The secret of composing???

[nonfox]

Hi...

I guess most people have tried composing their own music - and that they never even succeeded making an intro. I'm one of these people. Several times I've tried to compose my own music, but I haven't been able to make it fit together yet.
I'm not very experienced, I've only played for 2˝ years - maybe that's why!?

Though I do believe that there is some kind of technique to compose simple music with bass and treble!? Of course do some people have some kind of inborn talent - but composing isn't only done by talent!? I guess that you have to know a thing or two about harmonies, and that a part of the composing process is having a good grip of this.

There's nothing wrong with my creativity, I'm able to play a certain homemade song / tune in my head, but I can't find the tunes on the keyboard. I know that a lot of composers don't use a piano while composing, but simply just write the sheets at a table! I can't imagine doing that - as I said, I'm able to have a tune in my head, but I would not have any idea of where on the paper to put the ink. 

So...

I'd like to hear your composing experiences; how do you compose and what techniques do you use?

[danny elfboy]

As far as composition is concerned I believe it is nothing but a mean.
You learn the mean so you know the techniques to express what you have in mind, but no one and no kind of training can put stuff in your mind for you.

On the specific learning composition teaches you how to avoid awkward sounds (which also  mean learning when it is okay to use them to get a certain effect) but doesn't teach you "what to create"

It's like a cooking course that tells you that rotten fish doesn't go with honey and chocolate ... it's teaching you the basis of harmonious combinations but that doesn't teach you how to make your own dishes.

I think this is important to understand.
We can only learn means and if we do it means we already know what we want to use those means for. Most education nowadays makes the huge flaw of not teaching you "how to use the means for your own purpose" but "what to use the means for" ... with clear disastrous results.

My suggestion is to respect your musical ideas.
What youcreate may sound like it doesn't fit together ... but then again it may be your style and might be the way you express yourself and might indeed work in comminication something to others. You never know. Look for suggestion on "how to concretize what you have in your mind" and not on "what to have in your mind that you want to concretize".

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

The thing is is that there are no secrets to composing. Either that or Mozart and Bach are just not telling. . The only way to compose is to keep composing, just as in playing. It is impossible to develop a technique in one sitting, just as it is impossible to develop composing technique in a few tries.

There are however methods that can help you. This is rather fortunate, in that it is a helpful guide, but again it is not necessary as many composers aren't familiar with the theory of music. I would recommend learning music harmony. I am taking harmony classes and must say that even though I hear the music in the head and know what sound I want to produce, I did not know how to do it faster and had a harder time picking out the harmonies. Knowing harmony, and especially chord progressions has made it much easier for me to locate that what I want to express, whether it is a simple I-IV-V-I progression or something a little bit more complicated. I am also able to identify the chords by ear and know for example the type of chords one is to find in a major scale, or a minor scale. Knowing theory isn't necessary for making music, but it does make it easier and faster.

[imbetter]

ask ahinton or phil13

[counterpoint]

Supposed there was a "trick" how to compose great works, then one could make a computer programm, that produces one symphony alla Haydn/Beethoven/Schubert/Brahms after the other. But I can't see such a program anywhere.

There are some basic principles in respect to scales, intervals, consonances, dissonances, chords etc. but if you know these principles, that doesn't make a good composer by itself. It's like chess playing - the rules are simple, but to be a good chess player, you need original ideas, a feeling where the game will lead to if you do this or that and you have to surprise your opponents. In music, the opponents are tedium and boredom 

[rc]

Supposed there was a "trick" how to compose great works, then one could make a computer programm, that produces one symphony alla Haydn/Beethoven/Schubert/Brahms after the other. But I can't see such a program anywhere.

I heard on the radio a fake Mozart concerto made by a computer program...  I think this is the same guy:

https://www.icnm.org/research/reviews/cope1.html
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/240642.stm

In music, the opponents are tedium and boredom 

Yes, and at the other extreme - incoherence.

[debussy symbolism]

I heard on the radio a fake Mozart concerto made by a computer program...  I think this is the same guy:

https://www.icnm.org/research/reviews/cope1.html
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/240642.stm


Yes, and at the other extreme - incoherence.

Computers may be able to imitate, but they cannot create.

[overscore]

I'd like to hear your composing experiences; how do you compose and what techniques do you use?

Composing basically revolves around the human voice. People composed songs thousands of years before there was written music or even written language.

If you can hum a tune, you can compose. Then you've just got to learn to pick it out, and embelish it with harmonies, counterpoint etc. (that last bit comes with lots of experience!)

[nonfox]

Thanks for your answers - they are very helpful 

There are some basic principles in respect to scales, intervals, consonances, dissonances, chords etc.

Again, I'm not an experienced pianist, and I only know a little about these principles. It would be great if someone could give some examples of these principles, and maybe even a link or a title of a book, where this is explained more deeply.

[debussy symbolism]

Thanks for your answers - they are very helpful 


Again, I'm not an experienced pianist, and I only know a little about these principles. It would be great if someone could give some examples of these principles, and maybe even a link or a title of a book, where this is explained more deeply.

Well if you are talking about getting to know the stuff such as scales, intervals, harmony, and counterpoint, then you need to consult either a theory teacher or a textbook. Again that is only the theory part and that will only make notating and writing down your thoughts easier. As was mentioned before, the real trick is experience.

[rc]

Thanks for your answers - they are very helpful 


Again, I'm not an experienced pianist, and I only know a little about these principles. It would be great if someone could give some examples of these principles, and maybe even a link or a title of a book, where this is explained more deeply.

Here's a guide to species counterpoint.  I'm not sure if they explain all the details of intervals, but it looks complete, it might be a bit confusing to start.  I got a textbook from a friend that's pretty much based out of this:

https://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/species/title_page.htm

...going back a bit on the same site brings links to general theory:

https://www.listeningarts.com/music/general_theory/

Here's another link, looks a little advanced, but could be useful for you sooner or later:

https://www.musique.umontreal.ca/personnel/Belkin/bk/

There's a lot to be read on the topic.  As with any self-learning project, try not to swamp yourself with information, find something you like and spend a while doing it.  Have fun

[pianistimo]

this is great stuff.  it helps to start with things like this and then move forward gradually into modern textbooks.  then you have an idea of where we came up with certain ideas.

[nightingale11]

To get you started get ''William Russo – Composing music – A new approach (University of Chicago Press)''. Bernhard mentions it in this post:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,3034.msg26512.html

[Derek]

Inhibition towards composing is an entirely psychological thing, I think. If you start out wanting to compose complete pieces and feel intensely dissatisfied at your very first efforts and then quit, obviously you are not going to make any progress.

If, however, you make requirements of yourself significantly lower than "I want to compose a Mozartian sonata" (not that you did, that was just an extreme example) and allow yourself to be satisfied with your first efforts, i.e. taking satisfaction in whatever music you write being YOUR OWN, you will find it much easier to stick with it. Take the attitude that it DOESN'T MATTER how your music stacks up to even an average composition. Try to focus entirely on feeling joy at just making your own sounds.


This is all easy advice for me to give, because this happened accidentally for me. I got into improvisation (which is essentially instantaneous composition,...I rarely write things down on paper, and it is much more fun and less tedious than composition)  through listening to what most Classical musicians think of as extremely vulgar and base music: Black metal.  Some black metal bands have classical like dark sounding arpeggios in the keyboards.  When I started out, I wanted to imitate these sounds. They consisted mainly of minor, diminished, augmented arpeggios,   but it gave me a great start in keyboard harmony and playing.  Because all I wanted to do was play these simple arpeggios,  I had NO inhibition in learning to write my own music.  Then, psychologically, my brain made a gradual transition between these easy dark arpeggios and trying to imitate classical music. I had additional influences which helped set me free (such as finding a more experienced improviser/composer to encourage me),  but I think that initial psychological state I was in was crucial.   

[ryanyee]

Hi...

I guess most people have tried composing their own music - and that they never even succeeded making an intro. I'm one of these people. Several times I've tried to compose my own music, but I haven't been able to make it fit together yet.
I'm not very experienced, I've only played for 2˝ years - maybe that's why!?

Though I do believe that there is some kind of technique to compose simple music with bass and treble!? Of course do some people have some kind of inborn talent - but composing isn't only done by talent!? I guess that you have to know a thing or two about harmonies, and that a part of the composing process is having a good grip of this.

There's nothing wrong with my creativity, I'm able to play a certain homemade song / tune in my head, but I can't find the tunes on the keyboard. I know that a lot of composers don't use a piano while composing, but simply just write the sheets at a table! I can't imagine doing that - as I said, I'm able to have a tune in my head, but I would not have any idea of where on the paper to put the ink. 

So...

I'd like to hear your composing experiences; how do you compose and what techniques do you use?

think of an idea while you're free. then compose whatever you wrote down. if you don't like it, just do some alterations or totally forget about it. my first 20 compositions totally suck and i dumped them aside. they were early compositions anyway.

[term]

I'd like to hear your composing experiences; how do you compose and what techniques do you use?

Let me quote bach, he said: practise practise practise.
the key to it is, to never give up and always try your best.
That is everything you need to know actually.

My personal experience is, that whatever you do, if it is means to an end, you learn it faster. That is true with technique, that is true with music and true with math. Everything can be covered by a "greater" idea. So what i try to do is to communicate my belief, through music. (Many things i compose resemble a fractal, btw) I started out by improvising, because that is a good way to let the ideas come instead of force them to come. Just do whatever silly stuff comes to your mind, even if it seems to be completely "senseless". You will find out that there is no such thing as senseless, because eveything has a sense, it only depends from how you see it and its "complexity" (I mean, give someone who never heard classical music the bach contrapunctus 14 to hear and he will dismiss it as boring and odd. - mostly). When i improvise, i try to improvise sonatas, pieces in a-b-a form but also more complex things. So that's how i learned technique (not with etudes, and not with learning pieces) and music, both. When i sit down and try to compose, i always have a variety of ideas from which i can choose in order to get the best. If i'm not satisfied, i wait until the idea just comes to me.
Improvisation is a very good method to get into composing because you then realise how totally arbitrary many things in music are, and how it still sounds ok. Another pro is that you are under pressure so that you constantly need to focus, to develop your idea, to come up with something new and to always be aware of what you do and where you are.

There is no such thing as the "secret of composing" btw. Unnessecary to make a big myth around it.

[hodi]

you need vivid imagination. that's it.
scriabin had it, for sure

[steve jones]

I think that the secret of composing music is to be able to have your creative and logical minds working together.

This is where I suffer. I find that my imagination is vivid. And I find that I can understand theoretical principles. However, I struggle to put them together. Sometimes I try to just play something... but it sounds unorganized, random. However, I find that trying to apply theoretical principles to my music makes its sound 'dead'. Well, not dead... just not 'me'. If that makes sense.

I guess what you need is a method for expressing yourself creativity through the theoretical system of your choice.

Sometimes I think this is perhaps why Chopin never wrote successfully for the orchestra - his vehicle of expression was the piano alone. Maybe he couldnt think creatively in an orchestral setting?

I am still searching for my 'vehicle'. Im not skilled enough on the piano. I find working with pen and paper makes me think too 'theoretically'. Guitar is too limiting.

I shall probably try to spend less time on piano technique and more time on literally getting to know the keyboard... being able to put my creative thoughts onto the instrument. I like using the keyboard to work out rough orchestral sketches from which to orchestrate, so this might be a good working methods.

Hope this makes some sense to you.

SJ

[steve jones]

you need vivid imagination. that's it.
scriabin had it, for sure

Ahhh, but Scriabin also had his facility with the keyboard through which to channel his imagination! Without that, would he have been able to harness the power of his creative mind so effectively? I think not.

I often think that if it were possible to access the subconscious mind, it would be fantastic for artists. You know, the part of the mind that dreams. Something that is all imagination with no logic.

Maybe this is why drugs have been so popular with creative types? Not sure... drugs always clouded my mind rather than open it.

SJ

[pianochick93]

The thing is is that there are no secrets to composing. Either that or Mozart and Bach are just not telling. .

They can't tell, they're decomposing! 

(thanks to my boyfriend for that horrible comment)