Practicing Composing

Hey Everyone, long time no see!

I've realized that one should practice composition like they practice an instrument, every day. However, I only write music when I'm truly inspired and have something in my head that I want to write down. Indeed if I sit quietly long enough usually music will come to me, but can you all give some advice or guidelines on what to practice/how to practice composing?

Thanks!

I'm not sure there's any good advice besides just write, write, write! Even if you throw it away, writing is essential. Go to the piano and improvise. That's composing *and* playing at once; killing two birds with one stone.

Well, *stupid question* would you consider it better to write it into the computer and listen to it, or just write what you hear in your head down on paper? I prefer paper and usually go put it in the computer eventually (well, usually I'll play some of it on piano to see if I came remotely close to what I heard originally)

But does just 'aimless' writing really make you better? You alway hear 'perfect practice makes perfect' but if you're just writing, even when not really inspired to, are you really making progress?

Depends on what you mean by aimless writing really. If your not really paying attention to what your doing - which I highly doubt - then aimless writing won't help you practice. Does that make sense?

Paper or computer is irrelevant because you're still creating the stuff. Its not aimless...

Do not mix up composing and improvising. Yeah, the latter may add a little to your development skills, but I think it will do little else than just fiddling around. You are not training the more cognitive aspects like form.

Do not mix up composing and improvising. Yeah, the latter may add a little to your development skills, but I think it will do little else than just fiddling around. You are not training the more cognitive aspects like form.

Eh?

How aren't you training form? you'd have to specifically avoid that, or you could improvise, you know, form?

You can adapt any kind of writing or playing routine to train any given parameter, you just have to know what you want to train. If you wanted to get your improvising to help you improvise form then it's as easy as simply doing just that. You don't have to write every note either then, and you can write form in abstraction (helps as well.)

And that's not how you use the word 'cognitive', as form isn't "more" or "less" cognitive than anything else, this is nonsense.

Look at the formless youtube ramblings and that is what I meant with improvise.

You are right and I spoke too harsh though, it can be adapted to any parameter, the question is whether it actually will.

I have only seen it so little that I am somewhat skeptical.

Everyone works differently so my advice here might be void for you.

I find that some basic knowledge in music history is essential if you want to be able to evaluate your music. It helps to know what other composers have done up until this point. You can get a lot of ideas from other composers and if you want to develop your compositional technique it sure does help to have a firm grasp on the techniques used by the big ones. The way I see it, this is one way of practicing composition, you don't always have to compose to get better at it. I would say that nothing stimulates the creative flow more than getting impressions from someone else's music. There are some books out there that analyses different compositional methods which can be helpful. But if you aren't the type that learns by reading don't worry about it, a teacher can tell you about most of it. :)

That said, it is very ,very important to write a lot! But what is maybe more important is to get feedback on what you write. It doesn't necessarily have to be a composition teacher (you'd be surprised how healthy observations you can get from people without a clue about music) but that's probably where you'll get the best feedback. If you can't find any composers to teach you then maybe a music theory teacher could take a peek, they often have some basic composition skills (but beware, a lot of them are red-tapists).

A common mistake a lot of people do when starting to compose is that they take on more than they can handle (I know I sure did!). As I said, you should write a lot. With this I mean write a lot of short pieces (around 2 minutes I would say). And it's best to limit the instruments to a smaller group. Trying to write a symphony the first thing you do isn't a good idea. You could compare this to as if you are starting out playing piano and immediately start practicing on some virtuoso Chopin-piece. It might take you a week (or even more) to get through the first bar of that piece and the chance that you will get tired and give up is very likely. A lot of people do this mistake with composition, leaving them with a hundred pieces that have a really cool intro but nothing more. A very important thing in composition is the structure and form in the music and this what you should be practicing on by doing a lot of these short pieces. After a while you will get a great sense of form and you can start making more ambitious project.

I would like to repeat that I think that books can help you a lot on the way (if you, like I mentioned, do like to read) but in my experience nothing beats a good teacher.

A common mistake a lot of people do when starting to compose is that they take on more than they can handle (I know I sure did!).

I'd say the actual "mistake" is that people take a while to understand and handle musical material or ideas. They want to do everything at once rather than focusing on few things at the time.

A shorter piece forces you to focus since you don't have that much time, and a smaller ensemble forces you to focus the sound since you don't have that many choices. All is about self-imposing limitations to be able to handle all the ideas and actually put them to practice. Eventually even writing for orchestra is pretty simple if you can focus your ideas and work them out. You have to know what you want first and foremost and it's just a matter of practice to be able to extend that to large ensembles or forms without getting lost.

I've realized that one should practice composition like they practice an instrument, every day.

Should one? Crap, I've been doing it wrong.

Well, *stupid question* would you consider it better to write it into the computer and listen to it, or just write what you hear in your head down on paper? I prefer paper and usually go put it in the computer eventually (well, usually I'll play some of it on piano to see if I came remotely close to what I heard originally)

But does just 'aimless' writing really make you better? You alway hear 'perfect practice makes perfect' but if you're just writing, even when not really inspired to, are you really making progress?

Yeah certainly. I'd make entire pieces in boring classes just on graph paper, imposing more and more things. It's just exercise like you said. I mean some might turn into something, but it's just a matter of thinking musically.

I have long considered writing some kind of manual suggesting exercises to practice composition. I think being exposed to, and trying out, as much as possible is key - far too many young composers simply imitate one or two favourite composers without bringing anything new, and as a result their work just sounds second-rate and derivative. In general you should try and do exercises that introduce ideas so far unfamiliar to you. For example, writing for untuned percussion forces you to think about using rhythm and timbre as the main variables, rather than harmony or melody. One thing my second-year composition teacher had us do was write pieces that were a maximum of ten seconds in length. This again forced us to focus on devising very small units of material and condensing ideas as far as possible. So, off the top of my head, I would reccomend:

- Write for instruments you have little or no knowledge of. This will make you read up on their capabilities but also introduce new sounds.

- Write exercises in which a certain parameter is fixed or removed (melody, timbre, note values, etc). This will make you more creative with the other variables.

- As above, write very short pieces, maybe a few seconds in duration, for as many sizes of ensemble as possible. How can you use a full orchestra in ten seconds?

- Experiment with following historical forms to the letter (serialism, sonata forms, rondo) then write something that deliberately subverts the rules of these forms.

- Orchestrate music by others. This will not only help your learn about instruments but give you an intimate knowledge of the work being done.

The purpose of these exercises is not to make your music into some kind of eclectic post-modernist grab-all that doesn't have any individualisty, quite the opposite. If you experiment with as many ideas as possible you can decide what you want to use and what to reject. And don't worry if anything you write sounds terrible, because it's just an exercise. No-one cares about student pieces or exercises, they care about the good work that eventually results from doing all of that.

=I would like to repeat that I think that books can help you a lot on the way

Do you have any particular recommendations on some good ones to start with?

Do you have any particular recommendations on some good ones to start with?

The first book I would recommend reading would be "Musical composition" by Reginald Smith Brindle.

It is filled with great explanations on most aspects of composition. A great all-round book. I had a lot of use of this

when I was trying to develop on my own before I finally got admitted to a composition course (I still read it from time to time).

If you want to write contemporary art-music (I wish there was a better name for it) then I would recommend this book:

"Techniques of the Contemporary Composer" by David Cope. It really opens up your mind and gives tons of new ideas. I think that

this book could be useful if you want to compose film music as well, since you get more tools to work with.

And if you want to develop your harmonic language into something more modern then a book called:

"Twentieth-Century Harmony" by Vincent Persichetti

It can take a while to understand this book and you really need to play through his examples on a piano (unless your sight-reading is up for it, that is) to get what he is talking about. But it's really worth the trouble if you ask me. This book really made me realise how free you are to do whatever you like as a composer.

I would also recommend a orchestration book to learn more about the instruments and how to write for them. The one by Samuel Adler is my favourite, it's called Study of Orchestration. Unfortunately it's a bit expensive (and you should really get the discs with the audio examples for it).

My god Mathieux.... haven't seen you on in almost a year!

Anyways, the tip is: you should just sit at the piano and play whatever comes out. If you get something you like, quickly write it down either on paper or on the computer. If you don't, at least you were getting creative, and you can tell yourself tomorrow you'll come up with something better.

Another thing you could do is to look at something, like a picture. I don't know, sometimes it gets me inspired to write something....

Hope that helps!

Heckel

The first book I would recommend reading would be "Musical composition" by Reginald Smith Brindle.

It is filled with great explanations on most aspects of composition. A great all-round book. I had a lot of use of this

when I was trying to develop on my own before I finally got admitted to a composition course (I still read it from time to time).

If you want to write contemporary art-music (I wish there was a better name for it) then I would recommend this book:

"Techniques of the Contemporary Composer" by David Cope. It really opens up your mind and gives tons of new ideas. I think that

this book could be useful if you want to compose film music as well, since you get more tools to work with.

And if you want to develop your harmonic language into something more modern then a book called:

"Twentieth-Century Harmony" by Vincent Persichetti

It can take a while to understand this book and you really need to play through his examples on a piano (unless your sight-reading is up for it, that is) to get what he is talking about. But it's really worth the trouble if you ask me. This book really made me realise how free you are to do whatever you like as a composer.

I would also recommend a orchestration book to learn more about the instruments and how to write for them. The one by Samuel Adler is my favourite, it's called Study of Orchestration. Unfortunately it's a bit expensive (and you should really get the discs with the audio examples for it).

Thanks for the recommendations, will have to check them out. I happen to already have a copy of Adler's Orchestration with the CDs, it's a truly brilliant work fully worth the investment imo, considering the amount I've already learnt from it. Twentieth-Century Harmony has intrigued me for a while now, will get a copy shortly, along with the other books, which were unfamilar to me, but definitely look like the sort of thing I am after.

Thanks again :toothygrin: