Complete Beginner. What to Practice?

Hi all,

Forgive me if this is the wrong type of post for these forums.

I am essentially a beginner to composing however i am willing to put in serious effort to get where i want to be as smoothly as i can. My end goal is to write orchestral music to be used for games, films and the like. I understand this is, for many is a complete life devotion and it would be an insult for me to say i hope to get anywhere in a specific amount of time. Time is not really a thing i am taking into consideration however i would like to feel as though i am one step closer every day.

I am currently working my way through the Piano grades with a teacher (who admittedly has said she is no good at composing) and hopefully, will be working my way to becoming proficient at Cubase soon enough. 

I understand there is so much more to it than that, this is what i do not know. What should i practice? (Orchestration, Music Theory?)  How long should i practice it for, and what is the best way to practice it? I have a Keyboard and Cubase at home and have a reasonable amount of free time a day, maybe about 2-3 hours to work on it. I don't mind if it takes me 10,20 or even 50 years, i would just like to see progress every day. 

Again, apologies if this is a completely incorrect post for this forum however it's my first time on the website!

Thanks in advance all. 

1. Just start composing.  Don't worry about whether it's "right" or "good," just start putting ideas on paper.  If you wait until you know enough to start, you'll never start, because there is always more to know.  

2.  Start sharing what you write.  The faster you start getting feedback, the faster you can grow from that feedback.  If you wait until your work is good enough to share, you'll never start sharing.  

3.  Give other people feedback on what they compose.  Beginner work follows patterns that make it less strong than it could be.  I won't say they are "mistakes," because every art form is so subjective, it's hard to ever point at any one decision the creator made and say it was "wrong," but there are things all beginning composers seem to do that make the work less impactful than it could have been.  Instead of highlighting your audience's enjoyment, they undercut it.  It's hard to see the problems in your own work, because you're too close to it.  It's hard to accept it when people point the problems out to you for the same reason.  But if you look at enough beginner pieces by other composing students, you'll start to see the patterns for yourself and notice what beginner pieces all seem to have in common, and it becomes easier to appreciate the advice others give you and avoid or fix issues in your own work.  

4.  Start reading about theory and orchestration.  Read musical analysis of famous works by famous composers and also the feedback given by and to other composing students here.  There is a lifetime of material to learn, so there's probably no wrong place to start reading.  Just start and let each question that comes up lead you down a rabbit hole to new reading.  What you read will inform what you want to try with your latest composing project.  (Hmmm... cadences... right, let's see what this sounds like if I end it with an authentic cadence...) And sometimes what you are composing will inform your reading.  (This doesn't seem to be a major scale or a minor scale, but it certainly sounds like it is a something.  Maybe I should do some reading about jazz scales and it will turn out to be one of them).  

5.  When you listen to music, or play something for your piano lessons, start thinking about what parts you like and why, what parts you don't like, and why, and how the piece is structured on a large scale, so you can apply those structures or those things you like to your own work.  

Welcome to the club!  We are all here because we are learning too!

P.S. If you're floundering about where to start, try looking up an analysis of a piece of music you are playing for your piano lessons, reading it through carefully, and looking up any terms you don't understand.  Assuming your piano teacher is giving you a good range of work, if you become an expert on the theory behind each piece you work on, you'll start to have a good grounding in a wide range of concepts with the added bonus that you'll remember the information well since you are practicing the pieces regularly, and each time you get to measure 45, you'll remember that this is the bit with the horn fifths and your brain will get a jog about what a horn fifth sounds like.  You'll also be able to discuss anything you don't understand with your teacher and then use that vocabulary in your lessons going forward.  The point of learning music theory is not to be able to write music, it's to be able to talk about what you and others have written.  

Thank you so much for your reply! Very detailed and it's definitely a big help! When you say just start composing, could that also be applied to writing stuff on Cubase? Or would you recommend writing it all down on paper?  Also do you know of any good books i could read about it all? Or will a few google searches do. 

Again, thank you for your thoughtful response! 

Either or both.  If you want to share your music you'll need good recordings of yourself playing if you envision yourself as a singer/songwriter, writing music and performing it live in concert or selling the recordings, or you'll need professional looking scores that you can share with other people so they can learn and perform your music if you want to be the composer more than the performer.  Some people are both.  It just depends where you want to go with your music, and there's nothing wrong with starting out more in one direction, and then changing course if a good opportunity comes up.  

Nothing wrong with googling books.  You could always put together a list of things that sound interesting and ask people here if there are any of them they have read and recommend.  There is so much information in print that what you will find helpful really depends what you want to know specifically.  

Sorry for the late reply. I am mainly interested in composing for games etc, and not so much going out and performing them. I am a drummer also so get plenty of performances from that! Thank you again for the help