How do you compose?

Hi I'm new to this forum.

I've been playing lots of instruments, but I have never composed a full piece before. I sometimes come up with an interesting melody, but I don't really know how to add stuff to it. I know general music theory, scales, chords, intervals, modes. But I haven't studied counterpoint, or harmonization much. Are those really helpful??

What is the best helpful skill you should have to compose music? When I comopse, I tend to compose really easy melodies. I think it's because I want to understand what I am doing when I compose. How do you make an interesting melody? Do you just play random stuff until you find something cool? or Do you compose melodies based on skills you have, eg scales, chords.

Sooo, All I want to ask you is how can I improve my composition skill?

Hi!

What is the best helpful skill you should have to compose music?[/b]

Everyone here will have a different view on that! You need a few skills. A good start is studying music of the composers you like, see how they did it.

And here's a good set of guidelines, once you get started:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/Techni...sing-t3233.html

M

Sooo, All I want to ask you is how can I improve my composition skill?

Check out this thread - composing strategies. For me, it starts with one, strong element and builds from there. Often it starts with something different than the last time....melody first. A bass line. Even just a particular voicing or sound...

A good exercise to develop and expand on your own is to 'assign' yourself projects emphasizing a particular aspect of the music. Melody? Harmony? Progression/root movement? Rhythm? Concentrate on elements foreign to you. Bash it out - you'll end up with loads of crap, but throughout the process you'll learn quickly what works and what doesn't.

...

I was sitting down yesterday getting ready to start a new work, and I was thinking about the process I use to compose. I like to write tone-poem-ish works, so usually I’ll start a new work when inspired by a book, a piece of art, or some sort of concept that intrigues me. (past inspirations include: MacBeth, Edgar Allan Poe, colors, a thesaurus, pictures)

The first thing I do before writing a single note is to draw up the instrumentation list, indicating which instruments and how many I’m going to use in the work. I then set up the score in Finale. The instrumentation may change over time, but it’s almost always close to the finished product.

After I draw up the instrumentation list, I spend a few minutes each day just looking at it and working motives or themes in my head for one or more of the instruments. Sometimes I’ll take out a sheet of notebook paper and just jot down possible instrumental combinations. If I’m envisioning it as a multi-movement work, I’ll spend some time coming up with descriptive movement titles (which may or may not survive to the final work).

This goes on for about two to four weeks before I open up the score and begin composing. I keep all my notes and refer to them often for direction if I’m stuck or looking for some way to move the piece along.

So, how do you compose?

well... I am heavily into inspiration. I'm an addict :D

when something hits me, in terms of a significant event, or something else, I'll just sit at the computer and go. I don't even need a piano a lot of the time... I just say, it's in A minor, so this would sound good with/over it, then it should go here.... blah blah blah. I find it very, very easy to write when I'm into it, and when I'm not, it's impossible.

right now, for example, I have a lot of writers' block. I will sit at a piano and try to figure something out, but it won't work, until some day, someone does something, or I see something I love, and it will just come out. it's odd that way. a lot of it, in summary, is based upon inspiration.

now, of course, I will sometimes go to the piano and figure something out, but it takes a lot of effort and time, and from experience, I know that it's unnecessary, because simply waiting will provide something good. I also know that this is bad, because If I hope to have a chance in university, for example...

but, there you have it. inspiration.

interesting thread, by the way.

Here it is (was)

...my Musical Manifesto ...whatever the hell that means.

I compose considering various steps. I say considering, because I often ignore, duplicate or otherwise alter my steps. These steps define and shape the end result, the main controlling aspects of which are laid out in the first, and only truly important step.

Cerebral Contextualization :D

Thinking about it. Instantly the generalities of the piece are created. In this step come basic orchestration (nonet? jazz orchestra? string trio?) and the overall shape/form of the piece.

With consideration more specific details take shape. Melody, a solid form, soloists, and exact orchestration, etc.

I usually end up spending a lot of time in this stage - never omitting it, and often never getting past it. I Spend a week or two (or less, or a lot more) just thinking of the piece, playing it in my head almost constantly. Tweak it - fix it - scrap it. Iron out the kinks before setting pencil to paper.

I do need to poke a piano to get ideas and starting points. Any simple idea will do - bass line? chord(s)? Voicing? Sound? I take a basic concept and (in my head) build on it, trying and testing it out, until I'm happy with it.

THEN hit the piano with paper/pencil and figure it all out. The rest is easy, when I've already (basically) finished the 'composing' part of it.

That's the important step - everything else, exact voicings, backgrounds, physically writing the damn thing out, computer input, part extraction...it doesn't matter, unless I LIKE the thing - in my head.

Okay, class....moving on.

What does it all mean, and why does this angry man write music?

I'll dumb it all down to extracting music. In all my former writing I was forcing my music through the musicians. Now, I extract music from the musicians.

Profound, I know. :w00t:

I'm finding a lot more freedom in both my playing and writing. More room for personal expression and individualism. Which is EXACTLY what I want from anyone playing in my bands. I don't want a Coltrane clone, or someone who reads perfectly. I want creative individuals with distinct and interesting sounds and concepts. For my current projects, I need the musicians to bring TO the music, as much as I do.

ALSO, I want the players to extract from my music something unexpected as well - If they find something hidden/unintended in there, or have a 'different' concept for interpreting certain aspects of the music, so be it! Finding and capturing interaction/reaction is what I'm all about now.

OF COURSE, sometimes there's little open to interpretation and I may give very specific instructions - but it's working within these confines that make it interesting.

...

Um...

:innocent:

interesting thread, by the way.

it is... just sort of re-iterating and trying to hold the spam to a minimum, but I enjoy figuring out what goes on in other people's minds. knowing how people write music is interesting, and let me tell you, I personally have a belief that it is impossible to write good music through knowledge of theory alone, and I think that honestly, you do need a reason. those soulless people, like swearington (spelled wrong, I think) and various other band composers... I don't know how they write so, so many pieces for bands. I have a lot of problems just churning out decent work over and over again.

well... I am heavily into inspiration. I'm an addict :huh:

when something hits me, in terms of a significant event, or something else, I'll just sit at the computer and go. I don't even need a piano a lot of the time... I just say, it's in A minor, so this would sound good with/over it, then it should go here.... blah blah blah. I find it very, very easy to write when I'm into it, and when I'm not, it's impossible.

right now, for example, I have a lot of writers' block. I will sit at a piano and try to figure something out, but it won't work, until some day, someone does something, or I see something I love, and it will just come out. it's odd that way. a lot of it, in summary, is based upon inspiration.

now, of course, I will sometimes go to the piano and figure something out, but it takes a lot of effort and time, and from experience, I know that it's unnecessary, because simply waiting will provide something good. I also know that this is bad, because If I hope to have a chance in university, for example...

but, there you have it. inspiration.

interesting thread, by the way.

Aha! Very similar to how I work!

The major difference is that in my case bad things are the major precursors of my compositions.

Plus, I desperately NEED an instrument to play it on (piano). Even if it's just the crappy synth I use to connect to the PC and write on Finale. It's just too tiring if I only use the mouse...

I’m very new to composing so I don’t have much actual experience under my belt. However, I do have a tone poem in the works that may take me the rest of my life to write (simply because of lack of experience in composing music). I call it The Journey Home, it has four movements, Infancy/birth, Adolesence, Maturity, and Senility/death.

I didn’t exactly start with an “orchestra”, however in this tone-poem I do use particular instruments to depict the various characters within the story. The timpani represents the “heartbeat” of life and is omnipresent throughout the entire symphony, but not always throbbing with the same beat or rhythm. The timpani also plays “sound effects” such as the when the child is learning to walk and stumbles and falls, or runs. The timpani plays the footsteps etc.

To keep this post small I’ll just list some other instrument-character representations.

• Timpani – heartbeat of life
  
• Flute – the voice of the musician’s guardian angel – again omnipresent “intermittently”
  
• Cello – the musician’s mother
  
• Violin – the musician’s lover(s) – in childhood and adolescence, as well as in maturity.
  
• Classical Guitar – the musician as a child/infant
  
• Electric Guitar – the musician in adolescence
  
• Piano – the musician in maturity
  
• Piano – the piano also represents the musician’s music teacher early on.
  
• Clarinet and Trumpet – Authoritarians in the musician’s life (especially teachers)
  

Obviously there are a lot of orchestra instruments not involved as main characters, such as the oboe, bassoon, French horn, viola, etc. However, I do plan on using those instruments as part of the background orchestration.

I know precisely what I want to do with this symphony in all four parts. I just don’t know how to write music well enough yet to even seriously start on it. So I’m learning to write small pieces and duets using the instruments that represent the main characters I’ll have to go back and fill in the full orchestration later as this thing evolves.

So far I have the child being born in the first minute of the first movement, and that’s about it, and I’m not even happy with that as an orchestration. In the next fewminutes the child learns to walk, then run, then swim, (the cymbals make great splashes and swimming strokes). Then the child (the classical guitar) is taught ABC’s (by the clarinet) but doesn’t do well. Then the child is taught 123’s (arithmetic) by the trumpet and again doesn’t do well. The whole time this is going on the flute (the child’s guardian angel) is softly calling the child in the background with “do, re, mi’s”.

The piano (the child’s music teacher) then begins to teach the child the “do, re, mi’s” and the child (the classical guitar) responds very well, taking the “do, re, mi” as a motif and expanding on it, sequencing it and transforming it with the whole orchestra playing along tossing the transformed “do, re, me” back and forth through the orchestra. The flute and classical guitar then join together a solo, and the orchestra fades into the background. The child (the musician) has found a purpose in life.

In the second movement the child expands on music with the electric guitar and the whole second movement is quite chaotic, with rock, and rap, and jazz, and general craziness blossoming into a wild electric guitar melody near the end. The movement ends with the piano (the child’s music teacher) beckoning the child toward more sophisticated music.

In the third movement the musician matures, falls in love with the “violin lover”, bears a child (more timpani heartbeats. Then goes on to have a wonderful piano/violin duet with the cello (the muscians’s mother) happily playing along. Everything is going well and the entire family is enjoying the music.

In the forth movement there is a terrible accident, the musician’s lover and child die early in the movement, then the musician’s mother dies too a bit later. The musician plays really sad music. Old age and dementia set in and finally the musician’s heart (the timpani) sputters and stops. However, there is a heartbeat from the orchestra that is resurrected and continues to throb as the musician passes on into the great beyond in “The Journey Home”.

I think to pull this off, not only will I need to learn how to compose music, but I’ll probably need some visual effects to go with it. I’m thinking of either a visual slides that depict the essence of each scene, or possibly some kind of live performance by mimes.

I may never complete “The Journey Home”, but I have the whole symphony in my mind. I just need to learn how to write it down in musical score.

In the meantime, I’m learning about music and about the individual instruments that will depict the characters in my tone poem. Everything I write, no matter how unrelated it may seem to others, is actually a small step toward learning how to compose this main symphony. I always keep this symphony in mind when writing other pieces of music. In the end I think the entire symphony will ultimately be made from many small pieces written as duets, or small ensembles, then orchestrated, and re-orchestrated until they become an integral part of “The Journey Home”.

Hopefully, I’ll write other less-intense orchestrations along the way. Just simple little motif manipulation orchestrations that convey other fleeting tales.

So I guess my “method” is to have a story in mind and spend the rest of my life trying to put into in an orchestration. :huh:

I didn't do a very good job of keeping that previous post small did I? :huh:

Nope. You didn't.. but you summarized it at the end, so it works. (I did read most of it though; your idea of immersion sounds vaguely like Scriabin's Mysterium... just don't try to bring about the end of the world :huh:)

I don't really compose, yet.

1. I often start out with improvisation... usually inspired by some event in my life, or sometimes just from a theme that pops up in my head (often while listening to other recordings of mine.)

2. Once I've got a start of an idea, I play it out and let it build through improvisation on the piano. This happens just by playing it and expanding on it using familiar technical patterns I've developed from years of classical piano training. Oftentimes I'll end up on a completely distracted idea that's better than the original.

3. I take the recording of my improvisation (I record them all) and look at the generated MIDI file, and pull out the things I like, and build that into a piece.

However, I still haven't gotten to step 3 yet. Part of it is limited knowledge of composing, and the other part is that I keep coming up with new ideas and the old ones start sounding pass

For me, the most important part of composing is the themes/motives. Although I sometimes just sit down and start writing, when I am writing, I always keep in mind the motives that I want to develop, possibilities for development that involve bringing in other motives from the same piece... and finally, what the goal of the passage I am writing is within the context of the larger piece, and where I want to end up.

Mostly because I don't feel inspired very often, I'll usually spend 1-2 years just sketching themes and motives for a piece before I actually start composing, and then the composing will normally take 2-3 more years.

Hmmm...

Interesting thread! (deja'vu anyone? ;))

I have "plenty" of ways to compose. Depends on the mood, or whatever.

At very few instances, I will sit in front of a piano, and a melody will hit me, while playing semi-random stuff, or improvising. Then I'll work on that

Other times (computer games music), I'll work to what I've been given:

"i. 2 minutes

ii. epic

iii. the end must fade out, naturally, not with a fade out plug in

iv. minor tonality

v. fast tempo"

Pretty precise...

Other times, for my PhD, I will come up with ideas, or what I want to say with the piece (say, not per language, don't anybody come and tell me about that, ok?), or the central spine, or something might impress me (like, Pier 6,Gatwick) and I will take inspiration, or another extromusical idea...

This is the starting point.

I write similarly to Jordan, I need no instrument in hand and I write in waves. I sometimes, when I desperately need to write something but cannot, I improvise on the piano like Nikolas. Otherwise the melodies and motifs just come naturally.

I hoard themes and motifs, orchestrate and harmonise them over and over again in different style/instrumentations and then, well, I haven't gotten past that point yet.

i improvise on the piano, collecting themes and other stuff, then i just write.

I have several different composing modes:

I - I sit at my piano and just put my hands down and play something. If I like what I hear I write it down in my musical journal under the correct catagory (I usually catagorize by emotions suck as happy, sad, joyful, ect.

II - I sit at my piano and play chord after chord till I find a progression I like. Then I play around with different inversions until I think its perfect. I then record it in my little notebook, so later I can...

III - pound on my snare drum until I find a rythm I like. then add simple chord tones as the melody

I rarely work with scores... and when I do that I'm just arranging/orchestrating what's already in my notebook.

I find that I'll be doing something and I will suddenly think of a motif I like that reminds me of something.

I find a nearby instrument (I always have one), then I write it down and what it reminds me of.

When I get back home I normally change the instrument to play it. Put just that instrument on a score, then eventually as I think of bass lines, countermelodies etc. I add the instrument to the score that I want to play them.

Sometimes my scores end up randomly grouped because sometimes I include things like lower brass but want no trumpets, or have a bass clarinet but no normal clarinet. But it normally works out in the end as I add little things.

Although I'm 14.. i like to swing in my backyard... Somehow that inspires my, the wooden squeaks and I'm somehow come up with a bass a piano or a whole orchestra song in my heard or I'll hum it. I'll remember most of the song and write it down. I've never finished a song.. yet, so i'll try just doing solos from now on.

-Smartyy!

I improvise all my compositions. I once thought that improvisation would be insufficient to make my music as organized as I would like it. For years I improvised tapestries of more or less unrelated ideas that were about a half hour long. I view these as ends in themselves, no less worthy of listening than a worked out, notated composition. However, I still wanted to acquire the ability to produce convincing form and development in my improvisations. I kept working on the ability to remember what I "just played" so I could bring it back later.

Since the beginning of this year I have improvised dozens of shorter works which have much more coherent form than the longer tapestries I'd played for years. I still however improvise the longer tapestry-like ones...to me, both approaches are equally valid artistic pursuits.

As for notation---I don't do it. In the time it would take me to notate one of my compositions, I could improvise a hundred new ones. Basically I figure---my livelihood is in something other than music, so I don't need to promote myself or get published. However, I do maintain an internet presence so that if someone ever does really like my work, they could easily transcribe it from a recording. There are thousands of people out there who transcribe music for a living...someone transcribed Keith Jarrett's Koln concert for example. If that can happen, it only tells me that my music WILL become notated IF I ever got that famous. Which I doubt---so why on earth bother with notation myself? I forgot to mention my rhythms are rarely easily notatable, I use all kinds of crazy polyrhythms and rubato. I don't know if it is even possible to notate. It probably is possible---but I'm sure it would be a crude approximation of the original. Oh well....the bottom line is I'm having fun.

it is... just sort of re-iterating and trying to hold the spam to a minimum, but I enjoy figuring out what goes on in other people's minds. knowing how people write music is interesting, and let me tell you, I personally have a belief that it is impossible to write good music through knowledge of theory alone, and I think that honestly, you do need a reason. those soulless people, like swearington (spelled wrong, I think) and various other band composers... I don't know how they write so, so many pieces for bands. I have a lot of problems just churning out decent work over and over again.

What I notice is that EVERY SINGLE BAND OVERTURE IS THE SAME. it's sort of annoying, in a creepy way. and they call themselves composers.

I compose by sketching out a picture in my mind of the style and melody of the piece. Sortof like saying to myself "I'm going to compose a pastoral piece for string orchestra, with a theme like this...."

Then I cram-write. I usually write a piece in 4-9 hours after I get it into my head.

I also like to freestyle, just sticking notes on paper in combinations that seem like they will sound good. That's how I started using jazz elements in my music.

EDIT: Just saw this BEAUTIFUL sentimental post.

Although I'm 14.. i like to swing in my backyard... Somehow that inspires my, the wooden squeaks and I'm somehow come up with a bass a piano or a whole orchestra song in my heard or I'll hum it. I'll remember most of the song and write it down. I've never finished a song.. yet, so i'll try just doing solos from now on.

I would really love to be able to get the ideas out of my head and on to paper. I have things going on in my head to rival Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Strauss, Schubert, and anybody else you can think of, I can just never get them from my head to a more tangible state. As soon as a start humming a line, I lose the quality. As soon as I sit behind the piano, I lose the whole piece. If I just write it down without the aid of any instruments, it sucks. I can't win. I will note that occasionally I have taken themes from random humming and applying those or building on them. But my humming isn't as creative as my orchestra inside my head.

Primarily, what Oboeducky said about freestyling, that is exactly what I do. Most of my music is just a compilation of notes that look good on paper/in Finale and have absolutely no planning. They are not preconceived, they just happen.

have things going on in my head to rival Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Strauss, Schubert, and anybody else you can think of, I can just never get them from my head to a more tangible state.

I know - this is/was the most annoying thing ever. if it helps, I started getting my ideas down by humming them into a portable audio recorder, and then transcribing them onto the paper/into finale.

(I did read most of it though; your idea of immersion sounds vaguely like Scriabin's Mysterium... just don't try to bring about the end of the world ;))

Heh, I'm surprised someone else knows about that. If every person on the planet lived a life of doing nothing but indulging the senses, I suspect they would all die and only people who feel they have immense personal significance (an ego) would be left. (These are typically the least indulgent, most self-concious people).