How much credit can you take for mistakes?

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. With programs such as Sibelius and Finale it is very to make a mistake, or hear something while changing a note and then deciding to stick with it and I wonder whether we as composers can take credit for writing these things or not.

For example today I was working on a piece and as I was trying to rearrange the harmony I dragged one note upwards without changing the other notes and I got a completely different sound from what I intended, however I really liked it and decided to keep it. But, does this mean that I didn't "compose" that part because it was a mistake? Another example was that by mistake I wrote a rhythm incorrectly, but I decided I liked the incorrect rhythm for the melody better. Once again, does this make it so that I didn't actually "compose" my melody?

What are your opinions on this?

BAHAHAH. It's not a mistake if you HEAR it, you LIKE it, and you KEEP it. It may have been a mistake at first, but if the world around you and your human imperfection brings about beauty (or maybe NOT beauty, if that's your fancy), why is that any different from hearing an idea in the first place?

I have been known to write a whole song in a very traditional format... then go back and change ONE note of every chord. :D

It's things like mistakes and experimenting that KEEP the music fresh. ;)

So, it's not that you aren't "composing", cause there is NO such thing as originality, there is only Voice. So, when you find the world providing you with Voice, take it.

Well, just so that I don't come off as sounding like I'm really worried about this, I was asking this just more in a philosophical way.

I suppose that I agree with you. I'm sure Mozart and Bach hit some wrong notes and said "Hey..."

It's very possible... But, it was more than likely to happen in more polyphonic/melodic pieces. They probably DIDN'T hit a weird note in a "chord" and say, HEY THIS SOUNDS COOL!

They were more harmonically disciplined in this matter.

We sometimes see composition as a process of three steps. First we have an idea, then we write it down, then it is performed. That's nice and all, and usually all of these elements -do- play some part in the creation of a new piece of music, but the temporal order of those elements is in reality often quite convoluted.

We may start out with an idea and go on to write it down, only to realize that the peculiarities of notation and our workflow, but especially the very act of making the idea concrete on paper may change our initial idea a lot. And as soon as we either "try out" that thing physically (be that by playing it on the piano, listening it through Computer feedback, collaborating with a performer, etc.) it might again appear in a totally different light to us and may change the way we continue writing the piece. And even if you deliberately omit such audible feedbacks during the composition process, there's still always the fact that there's an inherent discontinuity between abstract ideas and their concrete realisations, which in many cases goes against a totally linear composition process.

Sure, the composer may exist who imagines a piece mentally to the greatest details and then "just writes it down". But that's both a relatively rare thing, and even an internalised composition process can still be distinct from an abstract structural idea. In the reality that applies for most composers I know, such "complete imaginations of a piece" often turn out to be a self-delusion when you actually get down to notate them. You may realize that you really just ignored a lot of aspects, or that your pretty ideas sound totally banal once you see them in black and white before you (or hear them). So you will do things you originally didn't intend and there will be aspects of your composition that only come into existence "by mistake" as artefacts of your workflow. This is all perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of.

The only question is how you deal with such "random mutations" that may creep into your piece. If you do have some sort of a concept for your piece (which I find a good idea) then you need to ask yourself: Does this "mistake" still fit within my general concept? If yes, more so than what I would have written otherwise? Or does it maybe not fit completely within the concept but the effect it has is negligible compared to the "coolness of sound" you like about it? Or does it not fit within your concept, but maybe open up a possibility to redirect your original concept to something different? Or, more generally put: Do I only like this "mistake" because of the immediate sound it produces at this moment, or does it make the whole piece "better"? I know, these are big questions and may seem a bit exaggerated for just a "little changed note" - but if you are looking for a "validation of your mistake" then those are, in my opinion, the crucial questions, and not how you actually came to write it technically.

In other words: Even if you use a random generator to spit out any set of notes, the decision is still yours to say whether those notes do represent your musical intention or not. The responsibility of saying "this is the music I want" remains yours no matter how any note was written. This applies to Cage as much as to Bach and as much as to a seven years old child that just wrote its first piece of music.

Well, for the piece that I was using for my examples I had no "concept" per se, just a certain type of sound/vibe and the mistakes just seemed to fit that vibe.

My compositional style goes measure by measure, which is either good or bad, I'm not sure. I compose each measure for all the instruments, so I may plan to make one part very dissonant, but then after one measure my ear tells me to go to a major chord, and then after another measure back to dissonance, so in a way it keeps my pieces interesting, and in a way it hinders them due to no overarching message or theme. I normally see themes in my pieces relating to how I feel however, it's just not planned. I believe it's because my conscious dictates what I hear measure by measure with a big idea in my subconscious. As I compose I think that everything seems random, but when I listen to the finished piece I normally find a very clear progression and idea.

I'm not sure why I said all that anymore...oh well.

A lot of wounderfull new inventions where made by accident.

HowStuffWorks "9 Things Invented or Discovered by Accident"

All of my music is born out of some strange happenstance where an unintended gensture yielded unexpected results. ...

I take all credit for my mistakes...they're mine, right!

My first composition teacher at Oberlin was a stickler about playback. He said that if you composed with playback, you were actually improvising, not composing. He advocated writing a whole piece, and THEN using the playback function. Because at that point, you would be editing, and not improvising.

I still don't know how I feel about it; I find I tend to work in sections with playback; I'll do one section of music (a verse, or a gestural set) and then go back and edit it before moving on, since I tend to allow my work to influence itself.

That makes more sense to me, Christopher. I mean, make sure it all works together first, and then you can move on. Besides, what does he have against improvisation?

A better criticism would be composing in Finale in general. Not notating, but composing. I think you should know what notes you want before you write them down, eh?

99 (ok, maybe 89) percent of music i did and do is probably due to these 'mistakes'. to a degree where i would call my first opossum 'music of thousand and one mistakes'. as for a credit part, i don't know. i take credit in that i follow these mistakes and keep on going. not on how good or bad they are.

Imperfection is what makes music good, and human. It's the reason why drum machines never got that popular when they came around. They were just, too perfect.

A mistake happened to me just now. I was writing this thing in F#-minor and I accidentally skipped a note. And it sounded a lot better with that note missing. This was on paper though.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see there was a page 2, so I didn't notice the "new" discussion about playback.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see there was a page 2, so I didn't notice the "new" discussion about playback.

There's no need to apologize for staying on topic ;)

Well for example on my newest piece (http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/sonata-piano-trumpet-mvmt-ii-moderato-21964.html) at the andante section I was planning to keep it dissonant, but then suddenly I ended up getting very consonant just by mistake. As I was dragging one of the notes up on Sibelius I said, "Hey that sounds great!" and kept it. It ended up changing the course of the end of the piece.

I see what you're getting at, but if that is your end intention, then use that. Also, if you don't like the chances of this happening compose all your pieces on a piano first, then arrange them from there.

I have heard many times that people did something by mistake and decided to use it. In my humble opinion, unless you compose a whole song before you ever play a single note, a lot of these "mistakes" will find there way into a composition. Fear not, it is still "yours" per se and it would be your decision to keep it or not in "your" composition.

It is fairly common from my experience in talking with other composers over the years.

Question: "How much credit can you take for mistakes?"

Answer: You just mistakenly or accidentally earned/received/were awarded a Million Bucks. How much credit do you take for your mistake?

Dude, if you say anything less than a Million Bucks... so help me! :headwall:

Question: "How much credit can you take for mistakes?"

Answer: You just mistakenly or accidentally earned/received/were awarded a Million Bucks. How much credit do you take for your mistake?

Dude, if you say anything less than a Million Bucks... so help me! :headwall:

[smartass] $999,999.99 [/smartass]

:headwall:

:D