How did you get into composition?

Well, I started playing the piano four years ago, and I noticed I had many ideas, but I was too lazy to learn how to write notes, and I thought I could remember them all, but then I saw I started forgetting many of my melodies, so I started wanting to learn how to write music, and this summer I bought the book "Music Notation" by Gardner Read (a must if you want to learn how to notate professionally), and I started writing down my ideas.

What about you?

I kind of did the same thing, around 9 or 10 years old, only difference is I can remember about 90% of everything I have written. Can't read music though.

As usual, I'm the exception. I sort of doodled on scraps of paper beginning in high school, but my first inspiration for an actual composition occurred on the first night of a camping trip during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. I started writing out a melody just before going to sleep, and in the morning, when I woke up first and was the only one up and about, sketched out the main theme to a slow movement for horn and orchestra. The next person up - who I didn't know all that well at the time - found me composing, said she played the horn, and asked to play the piece I was writing if I finished it before the summer was over. I ended up finishing that movement over the summer, and turning it into a whole concerto over the next two years. Some of the motives in the first and fourth movements came from snippets of melody I had written out in high school.

As it turned out, what I wrote on that first morning as a composer was the most I ever wrote in a single day.

I suppose I was lucky in one way: my first piece, though it started out as a random idea, was already being written for a specific person within 12 hours after I started it. The same horn player ended up playing two movements of that concerto at her senior recital, so I actually had a performance of the first piece I ever wrote.

Meanwhile, I still only have a musical idea every two or three weeks, so after more than four years of composing I am still working on my third piece. Makes for extremely fast improvement from one piece to the next, at least. It's slightly depressing, though: I start every piece with a specific person or group of people in mind, and by the time I make decent progress, the person or group is no longer available...

I started very young (at about 3 or 4 years old) by improvising simple piano pieces. First I started by improvising purely on the black notes, but later I started to explore the rest of the keyboard. I think the first piece of music I actually wrote out was called "Prelude in G" (I was 13 at the time, I think), which was merely a simple melody over an Alberti bass, but I ended up being so pleased with it that I continued to write music non-stop for the rest of my life. I became so engrossed in composing that I had completed three symphonies by the time I was 18, as well as numerous other compositions for chamber orchestra and solo piano.

The funny thing is that I never really even considered composing music much before I wrote that prelude.

I used to go see opera all of the time when I was a kid. My parents were, and still are but not as much, opera buffs and I got into music at about age 5. I used to pretend I was the characters in the operas. i would use my brithday money and my Christmas/Hanukah money to buy opera librettos and reocrdings from Barnes and Noble. At about age 12, I began to look further into music and I doodled on my piano my parents gave me at an early age (opera buffs, they thought it would look pretty). I turned out to play pretty well.

By age 13, I was playing quite well and I started to write down my doodles (I could read music because I took piano). Because I was writing, I progressed really fast in piano. (On a side note, I just finished my last Alfred Training Piano Book, I am starting to look at real pieces now!!!) I recently bought Finale 2006 (in July). I came here in October and I am working on my first Symphony!

That is how I began composing... with a short biography...

~Mori~

I studied as a jazz performance major...and composition is kind of a necessary next step. Of jazz players, there's not many who aren't also decent writers...goes with the territory I guess.

Also, for me, it's just one more aspect of my music to unleash. I'm a player, so I need something to play. I get tired very quickly of always performing music by others...

I started electric guitar when i was 12, i got into shredding and all that scraggy before gettting a decent teacher who convinced me to start classical guitar. I quickly got into it (this was about 10 months ago) and am now working on Asturias and Bach's Allegro from BWV998. Am doing my grade 8 some time soon.

Anyway, my first composition was something called Etude in Em, this was way before i knew this place existed, before i even started playing classical guitar. It was a normal sort of shred imitation classical type thing with a repeating 1323 pattern going up and down the high E string in a progression that sounded good and ending on a superfluous show offy sweep picked Em arpeggio.

I then started researching on the internet different types of compositions and having a pop at a few of them, in this, i found this place and 'enlisted', now it's my main source of information and socialising!

I'm now putting everything on hold till I've gone through the whole of Piston's Harmony and then Kent Kennan's Counterpoint, so in the coming months I'll probably only be composing what they recommend in the aforementioned books.

Maek

I alwaysed wondered how others got into composition as well.

I'll try to keep this short without being too detailed and boring...

I started playing lesson pieces of others that I heard on the piano on my own at age 3 and my piano lessons started soon after. I also played violin for a short while and got into voice. I almost thought I would double major in opera and composition.

Musis was always a big part of my world but the big moment that turned me on to composition was about age 13. At the time my mother thought I was into classical music (and I really wasn't). She came home one day with some classical recordings and being curious I took them from her and played them on the stereo. The first piece was Schumman's "Rhenish" Symphony in Eb. To me the music was so "different" that I fell for it instantly.

From then on, I began experimenting in my own way, reading and taking theory in highschool until I decided to be a college major in composition where I had my first composition lesson/teacher.

I only started this year... after I started enjoying longer and longer improvisations in Jazz Band, my A2 music teacher (a professional composer/brass band arranger) pointed out such things as "cadences" and "chords sequences" to poor kefuddled me, and started me composing. :P

I never really started enjoying composition (I just had to do it as an exam requirement) until I started a Music Tech course and discovered Cubase- and Edirol Orchestral. Suddenly I could hear the annoying Sibelius beeping noises being turned into high quality instrument fonts! The shock! I'd never really seen anything I'd created as "music" until that point.

So, yeah. I got completely addicted from that point onwards :D

i just recently got into though ive been writing now for 2 years for several different rock bands. The newest one im in is a Prog. Ambient Metal band. Different 2 drummers(full sets) syth, 2 guitars and a bass. Quite fun to arrange for but as i was writing i wanted to become technicly better at writing. i asked my guitar teacher about theory and everything else is down hill.

In a nutshell: after I moved to Indiana (bad move- if you ever think about moving here, DONT!), and I started to learn percussion, I started playing things I heard on TV and video games on xylophone. I made up my own pieces before I started writing them, and I only wrote a few 'cuz it took me a while. Then I found Finale. I downloaded the free version and for a year I was in heaven. Then my compositions got better and better, and I realized I could use more than just 8 instruments. So after begging my mom for half a year to buy it, she finaly did. And here I am, sitting at my computer disk, still in Indiana. I can't wait to get out of High School...

~Kal

I notice a commonality among pretty much all of our stories about how we got into composition. For most of us, composition began naturally: it began because we had ideas in our heads and for some reason understood that these ideas needed to get out.

In this way, composition is profoundly different from most other career paths, both musical and non-musical. For instance, it's common to hear a person decide that one day they want to be CEO of a company. From that moment onward, that person works hard to learn the skills required for such a position, and to take the necessary steps to get to that position. To an extent I think this is also true of conducting!

But usually with composers it's more intrinsic. We compose because there's music there and it's gotta get out.

Personally (and I used to be embarrassed to admit this) I got into composing through video game music. Back in 8th and 9th grade I was playing a lot of Final Fantasy games. I enjoyed the music from these games and would often sit and play on the piano. Then I guess one day I said to myself, "This is what I would have done if I had to write a forest theme," and proceeded to download NoteWorthy Composer and do my thing. Eventually I wrote some stuff for band and brought it into my band director, and from there I was off and running.

Personally (and I used to be embarrassed to admit this) I got into composing through video game music. Back in 8th and 9th grade I was playing a lot of Final Fantasy games. I enjoyed the music from these games and would often sit and play on the piano.

Nobou Uematsu is great :P Have you been on ocr? OverClocked ReMix - Unofficial Game Music Arrangement Community

Personally (and I used to be embarrassed to admit this) I got into composing through video game music. Back in 8th and 9th grade I was playing a lot of Final Fantasy games. I enjoyed the music from these games and would often sit and play on the piano. QUOTE]

Nobou Uematsu is great :P Have you been on ocr? OverClocked ReMix - Unofficial Game Music Arrangement Community

You shouldn't be ashamed. Just because its video game music doesn't mean that its lacking. A lot of people have been turned on to composition because of video game music.

I would love to get the opportunity to compose for an rpg.

Personally (and I used to be embarrassed to admit this) I got into composing through video game music.

I've never been really into them, but some games DO have some seriously awesome music - Chrono Trigger anyone?!

Dan quoted that, not me. **sucks at HTML whatnots**

Although I adore Chrono Trigger music. :P My boyfriend introduced me to that. I've always loved Nobou Uematsu, too- it characterized the whole Final Fantasy series. :)

And then Final Fantasy 10-2 arrived, and everything died a horrible, horrible death....

It was a sunny day in the garden. Well, it was actually raining but that doesn't matter. I was eaves-dropping to the usual ant's banter down below from atop my leaf, when I soon heard this strange "sound" coming from the bottom of the garden. Of course, that is where the orchestra plays. But I soon learnt that what the orchestra was playing... that is music! This fascinated me and so I proceeded to slide down and get a closer listen. Of course by the time I had got there, due to my snail-like nature the orchestra had fallen asleep! This made me sad, so I started to play the marimba - and it made me happy. It also woke the orchestra up and they were very angry at me for putting slime all over the cellos.

That is my story!

It was a sunny day in the garden. Well, it was actually raining but that doesn't matter. I was eaves-dropping to the usual ant's banter down below from atop my leaf, when I soon heard this strange "sound" coming from the bottom of the garden. Of course, that is where the orchestra plays. But I soon learnt that what the orchestra was playing... that is music! This fascinated me and so I proceeded to slide down and get a closer listen. Of course by the time I had got there, due to my snail-like nature the orchestra had fallen asleep! This made me sad, so I started to play the marimba - and it made me happy. It also woke the orchestra up and they were very angry at me for putting slime all over the cellos.

That is my story!

:)

I got finale 2005 back in December of 05, then I met Nico later that month. He pretty much taught me how to commpose.

Well, I have a different story from most people here. I've always loved music. I come from a musical family. I wouldn't say I *liked* classical music per se. But I, like Mark, started out with the electric guitar. I was into shredding more than enything else. Ya know. The headbanging stuff. Then my parents asked me if i wanted to take piano lessons to help me with the guitar. I said yes. Anything to help with my road to rock 'n roll stardom. Then i started... and hated it. Hated the piano with a passion. I was about 11 at the time. Then, my friend Kevin came to me with a proposition. He asked me to compose an original score for his musical, "Beauty in the eye of the Beholder."

I agreed. The sketches i did for the score were poorly composed and very boring. But, i decided that this "composition" thing wasn't so bad. Next Sunday marks the one year anniversarry of my first completed composition. And ya know. That score still isn't finished.

Well, I have a different story from most people here. I've always loved music. I come from a musical family. I wouldn't say I *liked* classical music per se. But I, like Mark, started out with the electric guitar. I was into shredding more than enything else. Ya know. The headbanging stuff. Then my parents asked me if i wanted to take piano lessons to help me with the guitar. I said yes. Anything to help with my road to rock 'n roll stardom. Then i started... and hated it. Hated the piano with a passion. I was about 11 at the time. Then, my friend Kevin came to me with a proposition. He asked me to compose an original score for his musical, "Beauty in the eye of the Beholder."

I agreed. The sketches i did for the score were poorly composed and very boring. But, i decided that this "composition" thing wasn't so bad. Next Sunday marks the one year anniversarry of my first completed composition. And ya know. That score still isn't finished.

Woah! You composed for a musical at the age of 11? o_0

After a year or so of playing classical guitar, I stumbled upon a tablature program. Somehow, I later realised that such software enables the user to create original compositions, not just play back transcriptions. Amazing, huh? I started off with an extremely terrible song based on a suspended A chord. I mean, it sounded "nice" on a guitar...

Although I wasn't studying music as a subject at the time, I knew someone who was and had reached a blockage. I changed the tempo of the song and turned it into something quite clearly original (not necessarily "good"), which they promptly imitated and submitted as the second half of their piece. Grr.

From then on, I began notating small riffs and licks here and there and over time it escalated into, to put it one way, my life's work. That's not to say that I'm a professional who earns a living from composition; that's impossibly far from it. However, as my interest in performance and composition grew, so too did my passion for music in general. Today, although I lament my lack of skill, music - especially composition - is the foremost aspect of my life.

I started composing at age 12 when my brother loaded a MIDI composing program, Cakewalk, onto my computer. He used to write very amateur electronica on it. My first music was heavy rock but after listening to The New World Symphony I fell in love with classical music. When I got Sibelius two years ago at age 15 I began composing seriously. I'll attached my first "classical" piece, by the way, just for a laugh. This I wrote at age 13 when I knew NOTHING about orchestration.

realrealorchestra.mid

Is it just me or is that piece amazing? I can't imagine your skill level now if you knew nothing about orchestration back then. o_0

A long time family friend who is a conductor out in Oregon was visiting us a couple weeks before Christmas (2 years ago). He was telling me about all the programs he used to arrange stuff for his orchestra, etc. and suggested that I invest in one to try my hand at composing. Well, I did, and I'm in love with it now!

I started composing at 8 years, but those are just stupid piano pieces. Then I just stopped composing for a long time. It's only much later that I discovered Noteworthy Composer and VST instruments, it's then that I immediately knew that you could make your music really sound like a real orchestra would play it. From then on opportunities lied open for me. VGM was the key to the motivation: first Uematsu but later on Hamauzu.