How Much Does Composing Take Out Of You? And What Does It Give You In Return?

It takes away from my sleeping hours since I usually compose at one go and start late at night and finish in the early hours of the morning. Also, if you compose non-professionally, as I do, it takes a lot of time and effort with little tangible material reward.

In return, I get the satisfaction of having created something valuable, of having put my inner experience, individuality, and attitude into tangible external musical form. And the greater reward comes when the piece I have composed gets performed. That is the time for recognition of one's talent, of one's efforts in having put in the time to compose - i.e. put one's inner experience, individuality, and attitude into tangible external musical form. The performance of a composer's piece, especially during a concert, is tangible proof to the composer of the value of their composition. As such, it is very rewarding. It also creates a link between the composer and the performer, the performer realizing the "composition as a mental/subjective concept" into an actual, living, organic, independent entity, an objective event, standing on its own independent of one's mind. The role of the performer is central to the creation of this objective event, to the realization of one's composition independent of one's mind and as an objective reality. Moreover, the performer integrates their own subjectivity, and their own understanding and philosophy of the piece (i.e. the expression of the composer's subjective truth) into the realization of the composer's subjective truth as expressed in the piece as an objective event.

I suspect also that there is an inherent satisfaction to composing in the sense of creating a narrative, a psychic coherence in one's life, or an organizing of one's experience and expression of one's essence and inner attitude, in short the synthesis of experience and being.  I think that is the essence of composition itself: a synthesis of experience and being. And that is bound to be inherently satisfying, since otherwise experience and being would be in disaccord, or ill-fit. Composition makes them fit, rounds the rough edges, fuses their otherwise juxtapositional coexistence; makes experience palatable to one's being on the one hand, and one's being adapt to and integrate experience on the other hand.

Let me here also add about the special reward when composers' subjectivities interact as is the case in one composer composing a piece on another's theme. Recently I had that reward when one of my themes was used by YC composers to compose 4 (till now) special pieces, each in their own particular style and making sense of the theme relative to their own subjectivity and musical logic. Then I had, in a separate challenge, the opportunity to experience it at the other end, when I composed a piece of my own on a theme by a YC composer. Both of these experiences were rather illuminating. I think in them composers' subjectivities interact with one another to give each other insight of another kind to that of performances. I think this kind of interaction and the (mostly compositional) insights it provides might be even more useful and rewarding (in another way) to composers than that provided by performances of one's pieces. It remains for us YC composers to fully exploit the possibilities of such composer-composer purely-compositional interaction. I think these challenges should be a mainstay of YC. We have yet to reap their full benefit. It is something still being discovered, and the future of YC and its composer-members can only be enriched by it.

Well composing doesn't really take much out of me at all. it's something that i like to do. actually, school and other extra-curricular activities take a lot of energy out of me and when i compose it's kind of my time to relax. 

as for what it gives me in return. not much besides relax-time and my own satisfaction. although maybe later in life, my compositions will be published and used by many others or maybe they won't. i don't know. all i know is that eventually i will be able to use these skills as a composer. maybe i will be using them to compose legendary works, or maybe it will just give me deeper understanding of the technicalities of the pieces i perform in the future.

also through composing, i know some of the great people on this forum and have had a great experiences doing challenges or maybe just chatting in the shoutbox.

Mushrooms?

Mushrooms?

Based on his manner of speech in this and an untold number of other threads he has started, I am guessing that Luderart is regularly ingesting psilocibin.

Based on his manner of speech in this and an untold number of other threads he has started, I am guessing that Luderart is regularly ingesting psilocibin.

haha. lololol.

Luderart you drug ingesting scoundrel... where do you get your psilocibin, i want to speak like you

haha. lololol.

 

Luderart you drug ingesting scoundrel... where do you get your psilocibin, i want to speak like you

They grow outside all natural and scraggy.

They grow outside all natural and scraggy.

hey you. shhh.  i was trying to make a joke. quit being a party pooper.  :P

Based on his manner of speech in this and an untold number of other threads he has started, I am guessing that Luderart is regularly ingesting psilocibin.

Stop extrapolating from your drug-infested mind!

Ah, composing takes time, time that I gladly give. However, there are so many other obstacles to completing a composition, and some, of course, are more important than the next great symphony. Completing my first opera last year, Libertaria:The Virtual Opera, after three years of hard work cost me hundreds of hours of work, countless lost hours of sleep, and  time with my family. I am glad to be finished with the work, although I already have several other projects in the works, but none so consuming as an opera. So time, sleep.

But what does it give me? 

Composition brings me joy, it allows me to travel through the deepest levels of my subconscious and bask in the most mysterious corners of my mind. When I am at the piano or Malletkat (a MIDI mallet controller), I lose myself, quite literally, in creation. What it gives me directly relates to what I can give back. Some works are simple self-indulgences, others are truly meant for the audience members to experience something innovative and exciting. And of course, there is the appreciation of others who experience your work and have learned something new. 

(Great question!)

Composing is a stress reliever for me.  It takes time, but as the poster above me stated, time that I happily expend because the accomplishment of creating a piece of art is immensely gratifying, even more so when it can be realized via software and technology and shared with others.

While it is mostly a hobby, I actually earned a scholarship during medical school which was specifically for a student entering a neuroscience field that had an interest in music or art and the amount was not trivial.  That's the only tangible renumeration I've ever received for my music but honestly, the intangibles (getting helpful feedback and praise from others, the rare case of actually having a piece performed live) is far more satisfying.

I'm at this stage of "coming out" with my composing. I've worked in music production since the mid 70's, I'm one of the few people who paid off a mortgage from the proceeds of the music industry. I'd have to say composing has been a high point in my life. The death of my father, a very talented man who did nothing with it, has triggered me to pour energy into the classical piano area. I feel like I'm in love. The feeling follows me around like a friendly puppy, and I know I'm home.

I'm ready to start putting music up on this site if it is good enough, & I hope to give pleasure to others by doing so.

I suspect it goes deeper than pleasure however, I'm even going to say that in the future the creative process will be utilized as direct medical or psychological therapy (& it is already). I think it is that good for you. Whether it is music, or whatever turns you on, but specifically music, with its patterning, the amazing chord combinations, the power to influence mood, etc.

If feeling in love is an illness, then I'm happy to stay that way.

On 9/23/2014 at 5:05 PM, luderart said:

It takes away from my sleeping hours since I usually compose at one go and start late at night and finish in the early hours of the morning.

I used to compose this way which I think is a certain type of creative mania but that was a long time ago (before I started composing on paper when I would spend long hours at the sequencer which today I find too intimidating for some reason - maybe I've grown out of it?)

On 9/23/2014 at 5:05 PM, luderart said:

Also, if you compose non-professionally, as I do, it takes a lot of time and effort with little tangible material reward.

I think the people who participate on this website probably do so because they find the process of composition and sharing it with others enjoyable - something that I personally would feel like I'd be putting in jeopardy if I did it for the pursuit of material rewards.  At the same time I feel like I would really enjoy writing music for some kind of extra-musical purpose such as a role-playing game or film.  But I don't think I would be able to forgive myself if I didn't deliver the kind of music that the context demanded/required and I've heard of some composers really stressing themselves out over this to the point of getting stomach ulcers so I guess it's a double-edged sword.

On 9/23/2014 at 5:05 PM, luderart said:

In return, I get the satisfaction of having created something valuable, of having put my inner experience, individuality, and attitude into tangible external musical form.

What I enjoy the most is the process of composition itself when I finally get to the point where I feel like I've made some musical decisions and know what I'm doing.  I just really love getting into it.  Being in the zone where I feel like I am doing everything right and the piece is basically writing itself.  I also like writing my music on paper - I feel like that's a really meditative and organized way for me to put my ideas together.  There was a time when I didn't have access to a computer for a while and I felt like I wanted to compose music so I started to write on paper and haven't gone back since.  I don't know why but when I sit down in front of a computer and attempt to compose into the sequencer I start to feel like I don't really have any worthwhile ideas and come up empty creatively.

My satisfaction in the end is in having created something that I (and hopefully others as well) can enjoy listening to and will enjoy sharing with them here.  I think if I wrote something on paper that turned out sounding completely wrong once I put it into the computer I would get the opposite effect and that satisfaction would not be there - in such a case I might try changing what I wrote (as I did a little bit with my "Stalagtite Cave" piece) or try to figure out what I did wrong and apply it to future pieces so that I get my music to sound the way I want it to.

Short answer:

The main thing it takes away is time. The most valuable, non-renewable resource in the universe.

It's given back the artistic satisfaction of creating the music I want to hear and realizing a vision I have, provided enjoyment to thousands of people around the world, and sometimes even money.

The much longer answer:

I increasingly feel that technology has significantly taxed people for time when it comes to composing. When I started, I just had my guitar and piano, and a pencil and paper. At some point in the mid 2000s, I discovered Guitar Pro 4, or maybe it was 3 at the time? That changed my world. The fact that I could play back my songs with (crappy) MIDI was just mind-blowing. Even though they'd actually existed since the 90s, I had no idea that home-recording was possible and certainly not MIDI sequencers and virtual instrument samplers.

I firmly believe that this had two benefits: 1. is that it made me a much better composer than a lot of my peers at the time wound up becoming. I could not rely on any technological crutches; I had to make sure that on just my guitar, or with the GP playback that it sounded like a great composition there.

But the other big benefit it had was how little time investment it required. Back when, I'd write the song (in just a few hours), it was was totally awesome, and I would just say "this will sound great when I can get my band together and go to a recording studio some day!" and then moved on with life.

However, it's extremely expensive to hire nothing but live players, and I don't have a band anymore most of the time, so I have to do virtual instrument mockups, mix everything myself, and this can take a loooong time if you want to make something great.

Looking at my project files for my most recent tune, which I did straight into the DAW since the electric guitar would be the only live instrument, I started it on the 2nd of March and finished it on the 21st. I worked on it every day until it was done. So for a 3 and 1/2 minute piece, which I'm really pleased with btw, it took almost an entire month. A song I wrote using almost all live performances, and started in Guitar Pro, back in October called "Open Road Runaways", I wrote that in a single day, and had it done three days later and the only reason it wasn't done in 1 or 2 days, was because I had to wait for the other musician to get around to recording his parts.

That is an absolutely staggering difference in time investment. 

Maybe I shouldn't admit this for professional reasons, but I am increasingly less interested in just "composing" and thinking more about getting back into playing in live bands. At this point, the only thing that appeals to me about writing CUSTOM music for games or stuff anymore would be if they were offering good money. Otherwise, I can just create at my own pace, and license out tracks to developers here and there; it's a whole lot less stressful and time consuming.

But Here's another thing about all these pieces of music I've composed, including the most recent one, which ties into my previous point: I don't recall about 90% of the process of creating it. On the first game score I ever composed, 10 years ago, I honestly don't remember anything about the time I spent composing it...

But I do remember jamming with my friends, rocking out on stage, the people I met, the festivals I went to, etc. On my death bed, I am not going remember all the fun I had writing music; most of what I'll remember would be the times spent playing it and the friends I made on the "journey" as it were. With a band, I could take songs I/we write and play them live for a lot of different people, a lot of stories and life experiences could be had. Not so much with just writing music, though.

So something else it can take out of you? Life experiences.

I know this all probably sounds really negative, but it's not meant to be, but what it has taught me I think is not to focus TOO MUCH on composing — there is more to music and life in general.

^ Agreed. Having developed a shorthand for quick notation on paper, I still use this. It's stood me in stead when I'm out away from instruments and computer, maybe on the beach, eating in a pub, so I carry a little notebook. A benefit is if I try it out on the piano and have second thoughts I can cross it through but leave it there in case I want to look back then shift off to elsewhere on the paper - something almost impossible in both daw and notation software. My latest composition (5 mins) took me an elapsed 12 hours or so to compose. It'll take me quadruple that to get in the daw and about the same editing the xml in notation.

To me, the time it takes depends on a few things like what else I have to do, my enthusiasm for the ideas; the stage I'm at (I so dislike notation software but it has one advantage - ripping out the parts of a multiplayer score. My dislike comes from the poor parsing of xml files and the need to be very accurate in the daw - snap to the grid the whole time which dehumanises the effect). The benefits of a daw are that you can try out orchestrations you'd take a chance on with live playing - providing you don't cheat. If you're want your mock up to sound like an orchestra you do your balancing with velocities. You think a player should play quieter you turn the velocity down, don't touch the mixer slider as that would give you a false timbre - and so on.

I once wrote my orchestral scores by hand - there were never many and they'd take a huge tract of time but I don't count that as composing, just secretarial work as is copyist stuff. Until lockdown I played in our local town orchestra (not the best but ok for the social side) and an ensemble of 8 or so players.  The secretarial time for them was a lot lower and I doubt I'd save much time by using notation software (not after writing in all the cues and things). Playing also means I have to divide my time.

As AngelCityOutlaw says, there's a social side mixing with musicians and this can reach into composing as well as (usually) being the fun. Although a few players may shun it, I've found many are happy to talk about their instruments and complaints against composers! which has been most helpful at times.  The pub after rehearsal can be a good place to be.

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