When did you start composing?

Just out of curiosity... since I just read cavatina's survey results, I'd like to know how many of us actually started early in composition. Also I thought I might as well take a survey of what the distribution of experience levels is.

One other question that I'm also interested in: what originally got you into composing? (Not on the poll above, because it's more open-ended.)

Well, I wrote one piece when I was like 8 and I never really finished it. Then I started playing around with an idea and never really did anything with it until high school...so I count myself in the 12-14 group. That's when I got serious.

So now I'll answer the quesion, "why did I get serious?" (instead of why did I start composing)

Basically, I went to a concert back in 1998 or 99 something like that. I was brand new music that was some of the worst atonal music I've ever heard. That was when I knew I had to do something. ....and they wonder why people don't go to the concert hall anymore. So 99% of my music has a tonal center and the 1% is just so I can say that I've tried and I don't like it. Then I just kinda got addicted to composing.....

I started at 9 composing formally. I was composing earlier than that (before I knew how to read/write music) using my own homegrown notation system (numerical...numbers = degree of the scale...don't ask me how I came up with this at age 5).

I don't know what got me started. I'd always wanted to write my own music. I can't remember a time when I didn't have musical ideas.

I began composing from age 8 - short pieces for piano, since I was taking lessons at the time. I was still having trouble with theory at that age, and so I didn't write very often. However, when I hit 8th grade, my theory clicked, and I began writing lots of new-age-y tonal piano music with a romantic mindset, with some neo-classical and jazz mixed in there.

Through high-school I wrote the new-age-y tonal stuff, and only began writing truly atonal music in college. However, I like atonal music a lot, especially when it's well structured so that its atonality is disguised at least partially. This brand of atonality is particularly useful for me because I write a lot of choral work, and it's very hard to write strong atonality that can be easily sung. See my latest post in the Chamber music section - it involves atonality and aleatory.

I started writing little melodies at four or five. I'd been surrounded by music and instruments through my whole life, and so of course I wanted to give it a try myself. Didn't really consider myself a composer until I was around eleven, though.

I don't know what my experience level is really. Basically I know nothing about harmony, although I have a much better idea of what I'm doing intuitively than I used to. I'm up to string quartets and at least one attempt at an orchestral piece. Getting there! * grins *

I wrote one song at 4 years old but then did no composing for about 10 years. I had tried a few times at composing in the 6-7th grade but they were not very good. I took a short class at band camp in the summer when I was 14 and that let me know of the proper way at composing (I composed one piece at the camp; a trio). I tried to write a symphony over the following year but gave up after while. When I returned to the camp the next summer I took the same class and did about the same effect as it had the year before. A member of the string quartet I'm in also took the class and was very excited at the thought of composing. I, being a competetive person by nature, thought I would try composing something as well (more so to see if I was better than him) and thus began my life as a composer. I started composing in September of 2006 and so I have been doing as such for about 5 months.

Lee, I find your story the most interesting. It seems to fit that you would be one of the better composers on this site and have an early beginning.

I myself started when I was 10. However, I put myself done as 14. When I was 10, I had this cake walk program and would use a keyboard to make little songs. This was all for fun nothing seriouse. I later started to understand music and felt a void inside of me. I could've done anything to fill up the void but music seemed like the thing to do. It was typical teenager angst but as I passed that stage of my life, the skills I learned stuck with me. I also figured out I rather liked to compose. However, I still thought I Would do somethign with physics. I then went to a concert and listened to Rachmaninoff 2nd concerto. It wasn't the first time I heard it but be there in person was something different. It was then when I realized that nothing can be more profound than writing music.

It first started when I was about 11, maybe younger. I remember playing the Vivaldi concerti movements on the violin through the Suzuki books. Although I never paid attention to the composers at the time, I liked every song by him seperately. One day it clicked that they were all in the same style so I checked and sure enough, same composer too- Vivaldi! I decided then and there that he had an incredible talent at writing music, and I was gonna do the same darn thing. Started writing down violin sketches, soon realized that violin wasn't good for figuring out chords or whatever. Sat down at the bro's piano, and soon started playing it more than he did. Stumbled upon Finale, which was god-sent at the time (still is), and started really chugging along. Finally finished my Vivaldi style concerto, then moved on to bigger and better things. Wrote my first symphony last year, took four and a half months, but the work I put into it and the fact I finished it (it's 40 minutes long too) assured me that I could do big things. Been slowly wading through the romantic era in the last year or so.

I'm actually surprised that so many people started so early... I started about 3 1/2 years ago, when I was 19. I actually started writing down miscellaneous doodles on manuscript paper when I was about 15, but none longer than about 12 measures and none having anything more than melody... and I only did it for a few months. I also jotted down one short melody while waiting for a 90-minute reaction in a chemistry lab my freshman year in college (age 18), about 6 measures' worth.

The next time I picked up a pencil and tried to write anything was the summer after my sophomore year in college, when I was cleaning out my dorm room for the summer and came across a few pages of notes that I'd written down 4 years earlier. One melody came across as something that would sound appropriate for a brass solo (it ended up being the main theme in the 1st movement of my horn concerto). Less than a week later I decided then to actually turn my notes into a horn concerto, after meeting the horn player whom I would end up dedicating the piece to. From there, I basically picked up all my composition techniques along the way.

Two years and two months later, I finished my first-ever composition. I've been pretty much composing continuously since starting - I just don't run out of ideas for new projects to start - but I'm still currently working on my 3rd and 4th compositions. I definitely started out extremely ambitiously... it means everything I've ever written is a serious composition or part of one, but the down side is that I have a hard time showing anyone a "representative sample" of my work when my entire output is smaller than most people's "representative samples".

I started composing (If you could call it that) at about 10. I saw the movie The Castle of Cagliostro. Towards the end of the movie, there is a funeral- ish song. When I heard that piece, I had this sudden urge to write something. So I sat down at the piano and tried to write something (With little success, I might add). The next day, we went out and bought some manuscript paper and I started to compose.

The first piece I wrote was actually a Concerto- like thing; I don't even know what to call it. Each of the "movements" were about two lines long, (Pathetic, I know :happy: ) except for the 3rd, which was about 5. I was really proud of it. The second piece that I wrote was a string quartet (I got as far as the 1st and 2nd movements) The only reason I dont delete this piece is because it was one of my first :laugh: . The piano concerto that came after that was absolutely horrid.

I put myself down as 12- 14 becuase I really started to COMPOSE at about 12. I had gone to a music camp and my friend had Finale 2005. I was amazed that you could actually do that! Writing music on a computer? It was amazing!!! I was on his laptop 24/7! When I got home, I downloaded NotePad. My parents were happy that I was "trying" to compose, but not happy that I was spending every spare second on my computer. Then, I showed them up with an Oboe Concerto I wrote. :D It was okay, but not great. I got Allegro for Christmas this year (technically last year, but it feels like this year) and since then I have composed two piano concerti, a Violin Concerto, multiple trios, and am working on a Flute concerto.

So, there's my story (Tragic, I know....... JK)

i started cause i was bored, interested and kind of pushed into it (glares at Marius :ninja:) about 2 months ago. i know nothing at all about music theory and i still have yet to compose anything that would be considered music :thumbsup:

i think it was like one to two years ago, i was trying to write a bookreport and then i thought of the stupid english teacher, and so i just wrote down all the stuff i hated about her. i showed it to my friends and they later told me it might actually do for a punk song, so since then i've been writing songs for punk, rock, and pop rock.

To be honest it was rpg music that got me into it... My friend and I were really into the Rpg maker thing and he got his hands on noteworthy composer, and he showed me it and I just had that urge to go home and write something. Eventually it got to the point to where it was several hours a day composing, and it's just gone up from there. Roughly 2 years later, I'm now seriously considering Composing as a career (once I get more schooling of course) because I'll be doing real-estate, so I'll have something to fall back on financially so it's like I'll have nothing left to lose... it gives me a lot of freedom!

Actually, I just started last year. I have always loved music and since I've gotten pretty good at the piano I'm spending more time at it each day, practicing and composing. I'm only 14, and still know very little about composing although I know qiote a bit about theory, and being musical myself, I've lately had a flood of ideas.

Just less than a week ago, actually Monday, I entered my Opus 1 which I finished about a month ago (I had been working on it for just over 6 months) which I creatively named Opus 1 in D minor for solo Piano in a local contest called Kiwanis. I placed first with a score of 90% and I'm rather proud of it. So it's given me a slight morale boost and I've started composing harder than ever. Right now I'm working on 3 pieces all for piano.

The thing that really got me into composing was when I was 12 or so, I went to the TSO and I heard Brahms' First, and from that point on, I realized I had to compose. I'm a big Brahms fanatic as my user name shows and I can't wait until I learn how to compose more complicated music.

I started composing December 23, 2005. I have 33 completed pieces. Right now working on the 3rd movement of my 3rd Sonata (the Rondo, grrrrr not going well, never wrote in this form before lol), also trying to write a piano concerto, and have the basics of a string quartet (just some ideas) but it will not be done for a long time!

No formal training, one day I just decided to write something, and did. I have no idea where it came from ;) My first attempt at composing was in 11th grade, the result: Reverie in A Major, and Etudes 1 and 2. Stopped composing just started again a little less than 2 months ago (need I say, I can't really consider my first 3 compositions as from "back then", they were almost completely re-written in December, only the basic themes stuck from the original).

Anyway, that's my "story" haha

- Jen

I placed 1st nationally in the PTA competition when I was 7. This was my morale boost. Nice to meet you, J.Br. i too am 14.

Wow. 1st National?! Nice. You're probably a whole lot better than I am!

I got a late start in music, and even later in composition unfortunately. I was a sad little chap when I was younger who had no passion or motivation for much of anything. That all changed when I started playing trombone at age 12.

About 2 years after I tinkered around with some composition, and to my surprise, I got pretty good results for a first attempt. I showed my first composition to a college student who was majoring in music and he told me that he didn't believe I wrote it and I must've found it on the internet and claimed it was my own. I took it as a compliment and kept tinkering around.

I didn't start to seriously compose until about the end of last year, however- I've been writing consistantly for 6 months now, whereas before, I would write a piece every once in a blue moon.

Just for the record, I am currently 16 years old.

Take a look at the poll, that's not a late start at all...

Wow! So many brilliant youths in this forum...

Hi! I started composing when I was around 17 (now I'm 19). RPG music inspired me, too...and also Michelle Branch. I have been doing (composing) so, albeit intermittently, for 2 years and every completed piece--even the uglier ones :D --feels gratifying. That's all the motivation I need.

I started composing in September of 2006 and so I have been doing as such for about 5 months.

Ahhh!! lol... speaking from the future, are we?

Hello all!

I self-taught myself how to play the piano at age 7. From ages 8-13 I studied piano (*but forced*) and even though I loved to play piano just the fact my mother kept forcing me to study removed all interest I had in that instrument... I moved then to classical guitar, then rock guitar (Steve Vai, Joe Satriani) and I started playing cover of my guitar heroes music (specially Steve Vai which I adore).

So I started fiddling a bit with composing for guitar at age 18... but then I got very frustrated with music and went to college for Computer Engineering... At age 26 I got back to study theory at Juilliard (evening division) and just last year I started composition studies with a private teacher. I still have long ways to go, specially because I decided that I want to be a professional composer. So my plan is to go back to a Bachelors in Film music at Berklee or NYU in 5 years. I plan on starting my professional career as a composer at age 40 (11 years from now as I am 29 y/o) which I think is more than enough for me to make up for the lost time away from music.

The way I see it, J. Brahms is my favorite composer and he died at 63 years of age. He started his theory and composition studies at age 13, so he had a good 50 year run with music. As I will start my music career at 40 (but I started my theory/composition studies at age 29) If I live to be 90 years old, I will have had 11 years more of composing than Brahms did! So I have no excuses not to do well :D

I think age does not matter... all that matters is your passion for music, and the desire to learn. Dedication will always be better than talent, and Dedication and Talent will lead to great music, so time is not my enemy, but my ally.

i used to compose my own music when i was very young (10 years old or so) but i didn´t know how to write it on paper, so i would record it with my guitar or just play it on the guitar and inside my head i tried to memorize... but i don´t call that composing since i didn´t have a clear compositional mind until i was like 16 when i started writing on paper... i´m 23 now

I'm gonna be 17 in April 13th. I started when I was 15. Love was the impulse :), dedicated my first sonata to a girl... ;)

I started to compose about 3 months ago! ;)

Oy, I don't remember. I started transcribing pieces and arranging them probably eleven or twelve and started composing about that time. I have no pieces preserved from that time period, and they tended to be nonsense (my method was pretty much, okay, I have a melody-let's throw a melody on top of that-then another-and why not another?! My pieces at that age ended up being unspeakably dense and unfocused. The earliest stuff I still have scores from are from late high school.