, doing much composing on such walks in his pocket sketchbooks - a habit I've adopted & found works brilliantly. There's always work for an aspiring composer to do; whether we feel inspired or not is no reason to waste precious time on television or whatever. And as Matisse said, conscious work gets one into a creative state.

The question of how much to practice has been on my mind lately, and I've done some research on the web on the amount expected of university music students, since I've decided not to do such a course for various reasons, but I'm no less serious than formally educated students about music. Well, I found the follwing: *Illinois State University: "For piano principles, a suggested minimum of 1-1 1/2 to 2 hours practice daily is advised. For piano performance majors, two to four hours practice per day is expected." *University of Tenessee, Knoxville:"...students preparing to become organ minors, principals, or majors: 2 to 4 hours practice per day.""Organ performance majors:3-4 hours practice per day." *Utah State Uni.: "Practice (these are minimum times. Practicing this amount is doing a minimum effort.)":"Performance majors: 3 hours a day minimum; 4 expected as the average." I've found more from other uni's but I haven't time to type it all up. You get the idea. I couldn't find anything on how many hours composition practice are expected of composition majors, and how they are expected to balance this with instrument practice. I'd like to find out what such expectations/demands on university students are, as they're most likely well-founded on experience & research, and would therefore serve as a good model for me, a self-taught aspiring composer-performer. I currently practice composition about 4 hours daily, and I struggle to get in 3 hours daily instrument practice. I don't find it hard at all to do that much composition, and it's not really enough for me. If I'm not "inspired" there are always plenty of technical things to practice and learn. With instrument practice, I sometimes find it easy to do a lot (about 5 or 6 hours in a day at the most), but I usually need good self-discipline to do a minimum of this physical work. I keep track of my music practice time using two stopwatches. I set one of these to start at the beginning of a session to time the session's overall time, and the other one I use to time how long I spend on each exercise/piece. I then add up all of the time I've spent on actual practice, and compare it to the overall session time. On average these days, for every 1 hour of my session total time, I spend about 45 to 50 minutes on actual practice. I use the actual practice time totals to add up my 3 daily hours instrument practice - my session total times would be higher, but only because they include things like sipping tea, stretching, scratching, and finding books. Before I did all of this I used to waste lots of practice time such as by wandering over to the mirror and deciding to shave, or cutting my toenails. I usually don't add up my compostion practice final totals, as I don't need to push myself to do more:- time restrictions on comp. are more from the demands of being a single parent of 3 than lack of motivation to compose; I always love it, and often have to drag myself away from it at the end. Oh, and I don't make specific demands on how much time I practice particular pieces or exercises; I just do as much as I can, listening to my instincts, and go on to the next thing, whatever I feel like doing, but keeping track of how much time I've spent on everything, and trying to be appropriately balanced. *** Any current or ex-university composition-major students out there, PLEASE tell us how much composition practice time is expected/demanded during the course, and how this compares with how much instrument practice is required. Of course, how much time we devote to music depends on such things as how enthusiastic and motivated we are, what our goals are, how much we need to develop & maintain our skills, how serious about & dedicated we are to music, our physical and mental condition, and how much our circumstances allow - family, work, school, etc.

I agree that the fact that diatonic theory is the norm in music education appears partly responsible for the prevalence of diatonic music, especially popular, but scales/modes of about 5 to 7 notes are also the norm in the music traditions of cultures around the world, which can be traced back to ancient times. Humans naturally enjoy music composed with these sorts of scales. Use of microtones has much potential, and I've just begun to explore the possibilities myself, beginning with learning about their use in Indian classical music, an ancient tradition which has an enormous amount to teach. This music very commonly uses microtones, dividing the octave into, as far as I remember, about 22 tones. The scales used however, range from about 4 tones at the very least, to about 9 at the very most, 7 being the average, and commonly have a different number of tones ascending than descending.There are literally thousands of different ragas, many which use exactly the same notes but which express different moods, and have different rules of use, such as the vadi and samvadi: the notes of 1st & 2nd importance respectively. There is much more to it of course, but what I'm trying to say is that there are such treasures in non-Western music, which have been severely, arrogantly dismissed, underestimated, and ignored, that we would be at a real loss if we didn't learn from, for ex. in use of microtones. To experiment with microtones, tonality, atonality, etc. may of course be beneficial, but I think it wise to first really learn about what has already been achieved in music which has attained real artistic greatness, so we don't waste our efforts in re-inventing the wheel badly, as so much of recent Western experimental music does. If we find the Western major/minor system too limiting, have we thoroughly explored other established systems? The prevalence of 5 to 7-tone scales in the world's music, from as far back in history as we can see, (as well as modern popular music worldwide) indicates that these scales (especially diatonic and pentatonic) are what humans most naturally express themselves with musically, and most enjoy listening to. It may be possible, by repeated open-mided listening, for people to get used to and even enjoy music which uses more than 7 tones, but this requires people to make the effort to thus condition themselves to music which otherwise wouldn't naturally appeal to them. It can be compared to the temperature ranges people are comfortable with; some may enjoy a warm bath, others prefer a hot bath. Some enjoy bathing in moderately cold water. But it's all within a limited temperature range. Beyond that, some may condition themselves to bathing in freezing cold or boiling hot water, and learn to enjoy these.

Hi. I'm fairly new to composition (about 4 years of serious effort), and I was thinking about building up a piece from a simple 1st-species modal counterpoint basis. I will try this asap, but I was hoping someone with more experience than me could offer some advice & suggestions on how to go about doing this sort of thing. I was particularly thinking about the comments I saw on this forum a while ago about modal composition not necessarily following the same rules of harmony we have for major/minor composition. This is why I thought a "properly" written 1st species exercise would provide a sound, logical harmonic progression to use as an underlying structure. Am I onto something?

Why were my comments removed? I didn't say anything offensive or too irrelevent, did I? Was I being too philosophical? Well it is a philosophical sort of question. Am I too new to this club? Why am I being excluded? I'm heatbroken! Surely the thoughts I expressed at least modestly contributed in a positive way to the conversation, and had enough merit & validity to be left with the others. It would have done no harm; at worst I'd have been criticised or ignored, which I'd much prefer. I do expect this message to be removed, but I'm really offended that my other sincere thoughts were discarded.

i agree with the komposeress, in that i doubt that music can be created by human beings without emotion of some sort. in my oppinion, the seperation of "intellectual" from "emotional" music isn't quite justified, as being intellectually-oriented IS an emotion. but "emotion" isn't quite an adequate term to describe what music conveys. "mood" or "state of consciousness" are better, methinks, but still perhaps inadequate. maybe "emotion"can be seperated from "mood" in music, if emotion is seen as more brief & passing, for example a burst of joy or anger, perhaps lasting only a few bars, whereas a mood or state of consciousness is more long-term, covering for example a whole piece or series of pieces as an atmosphere is built. (maybe these are just different aspects of emotion,but that's just a question of which words to label these things with). would anyone share their thoghts on this?

hi everyone. i'm new here, & think it's great to find all of this useful info/answers to questions. I've also been interested in composing with the modes, & at first got stuck on the problem of how to use harmonies. what more or less resolved the problem for me was reading some books on jazz theory. i don't compose jazz & don't want to, but those who do are very big on using modes, & even pentatonic scales. still, i haven't found the sorts of 'rules' of harmony as we have for major/minor scales, & jazz music usually modulates far too often for my taste. but at least it's a genre which keeps the use of modes alive,& has come up with lots of its own ways of doing so. oh, and i'd also recommend looking up indian ragas, many of which use the same scales as the diatonic modes. the rules of these ragas can be useful in developing motifs, and they have a specific mood. i found some excellent material at a local university library, from which i've photocopied heaps. ;) Jim.