Times to compose?

Now that school had resume for me after x-mas break (well more like 3 weeks ago actually), I find that it is harder for me to find time to compose. I simply do not have time. I like to compose daily, or at least doing something musically, but school and homework seem to take up the majority of my available time on weekdays. When I do not have homework, I find myself too tired to generate any musical ideas. Weekend wise, I do try to compose; but after days of not doing anything, I become rusty (musically).

Sometime I think I am just making excuses or just being plainly lazy. :ninja:

So how do you balance your times? I just need some advices.

thanks for reading! Pardon the English, it sucks!

I find that composition can happen anytime I'm at a piano, no matter how long I'm at it.

But late afternoon seems to be verdant with ideas floating around.

Or, just cut out school and homework :ninja:

That's what I do :)....of course, I'm in my senior year at high school and barely have any work to do....if I DO get work, I simply do it while at school. I study for calculus and physics tests at home usually, but everything else I study while in school. At home, I compose and do stuff :ninja:

If you can't find time, simply give up a little bit from everything else, if possible, to create a time slot to compose in (which for me, is technically "all day", working sparingly on parts over the course of the day :))

In the 10-minute breaks between lectures, or if I'm just really tired of studying. I'm not kidding - it's been over a year since I last worked on a piece for more than 30 minutes continuously.

I have two engineerign majors.

Needless to say, 12 'o clock midnight is good. 2am is the best :ninja: Also early in the morning like 7am.

i do a lot of my homework in the 10 minute registation period at the start of the day, leaves me loads of time to play guitar and study (music) at home.

Being in my final year of school, I have a great problem of lack of time for the things I love. But it's about cutting commitments. I used to write stories and keep a "diary" (yes, it's very lame) but I stopped all that this year to focus on music and homework. Maybe there are some things you can cut back on to make room for composing. Even if you don't get the time during the weekdays, composing on the weekends isn't that bad an idea. Everyone manages time differently but personally I like to do three hours of homework when I get home (more if needed) and then allow myself to relax and play/write music or talk on the phone for the rest of the night. I'm not sure if that works for everyone though.

Time is always a problem - once you've done a day's work / commuting, done instrumental practice, done the day-to-day admin, dealt with any students still on your books, ensemble practice, spent time with the one you most love and other socialising which you have to do to keep music contacts on the go... well, there aren't many hours left in a day. But that's the time to compose for me - when the pressures are building up. Deadlines are good - they focus the mind.

Best to learn to compose away from keyboards and computers so when you do get time it's just checking/editing /inputting.

All the replies are encouraging. Well at least I am not the only one. I'm a senior in high school now and it is the last semester; so I guess I should take advantage of my senior slide. But it's a private school and pretty strict so I don't know how that going to work. OH well!

I guess I will have to cut back on other activities, like watch less TV or internet. lol

Evening and night works for me. I compose before, in between and after homework. Sometimes I skimp out on the homework a bit so I can fit in some more composing.

I fortunately enough have gap hours at school, and I either play the piano (and write any ideas that I have) or I do some of my homework. I generally finish my homework pretty quickly, so I have plenty of time. Of course, I've given up all of my other hobbies (well, at least now that I want to finish some compositions before the 20th of March) such as tennis, juggling, magic tricks, programming etc etc to dedicate all of my time in music. Thing is, for the past few years, I could manage homework and all of these hobbies, so now I have plenty of extra time if I just drop them. And it works :whistling:

But that's just me :|

Never have any homework problems here cuz I always do them three minutes before classes :whistling:

Never have any homework problems here cuz I always do them three minutes before classes :laugh:

my goodness where do you go to school? I need to go there :D

I can't never do that... I admire your courage and skill

My record for doing homework the soonest before it was due (barring all those time I didn't do it at all, of course) was once when I started it as my teacher was checking at the other end of the room and finished it by the time she got to my end of the room. Gotta love easy math homework. :D

Then again, there was also this one time where I didn't do an assignment at all but I told the teacher that I did and had already handed it in and because I was normally a great student and this teacher loves me, he actually found someone else's without a name on it and marked it as mine (unintentionally) and I got an 80 something on it. Not bad. :laugh:

I go to an ALC (Area Learning Center), don't know if you have those in your areas, but I don't get homework... or really any work for that matter. It's really laid back and anything we do (if we even do work) is done there. Oh, and I'm graduating early. :laugh:

My record for doing homework the soonest before it was due (barring all those time I didn't do it at all, of course) was once when I started it as my teacher was checking at the other end of the room and finished it by the time she got to my end of the room. Gotta love easy math homework. :D

Then again, there was also this one time where I didn't do an assignment at all but I told the teacher that I did and had already handed it in and because I was normally a great student and this teacher loves me, he actually found someone else's without a name on it and marked it as mine (unintentionally) and I got an 80 something on it. Not bad. :laugh:

I loved those days.. Too bad now we have to do it in an exercise book. Takes more time. Oh and if didn't do your homework, just tell your teacher you didn't bring it to school :D