Too much inspiration... A bad thing?

Hello all. I've been thinking... I dunno if it's the same with all of you ladies and gentlemen, but I'm constantly inspired by almost all the stuff I hear to write a melody and make a similar piece of it. The problem is, I already have 5 pieces going on that all require lots and lots of work to finish. What do you do when this happens? I mainly write down them in a notebook (the melodies) and add a little chord to it, making counterpoint, then sometimes note what I think it should be. The problem is one of two things. When I go back to it, the idea doesn't seem good anymore, OR, I've forgotten what was gonna go on with it.

What do you do when this happens? I think it's a bad idea to have 20 pieces' starting melodies going at the same time, as you can't possibly finish them all in the week. So? Do you use my method of writing them down quickly and going back later? Do you write an opening number of seconds and save it for later? Do you say, "To hell with [insert current piece here], I'm writing a new one!"?

What do you do young composers? ^_^

- Leon

I think it's a bad idea to have 20 pieces' starting melodies going at the same time, as you can't possibly finish them all in the week. So? Do you use my method of writing them down quickly and going back later?

I try and avoid having more than a couple pieces on the go at once...I get confused. But, when inspiration hits, do your best to preserve it. Write it down, save it for later.

Eventually, you'll run out of pieces to work on, and need something. I do the same with pieces I can't/don't want to finish. Save it, eventually you'll find the right spot to put it, or a new approach to salvage something...

I'm a type with 'too much inspiration' as you... but since I never (or rarely) note it, I tend not to work on too many things. I guess it comes with experience even though I got a lots of projects that I never finished... but I consider them sketches for something to come !... eheh

But with time, I'm learning to work more (develop) more my material since it's easy to become less coherent is you put too different materials in the same piece.

A composer once told me to save ideas in a folder divided by instrumentation types... so if you get a commission for a brass ensemble... well, you already have a bank of ideas for it. I don't practice this really since I write not a lot and have enough ideas and more than all... I'm learning to develop as I told.

:) Is that a kind of answer you where asking for ?! eheh

Yes, I call this "improvisation". I get plenty of great ideas just from improvising, but I leave them because I usually play for a while and later forget them. Really good ones, though, I try and write down, even if it's just a few measures, so that I can use them later.

I get bored because hearing over and over and them I move on the the next thing...

good about that is:

I write a lot of ideas/improvisations which i can choose from for making something big.

Bad:

I haven't made a lot of neatly finished 'pieces'.

so...What does help to complete the big project?

maybe:

->get focus on 1 project, how?

cooperation:

I get very much motivation from cooperation with someone else. that is because when I make something and I send it to the other person I am very curious about:

-what he/she thinks/hears

-what he/she adds/changes to the piece

Make finishing the project emotionaly an important goal

finding the reason why I should finish something completely.. I've never had a big goal,for me its just fun. If it has a purpose like liveperformance, study or so.. it could motivate me.

about a lot of melodies...

-I put em on my mp3player and listen.. and sometimes additional parts come.

but mostly I just sit behind my computer playing with sound, changing listening, changing, listening. My problem is that when a piece gets bigger, I often loose the picture and it seems then that there are more songs in one piece.

Does anyone now some ways to keep your motivation to one target?

I can identifiy with this a lot.

From the point of view of someone who's been doing this for about 35 years, I encourage you to write down all of your good inspirations. They're all gifts. It doesn't matter how good you think they are tomorrow...you may be surprised when they become useful to you.

Last year I wrote a huge set of dance music - about an hour's worth - the bulk of which made use of old inspirations I didn't know what to do with at the time. A few of these ideas I'd either jotted down as sketches or had been rolling around in my head off-and-on since I was in my teens.

Carry a little "inspiration pad" around with you, or find ways to jot things down in shorthand. I cultivated this habit as a child and I've never been sorry...even when I have to drag boxes of sketches around with me everywhere when I move house.

Yes, I call this "improvisation". I get plenty of great ideas just from improvising, but I leave them because I usually play for a while and later forget them. Really good ones, though, I try and write down, even if it's just a few measures, so that I can use them later.

I have the same problem... :P

Yes, I call this "improvisation". I get plenty of great ideas just from improvising, but I leave them because I usually play for a while and later forget them. Really good ones, though, I try and write down, even if it's just a few measures, so that I can use them later.

This holds true for me, too.

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". Imagine a piano piece consisting of the themes of Beethoven's 6th + Mozart's 40th + Haydn's 100th symphony - would you like it ?

I believe that infinite inspiration combined with superior technical knowledge can lead to your complete and wonderful interpretation of all sound and music and can account for the greatest panacea of compositional fears and blunders. You just have to let these things to affect you in a positive way.

yeah, I think that too much inspiration is mostly a bad thing. It's great if you are only working on one piece but then (for me) when I start another piece I quickly start liking the new one way more and stop work on the initial piece... So for me it's best just to have a couple projects and jot down my inspiration theme stuff for later use. :P

I think for people with too much inspiration:  learn to be more critical of your ideas and to see which ones are more derivative/unoriginal.  It's always a great practice to carry around a musical notepad like was mentioned in one of the posts above and write down your ideas but eventually you have to be critical enough to be able to abandon/throw out some of those ideas - you'll get fatigued just sifting through all your old ideas and that's time wasted that could have been spent composing something good.

On 11/2/2006 at 6:29 PM, SHEKHAR said:

Imagine a piano piece consisting of the themes of Beethoven's 6th + Mozart's 40th + Haydn's 100th symphony - would you like it ?

This does not usually happen if one develops each idea on its own merits.  If two ideas are related enough to be in the same piece they will gravitate towards each other and through that process of development it will become obvious that they belong together.  The other ideas though should be discarded or used in another piece.

I think it was Prokofiev who used a technique of keeping a book of impressive "piano excerpts" to insert into his piano concertos.  Of course, you risk sounding a bit discontinuous if your whole effort is spent on making sure that the most impressive excerpts make it into your composition (unless you're good at writing convincing transitions).