For the forum's composers...

[phil13]

How do you like to write? Do you have places or people of inspiration? Does the music just come to you? How exactly do you kindle the creativity? I'm curious.

For me, the greatest place of inspiration is a park near the center of the town I live in. I go there whenever I want ideas to spring up that never do elsewhere.

Phil

[BoliverAllmon]

reading scores of the greats is inspiring. Other than that I can create whenever. I never want to wait on inspiration. I just think of something and start to hum a melody. If I like it I keep it if not, trash.

boliver

[pantonality]

How do you like to write? Do you have places or people of inspiration? Does the music just come to you? How exactly do you kindle the creativity? I'm curious.

Hi Phil,

For me the most important thing is to have an idea or concept of what the music will be about. This doesn't mean I write program music, though I have. It means every piece I write has a reason for coming into existence. It can be a challenge that I've set for myself or it can be a concept that I'd like to express.

For example, my piece "In such a small place" was a response to the breakdown of peace negotiations. Another piece Tender7 was a challenge to write a piece in a consistent odd meter (it's all 7/8 or 7/16). I wrote a Suite for String Quartet that updated the idea of a suite as a collection of dances and uses the dances to tell the story of a romance. So the Tango is about attraction, the Slow Dance is about falling in love, the Waltz is subtitled "A groom's first dance with his new mother in-law" and the Jitterbug is about wedded bliss (it's not all bliss). I do this because I find I run out of motivation to complete a piece unless I have a complete idea I wish to express. It is the idea that determines where a piece goes.

Similarly I wrote a 1 page piece I call "When the great leave us" that was inspired by the end of the latest Harry Potter book. I just can't seem to work up the motivation to make it longer though the musical material would certainly support that. Sometimes that's just the way it goes.

Steve Chandler
https://www.audiostreet.net/stevechandler
https://www.soundclick.com/stevechandler

[gonzalo]

Personally, I find nature very inspiring... I compose melodies in my head, which requires a lot of thinking, and I write them on a score... Then, with some idea of how it will sound like, I go to my piano and play it. I only go to the piano if I am convinced it might sound well, if not i don't... 
I also use poetry, beautiful poetry as an inspiration and maybe, a certain image that calls my attention. This could either be a landscape, an image in a dream of mine, etc.
Sometimes people inspire me  ...

[prometheus]

Let me give a short answer. It is just hard work, no magic, no special talent. At least not for me. And the same goes with my literature, which are of considerable lower quality than my compositions, which aren't very great yet either.

Sure I have inspiration and ideas. But it doesn't flow magically from somewhere. I have to think about it and then work hard to get it right.

Motivation is key. If you do not have to urge to create for the sake of creation then I think that is a weakness.

[rob47]

I just steal from other composer's, use technique liszt invented, try to mimic Rach's textures and, after this has all been done, since we live in the 21st century I will tend to throw in random "modern sounding dissonances" so I seem deep and intellectual; my 'works' are bizzare for the sake of being bizzare.

I have never actually developed a theme, only put together virtuosic diddies.

I like to imagine I was prokofiev writing the 2nd concerto or sixth sonata and think of all the fame and how people would tell me how awesome I am.  I take this a step further by writing insanely acrobatic compositions, again little substance in these, and imagining playing them for swooning school girls as i tour the world but I have yet to actually sit at the piano and play one.

I've taken one formal composition course at university and it was intro to comp 029.

randomly.

[lostinidlewonder]

I like to draw inspiration from Improvisations. Often I will hook up my digital piano to my computers midi port and record the notes of improvsations. I'll go back and listen and pick out parts which I enjoyed and which I thought had a peculiar and interesting sound to it.

I really think that knowing all types of Chords which you can create with both hands at the keyboard is essential. I have not met one person who has a big library of chords in their memory and has an affinity with all of their sounds and progressions who cannot compose. Afterall Chords are like the telegraph poles in music, and the melody is the wiring between each.

[JCarey]

Here is a post I made on another forum (Piano Chat):

"I always try to think of a decent melody. My melodies tend to be similar in character, yet they are never boring. If I find a melody I write to be boring, I save the piece for another day.

Once I've found a good melody, I focus on writing interesting orchestration (for orchestral pieces, that is). If I can't find interesting ways to use each instrument in the orchestra (that's what they're all there for, after all!), I save the piece for another day.

Then I work on "flow", making the music move logically between different ideas. If it doesn't, the music will seem "random", something many people (including me) do not particularly like. If I can't make the music flow, I save the piece for another day.

As you see, there's a lot of "saving the piece for another day". For me, that's they only way to get pieces to the point where I feel they are ready to be played for others. Near-perfection, at least in my mind, is the level of quality everyone should try to achieve before performing/recording/publishing their works."
 

[ted]

I strongly agree with lostinidlewonder on this one. For good or ill, improvisation is my source of just about everything in the way of ideas. I might place more emphasis on the distances between the telegraph poles, that is to say rhythm, but the differences are in the way of preference.

I think the creation of the best piano music cannot be separated from the physical act, the fingers, intimacy with the keyboard, spontaneous association of its sounds with the mind. I cannot think of one composer of fine piano music who was not also a fabulous improviser. In recent times, in the ragtime, swing and jazz eras, such people began to forget about writing things out altogether. In effect the improvisation became the composition. The task of couching it in notation was left to devoted transcribers such as Dapogny, Posnak and Scivales.

So much for the general. With me personally, compositions form like crystals within of a liquid of improvisation over time - sometimes very quickly, sometimes taking months. To put it bluntly, I'm not very "good" at form, and prefer to let that part of it take place organically. I have tried many times to start at the beginning and finish at the end, fitting things into a structure day by day but I simply cannot do it. I have to let the whole thing form in my head; the act of writing it out afterwards is just a tiresome process of finding a best written approximation that others are most likely to understand.

Had I been trained in formal composition away from an instrument I would probably have turned out differently and so would my music. But there is little point in debating whether the gain would have outweighed the loss.

[ravel]

I just steal from other composer's, use technique liszt invented, try to mimic Rach's textures and, after this has all been done, since we live in the 21st century I will tend to throw in random "modern sounding dissonances" so I seem deep and intellectual; my 'works' are bizzare for the sake of being bizzare.

I have never actually developed a theme, only put together virtuosic diddies.

I like to imagine I was prokofiev writing the 2nd concerto or sixth sonata and think of all the fame and how people would tell me how awesome I am.  I take this a step further by writing insanely acrobatic compositions, again little substance in these, and imagining playing them for swooning school girls as i tour the world but I have yet to actually sit at the piano and play one.

I've taken one formal composition course at university and it was intro to comp 029.

randomly.

HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am sure that was not  sarcastic

[arensky]

I am primarily a pianist and teacher, but I've written a bit. Music ideas will often occur to me, when I'm walking, playing the piano, on trains or planes, waiting in line someplace (not too often with that one due to piped in music  ) . or wherever. I will usually play through the idea and and try and take it someplace. I will then put it aside and if I'm still thinking about it a week later, I will write down what I have, and then the game begins. If I'm still thinking about an idea after a week it's probably worth exploring. If it leaves my mind, well, it's gone... BTW this works fine if you don't have deadlines, which I do not. This proceedure has yielded about six short worthwhile pieces in the last five years.

Everyone should write music, it can only help your interpretation of other people's music.