About composition technics

I'm trying to think about the creation of tools to learn composition for the peoples here. But although I posted one today, I'm worried to put time on stuff for nothing and wish to open a discussion here about this.

Question 1 : do you think it necessary to have tools* to compose music ?

Question 2 : if you think this necessary, what kind of tools would you like to have that doesn't exist in the common litterature**? What ability would you wish to improve through exercises made through technics.

SO... I'm willing to spend time to devellop tools of practice for the composition, but I don't want to make them for nothing... so I guess that it must come from your needs more than what I'm thinking you should learn. As one of the members of the over-30 yo (the grand fathers in short :P )... I've had time to learn a few thinks in composition and I'm glad and willing to share. Let's us discuss these two questions.

* By tools I mean (for example) anything that can alter a motive, help making harmony.

** Common litterature technics would be stuff like harmonisation, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration, and other 'all-teached-at-school' stuff.

Well, since no one's jumping in here, and you seem to be getting restless, here ya go:

tools? Of course....you need them. You're incompetent if you don't. Just like any professional: you need the proper tools/weapons/skills to perform your job well. A chef needs knives, carpenter need chisels, golfer needs clubs, trombonist needs mutes, composer needs...

An understanding of harmony, orchestration, rhythm, etc. ...and also the knowledge of when to abandon the tools, creating your own.

As an 'improvisor', I want (need) as many things as possible in my bag of tricks, as a composer it's not much different. You need the tools at your disposal - whether you choose to use them or not, depending on your chosen genre is up to you...

As for tools that don't exist, that's not something 'teachable', really. More people need to let go and abandon the 'learned' techniques...once you have the understanding...

*addendum*

All that nonsense aside, I'm sure there's many major composers who don't have a firm grasp of how to write a fugue, or write 'proper' counterpoint...If that's your bag, so be it. Personally, I only apply the tools and techniques appropriate for my concept of music...

*addendum*

All that nonsense aside, I'm sure there's many major composers who don't have a firm grasp of how to write a fugue, or write 'proper' counterpoint...If that's your bag, so be it. Personally, I only apply the tools and techniques appropriate for my concept of music...

Of course !... I'm not quiet good at fugue or counterpoint... even though I not too bad in counterpoint either but I couldn't teach it right now. I also talking about personnal technics... but some of these might be useful to more than one composer. And I'm mostly adressing to beginners that are now writing good melodies without being able to go further.

HEY!... nobody cares about technics ??? or nobody reads the topics ?? Maybe I'm just an over-passionate composer striving (is that the good word??) to ameliorate my music and to learn more and more about theory, acoustic, instrumentation and composition technics... (okay... I'll calm down ;) ehehe).

Hmm.. to me the most important technique is harmony.

Orchestration is second, but that is only if you want to compose music for the orchestra.

I guess you might be wrong here yoyodog... you can orchestrate for a solo violin if you wish... you then orchestrate the timber of the instrument. You have to think orchestration from a larger point of view. Any decision that you take (dynamics, note height, articulation, position of a bow or the way you blow in the instrument, etc...) in writing your music if part of the orchestration. The harmony in itself is the notes (and also the way you dispose them of course... harmony and orchestration are linked in this way). The same harmony placed differently or played at different instrument won't sound the same.

There is great studies of all that in some university (Pacific Ocean... or something sounding like this) lead by a composer named Fran

HEY!... nobody cares about technics ??? or nobody reads the topics ??...

I do...and tried to spark up conversation, but got shot down thusly:

...I'm mostly adressing to beginners that are now writing good melodies without being able to go further.

ANYWAY....I'll try again.

I'm also talking about personnal technics...

You asked about tools...I mentioned some I think are useful.

However, personal tools - I boil it down to a single tool. The ability to hear the piece internally. I've developed my 'cerebral contextualization' (see this post) and can define aspects such as form, density, colour, orchestration - in my head.

If you can't hear the music, you shouldn't be writing it.

This isn't something that can be taught, it is a tool that has to be developed. Someone, a beginner with good melody writing capabilities perhaps, should spend more time thinking about the piece than working on it. Only when you have a clear concept and direction should you put anything on paper. (Of course - draw a sketch, write the melody out, write down the ideas if you'll forget them, but don't start 'composing' until you know where it's going)

...

If you can't hear the music, you shouldn't be writing it.

Hmmm... I partly agree with what you say but I disagree with the quote I made of your answer. Exploration through computer aided composition can help you realize unheard musical materials. Of course, I for sure think that it's important to have the most precise possible idea of the whole composition (or at least by movement or big sections) you want to write. But I definitly disagree to tell to the young composer that they shouldn't write something if they don't ear it... I would probably have never composed with this 'counsel'. And I guess I'm a any more bad than most of the composers here. :P

But I agree that one should aim toward that goal without excluding the exploration of unheard material. Of course if you do only tonal music... then you should be able to hear it... but try out some writting in 1/8th tones or some music exploring some spectral music technics... and... to hear every interactions between all the complexe notes is quiet an accomplishment. If you can do that !... you're amazing, truly !... I'll be jalous ! eheh

I find it deceiving though that the younger composer find that their stuff don't really need improvements or more tools to plunge deeper is the marvelous complexity that can wield musical languages... I guess it comes only to very few individuals. I got a few penpals from here since few days that I guess are wanting for more than just delivering one concerto of 2 or 3 minutes one after the other. But I understand that I probably woundn't have been ready to handle such notions at their age. Would I ? I will never know.

Are your music played in concert from time to time... where are you located in Victoria or Halifax ??... that's quiet opposite. Do you know Wolf Edwards !? He is the greatest young composer from Victoria I know of. I made a canadian tour with the Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal with him in 2004. He's a great man. His music sounds as powerful as the Rockies. (and he's very handsome ahaha) We've been in the tour to Halifax, Calgary, Toroton, Montreal and Vancouver. Where you there in the crowd ?

Exploration through computer aided composition can help you realize unheard musical materials. ...one should aim toward that goal without excluding the exploration of unheard material.

Good point, and fair enough. I suppose I do feel the same way - though I'd never aproach it in that manner. My unheard material comes from either a sound concept, or improvisation.

I can hear effects just as well as I hear melodies...I want something, I may not know what it is, or how to properly notate it, but I know what effect I want. I can't hear the exact effect, but still "visualize" (audiolize??) what's going on...

But, you're right - unexpected and beautiful things can arise from unheard, unintended material.

As for me - I'm a jazz writer, living/studying in Victoria. More and more I find myself drawn to free/collective improv and such. Less am I about specific and accurate notation than I am extracting unexpected sounds from unintended places. ...Don't know Wolf Edwards, but will keep my ears/eyes open. Studying right now with Christopher Butterfield, and particularly dig the work of Vancouver composer John Korsrud. The ECM will be here soon as well - looking forward to that.

Yes !! Go to the concert !... I got to school friends that have their works played. The two quebecois I studied with at the conservatory. They really have a very different music. Both are good. Charles-Antoine Frechette is much more experimental... I'd say completly immersed in experimentation, he write timber and he's very experimented at it. He has a very original and poetical voice in music. Maxime McKinley has a often a music much more humoristic music... playing with material in various and surprising ways. He already had something like 4 or 5 orchestra pieces played in professionnal settings. He's growing pretty good the las ! :P

I don't know what their music will be about this time though... but be prepared for something very original. Two years ago I guess few understood my piece in the west (which was my most difficult I have to confess, but it was intentional before setting the first note)... and I got 'ear splitting' critics at Toronto ahaha !... but I don't mind... what I seek is beauty but I seek it in different and more arduous paths than most. I seek the beauty of what can be found in the different intervals and in their relation when act together.

A golden principle :

Do not put pen to paper until you have decided upon the "Structure" of the piece. Great ideas do not count if they are not presented to the listener in a recognizable "container".

But just make sure you realize that a efficient structure ins't always and necessarily a 'container'... an exemple of that is a 'process' that clearly start with one point to another... it's not a container but the content that give the shape.

That rule was not formed by me, though I know it's the right one. Its pretty obvious - a string of good ideas remotely related to each other may sound great to the composer himself, but the listener is always in the lookout for a recognizable structure and form. The listening habits of humans are formed for centuries, and cannot be refined or modified to suit the composer's whims.

What about a rhapsodie then ? It's a jumble of ideas and still people listen to it !?... The structure is obviously very very important... but it's just the 'reconizable container' that not a precise idea. Just think about Wagner music that flows from one moment to another. The motives adjunction and slow metamorphose becomes the structure... but it's still not a container. But I want to add that it's not false what you cited... it just have to be 'precised'. Because the major problem of most of the composers here isn't really in not having ideas (however classical or baroque they are) of 'containers' but more a problem of 'agogic movement' (not sure if the expression make sens in english)... how to flow dynamically from one point to another, how to build the tension in a music. That defines the container (well I should say mostly or even may define).

I again return to what I originally said about "forming the form in the head" before sitting in front of the piano / PC / score-book. JUST think about the greatest and the most performed composer ever - yeah, I am talking of that man who wrote all those fantastic pieces without being able to hear them himself. What does that point to ? The fact that composition are made in the brain.

I have been reading a wonderful book titled - "Form and Content in Instrumental Music". Everytime I read any such enlightening book, I say to myself : "everything that I want to know or should know is already there in printed form. It is our fault that we talk more, think less, do little and read nothing.

Great ideas do not count if they are not presented to the listener in a recognizable "container".

I agree with you that form is important...other wise, you're way off base.

Great ideas don't count unless presented in a recognizable container? Check out cats like Schoenberg, Berg, Webern - there's A LOT going on, immensely great ideas (so great that few of us can understand them, let alone appreciate the greatness)... BUT, there's usually little/no obvious form - certainly nothing recognizable to the casual listener.

On deeper inspection, sure you can find a form but because it's not immediately recognizable makes it the music inherently ungreat?

puh-leaze...you're thinking in very dated terms...

And don't get me started on free jazz...

The great Vaughn Williams said " Music is for listeners". And listening is not an intellectual process, it is a psychological process. It took ages to make people used to dissonances. When I listen to Webern or Berg with my "dated" ears, I would perhaps say " What a great composer", but when I listen to Beethoven, Rachmaninof or Debussy, I say " What great music!"

Perhaps one day I would evolve to become a "cerebral" listener like you, but for now, I remain an "aural" listener. In the meantime, there are thousands of Indian and

Weastern classical and semi-classical pieces that I can enjoy that way.

...Perhaps one day I would evolve to become a "cerebral" listener like you, but for now, I remain an "aural" listener.

I am by no means a 'cerebral' listener. I don't approach listening in that manner. Some people can and do. The point I'm trying to get across is that it's silly to discount the importance or greatness of a style of music simply because the form is not easily and audibly recognizable.

There are many fantastic 'tonal' works that are through-composed, one measure at a time. As a composer, focusing solely on form as part of your pre-compositional process is severely limiting your possibilities.

...just one man's opinion.

As I told earlier - you are perhaps looking from the point of view of the composers only, but ultimately, music is for listeners. We should all start to think from the listener's point of view. And lay listeners are not going to become serious listeners overnight - they are not going to give a piece more than two or three listenings to find out the so-called "hidden structure". Art is for communicating, and if nobody can make out anything of a novel or a painting or a film, the very purpose of creation is defeated, though the ego of the creator won't let him admit that.

You're still missing my point - the "hidden structure" isn't always what should be listened for. Form is only one aspect of a piece of music...

The question is what type of listeners your searching for ?? At the time of Mozart or Haydn or a lots of other composers the listeners where smart educated nobles that where listening to the subtelities in the music craftsmanship. But if you write your music with the common poeple listener of today... I will probably just won't be able to stand the stupidity of that music. You have to bring the listener in your expressive world... if you write a music without personality or flavor... then of course any listener won't give a damn about it... structured or not into a sonata form or not. The form is important, very important, but not all.