What Have You Had To Overcome?

When I first started composing, I had a weird compulsion with never using accidentals. Obviously, this was something I really needed to weed out of myself over time :lol:

Which made me wonder: what were some things that you had to overcome in order to grow/advance as a composer? Was there some sort of roadblock or obstacle that you needed to overcome as well?

What a great question!

There are a few I can think of:

1. That because I was intelligent and talented, I knew all there was to know about music, and could do no wrong. [something I disabused myself of early on]

2. That my colleagues' and teachers' disdain for what I was trying to accomplish as a Classical-Revival historicist didn't amount to a hill of beans. [something I'm still learning]

3. That no matter how much you think you know, there is always - ALWAYS - more to learn.

EDIT: Not to mention depression, ADHD, and several major pre-adulthood traumas.

I don't think I've got any for composition but I do have a lot for playing; the funniest of which would have to be a dislike of my hands touching.

Surprisingly, it doesn't effect my playing at all.

:mellow:

just adding different themes, without regard for form and structure.

boring myself to death, i have to overcome this daily.

The breaking of writing in "CP Tonality" all the time.

Like hands crossing?

No, physically touching. I've had them cross over and on top of each other numerous times.

Thats ... weird. In the 24th etude in Chopin's set you have notes that are repeated by both hands seperated from each other in a quaver's space of time ... so when you hesitate in one hand you are sure to touch the other. Doesn't this bother you?

No, I don't hesitate in performance; and if you read my first post again you'll see that I dislike it, I don't do anything in my power to make sure it doesn't happen.

Nothing stops me from composing from a technical standpoint. My biggest hurdle now is setting aside time to write music in the midst of a plethora of other activities and distractions.

Good topic, tho!

Like sern, i have the same problem, I tend to avoid accidentals as much as possible and try to alter to key so I don't have to use them, unless I'm writing something atonal. I also keep thinking "God, this is crap," while I'm writing. Hopefully as I progress I'll learn that accidentals ARE okay, and to have a bit more self esteem in my writing! ;)

I think for me it's been working with form, and really learning how to organically weave my music together, instead of just throwing every idea I ever have into a piece.

Performers

I hate performers, they are the biggest obstacle a composer has to go through. Performers can make you want to quit composing forever.

Wow, I'm really interested by all the thoughts on here :D Everything from performers to an aversion to hands touching!

Running out of chords. But seriously, this happens to me regularly. I'm writing a piece, the progression bores me, then I can't find other suitable chords to a melody I got, the song looses the feeling, I forget what I wanted it to sound like anyway and pretty soon I just quit the whole thing. We should really have like more... chords?

One of my struggles while going to school was production: being able to produce enough music even when one was not "inspired." I was having difficulty adjusting to the college environment, and I just could not get myself to sit down and write anything of length before I became frustrated with writing what I perceived as bad music (cheese, as I remember it was called :-) and gave up. I remember one night staying at the library until late into the night/morning writing and re-writing the same few measures/sections over and over again only to toss it in the garbage at the end of the day. When one of my teachers told me that a serious composer commits to five hours of uninterrupted music-writing each day, I was shocked: such feats seemed utterly impossible! I think it is only now that I can begin to understand how dedicated any musician has to be to his/her art. The lack of pieces produced and poor theory grades resulted in my dismissal from the program after the second year. A painful lesson learned, even though it was not until I took a couple of fantastic art classes my senior year that I finally improved significantly in my outlook on life and the nature of our creative endeavors.

Production is still an ongoing struggle; I'm taking baby steps in presently giving myself small, fun challenges like having the inspiration (time period) and instrumentation randomly pre-determined for me--in the hopes that eventually I'll get to a place where I feel comfortable enough to tackle my "own" (freely inspired/formulated) compositions. I guess the thing that I am working to overcome is being overly self-critical before the piece to be criticized is even created. Hopefully I'm making some progress in the right direction!

Repetitiveness.... I still haven't overcome that...

I noticed one time I had an idea... and it kept repeating in my head... the same bar, over and over. After a while, I thought, "well good, now maybe I'll fall asleep!" I noticed that 1 hour later I was still awake :rolleyes:

Also, writing for small groups. I used to just write for orchestra, but now, I can't seem to stop writing for string orchestra!

Heklaphone

We should really have like more... chords?

A colleague of mine - the director of the local suburban orchestra, as well as a gifted composer - professes to "collect" what he calls "beautiful (and ugly) chords." There are apparently plenty...one simply has to find them.

“You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.” --Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

A colleague of mine - the director of the local suburban orchestra, as well as a gifted composer - professes to "collect" what he calls "beautiful (and ugly) chords." There are apparently plenty...one simply has to find them.

“You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.” --Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

Hehe.. interesting. I'd love to take a peak at his "collection" :)

My challenges:

1) Trusting the validity of my judgment of my musical ideas

2) Learning to spend time with those ideas to create satisfying forms

3) Overcoming the insecurity of not knowing everything about music

4) Taking time to understand clearly and fully constructive criticism and employ it to my benefit

5) Writing for orchestra

6) Making quality time to write and study scores amidst all the distraction - day job, organ and church subbing, family etc

7) Permitting myself the benefit of short rests from composing and music

I went through some tremendous struggles as a composer. But i remembered that going through this would only make me stronger on the way out, and it did.

1. I went through a long period of time (and still am) where i had no Piano whatsoever, and it was very difficult for me to get into feeling the music, because that was something i loved most. Music to me was an act of expressing my soul, and when that is taken away, when you already have no where in the world to express your soul, no friends, parents-nothing, it can be one of the loneliest and depressing feelings in the worlds. However through my persistence i am overcoming it, and in the process have become a better composer. I gave up believing that the piano can give me that love, since that is gone now. I decided to pick up other instruments, and it is returning to me.

2. Perfecting my performance ability with instruments, which i never really focused on (bad mistake)

Life for me never been no Crystal Stairs, but i is a fightin...

Something that took me a long time to realize is that music doesn't have to be perfect. Overcoming my insecurities and nit-picking of my own work and letting good enough be good enough was really hard for me. My perfectionism has paid off on numerous occasions, but there gets to be a point where it's really too much. Also, I was a pretty pretentious performer. Everything was done to impress. Haha. Getting over that is still on-going, but I've mostly succeeded.

I think that the thing I need to get over the most is confidence in my compositions. I keep thinking "It's okay if it's not very good, just keep writing."

but then I get frustrated and delete everything. I know. Bad habit. And that ties into this next paragraph...

I think I have a sort of Compositional ADD. I'll write down, say, a theme, then I'll get another one pop into my head, then I'll forget about them both and move on to another one, then by that time I forgot where I was going with any of them. I think this goes back to the thing that makes the most sense to me, yet I find to be the hardest thing to do; you read in every article about composition "You need to plan it out and know where the piece is going in your head before you write it down" or something like that. I try my hardest but I still can't quite get that.

I think I just need to slow down and take a break and not think about composition for a while so I can give my brain a rest.

I have had almost no compositional instruction, so often times I will know WHAT I want to write, but not necessarily HOW. I'm excited for next year in college when I will have my first *actual* instruction.

Another obstacle I have/am endured/ing is a very great lack of self-confidence. I often times feel very insecure of what I can do, and most times don't believe that anyone will ever have any interest in what I have to share through music.

I guess one that we all face, though, is a lack of time (from time to time). However, now that summer is here, this is no longer an issue for me :P

Obstacles I had/still have:

Listening to the first 30 seconds of your piece for 2 hours, having no idea what to do next.

Not adding accidentals

Using the same key

Not understanding how much the mix plays in to the composition

Not using enough woodinds!

My own obstacles:

1) Listening the first 58 seconds of your piece during 2 hours.

2) Writing for more than one instrument.

3) Don't know how to write you' re hearing in your mind.

4) Self-confidence

and a big etc.