# Working Practices (Composing)



## Minona (Mar 25, 2013)

Hello, it's extremely practical for me to work on more than one composition at a time (one for short-term release, another for long-term).

However, by starting another short-term project, I feel like I'm abandoning the long-term composition and feel guilty about it.

I know painters work on more than one canvas, because paint takes time to try... but do composers do this too?

I don't want to appear to compare myself in any way to great masters, but there isn't much info about mediocre composers, so anyway...

I seem to remember reading that Beethoven worked on multiple compositions... and I suppose he must have done if large-scale works took 10 years... 

...but did he stop one work to do the other and then return to the large-scale work later, or did he work on them intermittently...?

What about other composers? What about you?

Thanks


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I usually start five or more projects in a block and end up focusing on one of them. It's rare for more than two from any given block to be seen through to completion, either because the seed idea is no good for me or because the instrumentation I chose has serious balancing issues that amplification can't solve. The decision to drop a piece is generally arrived at intuitively rather than spending a long time deliberating over the particulars, I'll reach a point in the work cycle where I realise I don't care about what I'm doing, so I stop.

Sometimes I come to a block in a good piece and move onto another (or even just start a new one altogether) but mostly I just do one thing, if I'm in the right musical environment for one piece it seldom means anything good for another unless the piece is quite similar, but then it is a redundant piece. On average it probably takes me around two months to finish a piece, but fluidity of progress is highly variable, sometimes I have months where I write very little because my brain just isn't in music mode; on the other hand, as in the recent case of _Urgynes_ (the shameless plugs never stop!), I can hit a good run where I work for several hours a day over a couple of months and there aren't as many obstacles to be negotiated, and the ones that are there are tough but I never doubt the feasibility of overcoming them. I think movements 2-5 of that piece were written in less than a month, but something like that is rare for me.


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## Sudonim (Feb 28, 2013)

I'm not a composer at all, but I do feel that I have some artistic sensibility  - so my instinct is that you should just do whatever works best for you. There's certainly no "right" or "wrong" way to go about it.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Minona said:


> ....I don't want to appear to compare myself in any way to great masters, but there isn't much info about mediocre composers, so anyway...


I am not a composer as well, but what I can suggest is: do not hesitate to compare yourself with the great masters, you won't go far if you take the mediocre ones as benchmarks.


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## Sudonim (Feb 28, 2013)

GioCar said:


> I am not a composer as well, but what I can suggest is: do not hesitate to compare yourself with the great masters, you won't go far if you take the mediocre ones as benchmarks.


I concur. Maybe you _are_ one of the great ones - why not?

(If so, remember us little people when you compose your will.)


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

One piece/movement at a time.

When I work in a piece, I "submerge" into the "world" of that piece. This world actually consists in a lot of ideas I want to put on the piece. Often these ideas are connected in my mind in diverse and complicated ways, and because of that I prefer to "download" them quickly. If I change to another piece, i.e., to another world, I run the risk of losing some of these connections, since they are very abstract (i.e., not in words, but rather in images). Often I have from five to ten ideas working simultaneously in this mental framework and I need absolute concentration and focussing only on this for at least a weak/s in order to produce something.

I noticed that when I compose, I work in the same way as when I study math/physics (my career). In math and physics, often there are multiple points of views for the same concepts. Through mental images, I try to connect the different points of views (these mental "images" are actually rather abstract things; shapes and forms that interact with each other; this may seem complicated, but it's incredibly more effective and fast that thinking the concepts as words, it allows you to think much faster and abstractly). My obsession is always the unification, to understand all the different aspects and points of view from simple structural ideas and to exhaust all the different and possible connections.

My favorite type of music is the polyphonic one. Many layers of voices, color, etc., the organization and convergence of all these aspects in order to get a cohesive and self contained musical work is one of my favorite things in composition.

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Maybe a mod can move this to the _Today's Composers_ forum.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Beethoven had numerous sketches going at all times. Often it was several major works at a time, I believe. I imagine if he had a commission that promised immediate money, he would devote attention to that. But I think works which were being composed for posterity, without fixed deadlines, would germinate over years. Some of the symphonies, for example. Sergei Prokofiev composed constantly even without having any specific composition in mind. He would sketch themes and ideas in a notebook he kept with him at all times, and then mine these notebooks later for suitable material when he started a specific project or commission. 

As long as you aren't missing deadlines, I wouldn't feel badly about working on multiple projects. Sometimes one gets ideas worth exploring immediately that just aren't right for the instrumentation or formal structure of ones major project. And it is sometimes helpful to get away from a big project for a while and return to it with fresh ears. On the whole, however, these things are really so individual that it is hard to give advice. I would say whatever strategy makes you most productive in the long term is probably the right one.

I am a composer, by the way — among other things — but my personal experience and methods are unlikely to be worth hearing.


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## JohnD (Jan 27, 2014)

A quote from Igor Stravinsky:
"I interrupted my work on the _Variations_, after composing the movement for trombones, to write the _Fanfare For Two Trumpets_...


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

I was a composer. (I haven't written anything since 1993 and probably won't in the future. The muse left; I don't have anything more to "say".)

My advice is to do one piece/movement at a time. Simply put, when I tried to compose two pieces at a time, the pieces would end up sounding suspiciously like each other. And that's not a good idea unless you're writing a multiple movement work.

Be lost in one universe (and find your way out) before losing yourself in another.


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