How often are you composing?

Simple as that.. How often are you writing something down? How often do you start one? How many do you finish? How many songs (in a month) do you usually write?

Hah, one in a month would be really optimistic. I only manage that for some specific, short pieces, and even then I hardly get any sleep in the final week(s) before I finish it. Most pieces take me several months, and I don't think I could write an orchestral piece (or large ensemble piece) in less than half a year, even if it just lasts 10 minutes.

I've rushed pieces before, and it hasn't turned out satisfactory for me. If I can write three or four pieces a year, which I had time to think through carefully and work on them in detail, I'm completely satisfied, but often I write even less than that. (I've only finished two pieces this year, the next one will be finished in January, but mostly I've been working on a project that might well take me almost another year or so to finish.)

I do generally finish everything I really set out to compose however. (With a few exceptions.)

I think it is really healthy to write a lot of short music, like those guitar weekly pieces you talked about. as long as they arent essentially copies, and you use those to push your compositional horizons and exercise your technical chops, then that can really progress you as a composer.

i should do that. :-\

I tend to have lots of little works at once....but very few of them are ever at a standard that I could call them finished.

So it's usually about 1 a month I guess.

Lex

I'm always working on something, but I don't finish things often. Once a month at best.

lol. I write so rarely that I'm lucky to get one a month (more like one every 6 months, if I'm bothered :P)

I take an extremely long time on my music. It's impossible to measure, because many times I reincarnate older material into a more sophisticated or more appropriate form. For example, just a few weeks ago I finished a piano concert etude that incorporates a melody that I had first written two years ago.

Started off as a progressive metal song.

Then became an orchestral fanfare.

Then became a piano/orchestral piece.

Then about 85% of it was stripped away, and the rest was added to my etude, which itself was already a reincarnation of older material.

So, yeah. It's impossible to tell. o.O

I'm constantly composing, but I also like to focus on writing stuff that's, umm, well written and good. So yeah....

It really depends..

The way it usually happens is that I keep the piece in mind for a long time, and when the deadline approaches I just do massive writing in a very short period of time. For example, although I knew for this competition since the beginning of the year, I hadn't written a single note down until five days before the deadline, and then I only slept 6 hours the three last days before the deadline, the other ones working my donkey off to finish the piece on time.

Then again, my largest pieces so far are a 3' piece for 9 players, and a 9' piece for 4 players, so I don't know if I'll keep working like that for longer/larger projects.

But on the other hand, I do believe that writing on a regular basis is very healthy for you as a composer - I don't really see why a composer should behave differently than, say, a carpenter: in all crafts and traditions one becomes a master by doing a little bit of work every day - and that in the long run will help you perfect your technique. I haven't been writing something every day per se, but I do enjoy writing short pieces for friends or teachers of mine (like some short pieces I wrote for a friend's brother).

I usually write several short pieces in a month. Infact I usually don't write longer pieces unless I have to, but I always try to write well made pieces that are better then the last piece I wrote. "Try" is all to often a keyword however... :whistling:

Very rarely.

4 - 5 worthy compositions a year ranging from 6 ish to 20 ish minutes.

EDIT:

I suppose over the last 2 months I have written about 6 themes and some variations for a theatrical production. Maybe once every 6 or so months I have a period where I try to be less thorough and intellectual and churn out maybe 10 - 12 pieces in a month but these don't make up substantial pieces of concert music.

Honestly, impossible to tell. I have gone for periods where I didn't write anything and didn't try --- so I admire people who compose in "the wilderness" - that is the chances of a good deal of their works being heard (except for the ones they write for their instrument) are ver very low. When i was young I wrote many unfinished pieces - maybe a few a year.

Now? Maybe 2-3 pieces a month but I tend to generate alot of ideas and discard quite a few. Some ideas stay with me for years and then finally find a home.

COmplete works that meet my standards (which are changing) and I would consider part of my permanent "opus" - 3 to 4 works (the longest 6 minutes). My composer friends say I set too high standards for myself and think I have more ... but quality over quantity regarding this.

BTW, the small pieces and writing them for practice is a great idea. I like doing couinterpoint exercises and stylistic pieces for that reason to hone my skills.

Around 2 hours a year! :D

I try to do at least some composing everyday, or most days, but I usually end up writing a lot of short fragments of things that never really get expanded into a full piece, which is why I have so few of them.

I'm composing all the time. A good five hours a day most days... if not more. However, I'm convinced that I live in some sort of paradoxical hole in the universe where actually the MORE I work on a composition, the LESS it is finished. Finishing one or two pieces a month seems a tad generous but I'll go with that. I reckon the total amount of music I've written this year though ranks somewhere in the hour and a half mark. The amount of GOOD music however is probably somewhere in the ballpark of 30 seconds.

I almost always have another piece ready to start as soon as I am finished with one. I find a good way to fix that (you don't want 1k output by 30) is to compose multi-movement works. This gives me plenty of space for constant creation.

Much of the compositional process goes on in my head, so in that respect I suppose I'm composing a good few hours a day, usually lots of sketching on pieces of paper, working stuff out in my head, jotting down form, key changes, phrase structure, even the harmonic progressions of individual phrases, where certain motif are going to be developed, the occasional melodic idea - so when I actually get down with some manuscript paper I have everything I need to write fairly quickly and get it finished, then I'll play it if it's for piano or guitar, or stick it into finale if I'm working with a larger ensemble and go through it all very critically, questioning every note, pretty much.

I do end up discarding an awful lot of ideas before they even get onto manuscript paper, so I'd say the amount of finished pieces is around 2 or 3 a month. At the same time I'm constantly working on counterpoint exercises, orchestration exerises, and so on, just stuff to keep me doing something constructive when I'm not writing much.

A piece might take me two weeks, but whenever I'm done a piece, I have a period of time where nothing sounds good. This period of time is frequently really, really, really long.

Honestly, impossible to tell. I have gone for periods where I didn't write anything and didn't try --- so I admire people who compose in "the wilderness" - that is the chances of a good deal of their works being heard (except for the ones they write for their instrument) are ver very low. When i was young I wrote many unfinished pieces - maybe a few a year.

Now? Maybe 2-3 pieces a month but I tend to generate alot of ideas and discard quite a few. Some ideas stay with me for years and then finally find a home.

COmplete works that meet my standards (which are changing) and I would consider part of my permanent "opus" - 3 to 4 works (the longest 6 minutes). My composer friends say I set too high standards for myself and think I have more ... but quality over quantity regarding this.

BTW, the small pieces and writing them for practice is a great idea. I like doing couinterpoint exercises and stylistic pieces for that reason to hone my skills.

At the moment I have 2 pieces that i am considering as becoming the start of a permanent "Opus" and at best they are provisional. I fully expect that by the time I have finished my special study piece next summer that that might be Opus 1 and I would disregard the rest as juvenilia. We shall see.

I am gonna try and figure out how many minutes of finished music I have completed this year, anything with an * next to it means that the piece is pretty close to being completed.

Concert pieces:

Ricochet Rhapsody for piano sextet - 8'

The Traveller in 3 movements for piano, oboe and contrabassoon - 18'

Pendulum for full orchestra, SATB choir and tenor solo - 20'

In Memoriam string quartet in 1 movement - 12'

Arrangements:

Helston floral dance: Decisive Battle for full orchestra and piano - 6'

Songs from the Celtic lands (4) - 11'

London Bridge is falling down for full orchestra - 4'

Greensleeves for full orchestra and piano - 11'

2 jazz arrangements - 4'

Progressive rock:

Astral Chronicles (4) - 23'

*Ascent - 21'

Music for theatre:

Not Yet - 25' (show is an hour and a half)

Music for media:

Pieces numbering roughly 15 - 25'

Misc - pop songs, ambience and other:

2 or 3 songs - 10'

Total minutes of music - 197' or 3 hours and 17 minutes

My goodness Nate - you are embaressingly diverse and prolific compared ot me. Well, I did have a late start -- maybe when I'm 60 I'll catch up!

Here is my list -

Juvenilia (this means even pieces from last year) -

Two other piano pieces - lost though - about 3 - 4' worth of music

Piano Sonata - 2 mvmts - about 20'

Sail On - song for soprano - 3'

Wraithes - solo clarinet work - 2.5' (this is the one piece I may rework)

Potential pieces for reworking -

Hanging her out to dry - duo for mezzo and soprano - 2.5'

String Quartet - one mvmt - 2.5' so far

Cello Duo - 1'

Kyrie 1' 15" - portion of a choral mass

Finished pieces, complete

Volcano - solo organ work - 3.5'

Intro and Variations for Clarinet - 6'

Patter(n) Recognition - duo for 2 violins - 2.5'

(Homage to Ravel - piano solo in an old style - 2.5' ????)

I really just started composing a couple of months ago. I guess close to 6 months now, but most of my finished works were in the last 2 months. All the finished works are really just 4 part writing (string quartet, SATB), string orchestra or piano. They aren't huge pieces, but I have been spending a consistant 15-20 hours a week composing. And obviously some of my other free time is spent coming up with ideas, and developing ideas in my head. So if I keep up as I'm going, I could get 2-3 pieces a month. But I haven't written a piece that was longer than 10 minutes yet. So that probably messes up the results a bit.