Do you use a method?

I was just working on a variations piece (yet again) and just realized how different writing variations is from regular composition.  Regular composition here being defined as composition based solely on inspiration rather than on a technical manipulation of themes/motifs such as inversion, retrograde, augmentation, diminution, fragmentation (and recombination), changing of mode/key, register, function (such as changing from melody to accompaniment or ostinato), tempo and time signature, and creating new and interesting textures from all of these changes combined.  I guess it would be pretty difficult to write a composition without using any of these techniques now that I think about it but some compositions definitely do rely more on these techniques than others do.  So I was just wondering - do you use a unique method when composing?  Or do you mostly rely on your intuition/inspiration to guide you?

I might also mention that besides variations techniques I have also recently learned to use dice in various ways to provide some initial material to start a piece off with.  There are so many ways of using dice in composition that I'll just briefly mention a few:  rolling two 6-sided dice to come up with figured bass numbers, using repeatedly rolled 8-sided dice to determine diatonic scale degree numbers in order, using a 4-sided triangular pyramid die in combination with a 12-sided musicians die to determine a pitch-class along with a quality (1 = major, 2= minor, 3= augmented, and 4= diminished) to come up with triads, and I've also come up with a unique way to use a 10-sided die to determine various different types of 7th chords.

Of course there's also many ways of using found materials in composition without using dice.  I've heard of random number generators.  Or just the simple old way of finding old folk song melodies or other composers themes and using them in your compositions in some way.  There's also quoting other composers which I've seen my fair share of.  And some composers use words/text and transliterate them into pitches.

So anyways - whats your method?

2 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I was just working on a variations piece (yet again) and just realized how different writing variations is from regular composition.  Regular composition here being defined as composition based solely on inspiration rather than on a technical manipulation of themes/motifs such as inversion, retrograde, augmentation, diminution, fragmentation (and recombination), changing of mode/key, register, function (such as changing from melody to accompaniment or ostinato), tempo and time signature, and creating new and interesting textures from all of these changes combined.  I guess it would be pretty difficult to write a composition without using any of these techniques now that I think about it but some compositions definitely do rely more on these techniques than others do.  So I was just wondering - do you use a unique method when composing?  Or do you mostly rely on your intuition/inspiration to guide you?

I might also mention that besides variations techniques I have also recently learned to use dice in various ways to provide some initial material to start a piece off with.  There are so many ways of using dice in composition that I'll just briefly mention a few:  rolling two 6-sided dice to come up with figured bass numbers, using repeatedly rolled 8-sided dice to determine diatonic scale degree numbers in order, using a 4-sided triangular pyramid die in combination with a 12-sided musicians die to determine a pitch-class along with a quality (1 = major, 2= minor, 3= augmented, and 4= diminished) to come up with triads, and I've also come up with a unique way to use a 10-sided die to determine various different types of 7th chords.

Of course there's also many ways of using found materials in composition without using dice.  I've heard of random number generators.  Or just the simple old way of finding old folk song melodies or other composers themes and using them in your compositions in some way.  There's also quoting other composers which I've seen my fair share of.  And some composers use words/text and transliterate them into pitches.

So anyways - whats your method?

 

I tend to go all Beethoven and use motifs and manipulate them if I am composing something like a Prelude or a Rondo. Sometimes I compose more from inspiration, particularly when going for a more atmospheric feel, but I still do end up using at least some of the motivic manipulation techniques you mention. And I will occasionally use folk tunes or other composer's themes, usually without even realizing I did it(plenty of Beethoven's Fifth theme entrances are a result of this).

I think variation, regular composition, or whatever ...., take use of any of those resources you mentioned. 

I'm a bit confused as to whether the question is about variations or composing in general.

I think of, and to be honest, pride myself on that I am an aesthete. 

I always have a concept or theme in mind of what the music, to me anyway, is meant to represent and the general vibe it's meant to have. A lot of times, I can basically hear it and see it in my mind before I begin to actually work on it. Often, for months before I work on it and it can take several drafts before I really "tap into" whatever I'm imagining. I don't know how to describe it, I assume other people feel it, but for my entire life whenever I'd hear music, I always drifted off into some reverie about what I was hearing — especially in instrumental music. I'd hear new age tunes by Yanni, Chris Spheeris or other Rompler-driven pieces from back then and I'd always see these different colors and images that went with it to me. Visions of soaring over castles and oceans, a romantic desert adventure, sunsets etc. Still do.

So for me, composing or songwriting has always been that I have this imagery floating around in my mind and I'm hearing some piece that goes with it and the whole "process" is trying to make that real.

Sometimes, the starting point is a painting or photograph. I'm sure some psychologist or whatever would call me "autistic" or people would consider me some sort of weirdo if they knew, but like I said I'm aesthete; I become obsessive over things that I think are beautiful. Even now, in some windows on my computer's taskbar, I have some paintings and stuff open and they're there for no other reason than to stare at them periodically, whilst listening to music or whatever. I just get lost in them; they are snapshot in time but after becoming so familiar with and enchanted by them, in my mind, they begin to move. I can imagine what comes next or what happened before. What the "story" of the picture is.

I read the Witcher saga a few years ago, and I paid good money to import the European (specifically British) editions of the books for no other reason than because I love the art on the covers so much that this Spanish artist made. I especially love this painting of Yennefer.

For me, this painting is just so striking. I've spent so much time gawking at it. I love that it's dark and haunting, but there's something romantic, warm and inviting about it either way that sends chills up my spine. Looking at it, I hear this music that has a sorrowful, but yet seductive violin and a woman's voice in the distance, accompanied by string instruments like lutes and classical guitars.

I'm still working on that tune, three years later and I haven't quite tapped into it yet, but one day...

I actually don't even see a point in composing music without first having that sort of inspiration, to be perfectly honest. 

To me, if the music isn't as aesthetically-pleasing as the images in my mind, then there's just no purpose. Beauty inspires beauty, essentially.

The natural beauty of the world and fantasy provides infinite possibilities to inspire a meager amount of notes to reach the sensory heights; the sense of wonder, awe, and lifting of spirits that one gets when gazing upon a great baroque Palace, soaring over the alps or sitting at "Pretty Place" chapel in the early morning when the clouds are low in the valley below, and it fills you with the sense that this is a close as it gets to heaven on earth.

So for me, that's the method to starting a new piece. Something great, visually or sensation enters my mind, and then I use my knowledge of the craft to bring it to life. And without the craft, you really can't achieve this.

I believe it was Brahms who said that "inspiration without craft is but a reed shaken in the wind".

It's usually things other than the standard 'blocks' of music theory that get me going.

Sometimes just hearing a certain type of ambience might hit me a certain way.

I find the things that can get a song going are usually bare, stupid, and dumb sounding.

Sometimes I may start from an audio engineering angle and mix something a certain way.

It's usually pushing something into the "no" zone that can spur an idea.

15 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I'm a bit confused as to whether the question is about variations or composing in general.

I meant the question to encompass any kind of method one might use to compose and I meant to make a distinction between method-composing and non-method-composing much in the same way as one might make the distinction between method-acting and regular acting.  Variation techniques in general have much in common with developmental techniques and invention or even fugal techniques.  I just kind of meant to include all of those techniques under one umbrella.

@AngelCityOutlaw I think I kind of do the same thing where I feel like I need to be able to envision what kind of composition I want before I start the whole compositional process.  Although for me it usually comes in the form of combinations of certain ideas such as "polytonal string quartet" or "5/4 and 5/8 hemiola chase scene".

16 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

I think variation, regular composition, or whatever ...., take use of any of those resources you mentioned. 

Yes, regular composition and variations both make use of all of those techniques.  But the question is how does one arrive at the final result - do you just write music through intuition/inspiration or do you use a method?

8 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Yes, regular composition and variations both make use of all of those techniques.  But the question is how does one arrive at the final result - do you just write music through intuition/inspiration or do you use a method?

For me, a good work is one that is able to express just a little bit of what I want to. That means I need some "inspiration" which can come from any where, or anything. A thought, an experience, something I read, I hear, ..... But that's just the less part. The rest is work, or method,... The more composition tools you know, the better. It doesn't mean you have to use all, but it you know them, you can pick them and mix them, etc... And that's how a music becomes expressive.

Even if you begin with a variation form or plan.... It's just a starting point. The raw or original material is only spot to go away, and make something new. So, all the techniques are ways of composition.

What I don'0t like, and I've told it many times is taking and style and copying it, "as exactly as possibe". Yes, everybody does it, me included, of course. I see it as a way of learning an processing the techniques.... And I respect people who writes that music, and I like it. But come on, we are on the 21th century and many things have happened to ignore them. I doesnt' mean we have to be in avant-garde movements and things like that....

Anyway, music is always welcome.

Having a method is hard, because it implies work. When I plan to write something "important" (by important I don't say long, but well structured), after I draft the first short ideas (melodyc, harmonyc, ...) I think of the style or styles that can fit to the mood I'm looking for. Tonal, jazzy, impressionistic, minimal,  free atonal, dodecaphonic, polytonality, polychords, and a long, etc.... And even the combination of those. I think of the Form. Y plan the parts in the Form, drawing a tension-relax and climax pathway. I think in each part what instruments have to play the main role and how the will be added or not. And I begin to write, melody and bass parts first. Harmony and countermelody afterwords. Transitions, riffs, ornaments, the last. Dynamics everywhere (because they're needed).

After all this, dependeing on the piece, there is a second phase of mixing.