obsession

Hello all,

I don't know if this is the right place for this idea/discussion point but...........

Recently I made a joke about being a bit obessive when it comes to my music (and the orientation of the jars in my cupboards but that's besides the point), but do you think that such obsession is necessary in order to be a good musician/composer?

I personally think, if it's not exactly necessary, it is at least a more common personality trait than one might imagine among many musicians and composers.

What do you think?

52 minutes ago, Mark101 said:

What do you think?

Well, I think I'm quite the control freak when it comes to my music. I once canceled a performance because we were unable to get the harpsichord I needed tuned properly to perform my piece, so I just pulled out from the program entirely. So, this is to some degree common, I bet.

Also, you do need to be driven and passionate about your stuff to get anywhere, specially if you intend for people to play your music. And often this also manifests in getting stuff "just right" as well. I don't think any of this is necessary to write music you like, but once it comes to performance and dealing with musicians, if you're driven and detail oriented, in my experience, people tend to actually respect you a little more because you show that you really care about your music.

And if you can communicate that level of care for your work, people pick up on that and they'll also tend to care as well. But like I said, that's just in my experience.

Before learning how to compose music I would definitely become obsessed with pieces and with learning about why they sound so good or just why they sound the way they do.  Coming to a satisfactory conclusion about why they sound that way was and still is extremely important for me as a composer.  I try to apply the lessons I learned from the masters to my own music, whether in the form of creative melody/harmony or voicing or instrumentation/orchestration.

Being detail oriented and meticulous about notating your music is also, I think, very important.  I think if you're writing music using specific notes in the score then in my mind (unless you use aleatoric devices in how you notate your music which is part of your intent) you should intend those specific notes to be played exactly as written.  I don't get composers who write something that is impossibly hard and then just say "Oh, well I don't mean that to be played exactly as written!"  I would say "Then why did you write it that way?"  Writing down exactly what you intend should be an obsession for any composer imo.

13 minutes ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I don't get composers who write something that is impossibly hard and then just say "Oh, well I don't mean that to be played exactly as written!"  I would say "Then why did you write it that way?"  Writing down exactly what you intend should be an obsession for any composer imo.

Well, if it's something like Xenakis where he himself admitted that some of his music is only basically 80% (or sometimes even less) possible to play, the main argument is not that the performance itself is the most important part, but the actual system to write the music is. Like, if the mechanism you used to write the music ends up making unplayable music, then it's just bad luck for the performer that has to play it, if you want to keep it as authentic as possible.

Naturally that's a rather extreme position to take, but I understand the reasoning, since it has to do with the integrity of the composition by itself first and foremost.

Personally, I think about every single note or rest, tie or slur etc., and go back over whatever I'm writing many, many times before I'm happy to leave it be.

I am strictly an amateur composer/pianist but apart from the creation of new music, when I sit down to learn a new piece, I will probably have played it thousands of times before I have it to the level of performance ready.  Each passage repeated over and over again and the more difficult passages repeated even more times in one practice session.  I don't get bored by that.  Sometimes my partner will say "can you move on to the next bit now"? (or words to that effect) and I haven't even realised that it must be extremely annoying to have to listen to someone playing the same thing so many times, I'm just off in my little world, trying to get the details right.  We can beautify the terminology, sacrfice, dedication, committment to ones art, but by any standard, it's pretty obsessive behaviour!

I think the idea of being a bit of a control freak is also necessary to a certain extent.  There's really no point in agonising over the details when writing your music, if later you're just going to say, Oh well, I'll leave that bit up to you.  No!  I wrote it that way because I want it that way and "Up to you" is not on the options list.

I think it must be similar with most art forms, otherwise any old tat would do and there would be nothing "Special" about any of it.

I can see where the idea of obsessive comes in. I’d say it’s more about single-mindedness when actually composing. I’m kind of schizophrenic – compose to satisfy self expression and a little commercial work, aimed at someone else’s contextual expressive need.

4 hours ago, Mark101 said:

Personally, I think about every single note or rest, tie or slur etc., and go back over whatever I'm writing many, many times before I'm happy to leave it be.

Like you, every note has to be right – HOW it’s played as much as why it’s there. It’s easy to make noises, to slap notes on music paper and come up with some pseudo-intellectual commentary in hindsight. But to know that the evolving sounds/development are just as you want them is very different.

I wouldn’t be so foolish as to say ‘I hear it all in my mind and know how to write it down’ before I start.’  (Some people can no doubt – not me.) Ideas come to mind – and usually with a timbre (e.g. orchestrally) so I jot things down then try them at the piano. I have an overall ‘picture’ but don’t try to force the work into it. At times I’m working away then hit on some super sound or sequence, and that can reshape the work.

What is important is knowing what I’ve scored so far absolutely. – Doesn’t mean it won’t get revised but there’s no point pushing on if I can’t mentally hear what I’ve done. That’s when the finer details emerge – issues of balance between timbres (mixing), of how notes are played.

4 hours ago, Mark101 said:

I think the idea of being a bit of a control freak is also necessary to a certain extent.  There's really no point in agonising over the details when writing your music, if later you're just going to say, Oh well, I'll leave that bit up to you.  No!  I wrote it that way because I want it that way and "Up to you" is not on the options list.

Absolutely! It's when you have to prepare an orchestra to play your piece - worse perhaps when someone else is preparing and you have to guide them. I've witnessed some pretty embarrassing situations when a 'composer' doesn't know his/her own score thoroughly!

Hi Quinn,

I think your process sounds very much like my own.  I tend to have a bunch of ideas that get put down and then I spend a lot of time tweeking and pushing them into place, a very specific place, the right place.  It can all change, as you say, on any given day when a new idea pops up, but that's not to say it's at all random or fudged.  The changes too are thought about and agonised over until they are right.

I've not had the pleasure/heartache of having to prepare an orchestra to perform any of my music but I can't imagine not knowing my own score, backwards, forwards and upside down and I'm pretty confident that if wrong notes where played or right notes where played badly, I would know.