# When and why did you start composing?



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Hello, TCers.

I have been wondering why some people become composers in the first place and I think it would be nice to share your story of how you started composing in this thread.

My story:

It seems a little fuzzy all those years ago, but I think it may have been in September of October 2007 when I decided that I wanted to be a composer. I was ten years old at the time. One of the music teachers at my school asked me if I had ever thought about composing and I said that I had not, but it seems like an interesting idea. He asked me to see if I could try and compose a piece for the classes rather unusual ensemble of pitched and unpitched percussion instruments, clarinet, cello, two keyboards, classical guitar ... can't exactly remember the instrumentation but it was something weird like that.

So I went ahead and spent the next three weeks labouring over this extremely silly little motif in A major that I figured out on guitar. It took me the first week to work out what key it was in! Once I finished the whole work (only twenty-bars long, ternary form) I showed it to my music teacher. I can't remember what happened at this point in time, but I know for sure that the piece was never rehearsed or performed at all. But once I had finished that really silly composition I knew for sure that I wanted to write music. It must have been that feeling of accomplishment that you get once you finish something that you spent so much time and effort on. I spent the next fourteen months from November to the end of December 2008 working on my first symphony as well as a few smaller works.

So that's it. That's how I decided on composing music. 
Now over to you.


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## Davincii

I've just started. I'm addicted to Baroque music. Bach, Handel and Vivaldi are my idols.

I draw the line at 1750. Anything composed past 1750 is tainted and impure.


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## mleghorn

Davincii said:


> I draw the line at 1750. Anything composed past 1750 is tainted and impure.


Does that mean that anything you compose will be tainted and impure?


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## Praeludium

My first attempt to composition was in my first months of music and guitar (not classical at this point) playing. I don't remember it but what I'm sure of is that I hadn't any melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, metric ear. It must have sounded awfully bad.
From that point until now, I'm still in the process of learning how to write à la manière de and the most fundamental (which are already very hard) things about the musical language.
So I guess the answer is since I've began music and not yet


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## emiellucifuge

Composing was a requirement for the music examinations I took when I was 15. I loved it and just never stopped.


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## aleazk

I have started (more seriously) 1.5 years ago, because I was bored of practicing the same pieces on the piano, so I wanted to do a different musical activity. I still compose because it's fun, but I don't give much value to the compositions itself, I value more the fun while composing.


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## Jeremy Marchant

It all started when I visited the composer Paul Patterson in the mid nineties and he proudly demonstrated his Sibelius system (this was before the days of pc Sibelius - it was running on an Acorn machine). I immediately saw that this was the music software package I needed - other products I'd used were crap. I don't have the facility to compose at a piano and write in pencil on manuscript paper so, in addition to the Sibelius software, I needed an Acorn to run it, a weighted Fatar keyboard, a Roland synthesiser and a dedicated hifi to play it through. Once I was set up, I started playing around.

Because I was a choral singer, I composed a number of pieces for choir, including a John Adams-inspired piece for choir and organ on Blake's line, _He who kissed the joy as it flies lives in Eternity's sunrise_. (Used by Stockhausen as the motto of _Momente_, of course.) Even though I say so myself, it has some gorgeous, definitely non-Adams modulations at the end.

One of my intentions was to get a public performance of a piece of my music by a professional. In those days there was an organisation in the UK called the Society for the Promotion of New Music and every year they ran a "call for works". Anybody could submit any piece of music they'd written - in whatever format: you could whistle into a tape recorder if you wanted. Interested musicians would rifle though the submitted works and perform what they felt like.

Reckoning that my two hour masterpiece for 97 ukuleles, including a crucial part for the rare piccolo ukulele, was unlikely to see the light of day, I submitted a short, ultra-violent piano work which makes Stockhausen's _Klavierstück X _sound like a _Gymnopedie _by Satie. This was taken up by Ian Pace and brilliantly premièred by him.

One of the pieces my choir had performed was Glass's _Three songs _for a capella choir. The conductor was keen to do more Glass but there was actually very little choral music by him at the time. I had noticed the harmonic similarities between the _Three songs_ and some of the tracks on Glass's album_ Songs from liquid days_, so I applied to the UK publisher (who I knew) for permission to make an arrangement for choir and small orchestra (mostly strings) of the whole lot (eight songs running 45 minutes).

My approach in making the arrangements was to suppress my personality completely and put myself in Mr Glass's service. I wanted everyone listening to the arrangement to assume Mr Glass had made it.

When it was finished, I met Mr Glass (he was in London for a sixtieth birthday concert at which the choir was performing part of _Satyagraha _(a pig to sing!)). We sat in the stalls of an otherwise empty Royal Festival Hall after rehearsal as he studied the full score, occasionally making suggestions (which I diplomatically took to be instructions). It's been performed both side of the Atlantic and recorded (I was co-producer, a task I enjoyed immensely).









I've not written anything since I became a self employed coach in emotional intelligence eight years ago (though I do work as a professional classical music journalist). The major work on the stocks which I do want to finish is a song cycle to poems by James Fenton, _Out of danger_. I was delighted he gave me permission to write my settings and it seems churlish not to finish it!


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## Cnote11

I didn't get past the "I'm 14" part.


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## PetrB

Davincii said:


> I've just started. I'm addicted to Baroque music. Bach, Handel and Vivaldi are my idols.
> 
> *I draw the line at 1750. Anything composed past 1750 is tainted and impure.*


Well, since you just began, regardless of your chronological age, you are a newborn who can talk -- maybe one year old, even. 
That cuts you a tremendous slack allowance for making such a ridiculous-silly pronouncement as, 
*I draw the line at 1750. Anything composed past 1750 is tainted and impure.*[/QUOTE]

If you remain here, grow on all fronts and I am, still, one on this forum, I will not hold this quote up in your face later. 

*Anyway, so many of us know better. It is widely agreed upon that all music went rapidly downhill to the devilish dogs who ate its bones and spat it out ever since Guillaume de Machaut ~ 1300 - 1477 ~ penned his last note / last put down his quill.*


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## PetrB

Can't say exactly. Starting lessons at six had me also not much later 'noodling around,' at the piano. That noodling was keyboard-hand configuration habit dictated, certainly. This was occasional.

Some years on while in practice of some repertoire being worked, Bach, Schumann, Beethoven -- standards, a strike error or slip brought a different pitch to a chord, sounding another good possibility. I became more curious, the pleasure of 'finding' a different chord change maybe pulling, too.

So a gradual growing interest is how it worked and the pleasure while working it which drew me, noodling and notating later yet, that ultimately drew me to study and so I could put my hand in more.

Whether it gets you directly and quickly, or it still gets you because it did not let go, those who do it are the bitten, whatever measure of little or great skill they have. No one else would dream of bothering with that particular labor....


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Davincii said:


> I've just started. I'm addicted to Baroque music. Bach, Handel and Vivaldi are my idols.
> 
> I draw the line at 1750. Anything composed past 1750 is tainted and impure.


We will soon change that! :devil:


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Cnote11 said:


> I didn't get past the "I'm 14" part.


Cnote, no one said they were 14.


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## Davincii

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Cnote, no one said they were 14.


Maybe tge first poster did. He started composing in 2007 when he was 10.

But that would make him 16 not 14... :S


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Davincii said:


> Maybe tge first poster did. He started composing in 2007 when he was 10.
> 
> But that would make him 16 not 14... :S


That was me. And I'm 14 years old.


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## Polednice

emiellucifuge said:


> Composing was a requirement for the music examinations I took when I was 15. I loved it and just never stopped.


+1. mo fos!!!


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## Couchie

I don't compose. Angels appear to me and direct me to buried golden plates from which I translate the music of God himself. And these angels don't cheap out, the 23.9976 karat plates are also doing wonders for my IRA.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Couchie said:


> I don't compose. Angels appear to me and direct me to buried golden plates from which I translate the music of God himself. And these angels don't cheap out, the 23.9976 karat plates are also doing wonders for my IRA.


Do you get to keep the plates?


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## Couchie

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Do you get to keep the plates?


Yes. But I'm not allowed to show them to anyone. I can, however, show you the signatures of some close friends verifying that they exist.


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## emiellucifuge

I believe you


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## Cnote11

Davincii said:


> Maybe tge first poster did. He started composing in 2007 when he was 10.
> 
> But that would make him 16 not 14... :S


Your math is terrible.


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## Cnote11

I smell a white texter


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## StevenOBrien

I started seriously composing when I was 14. It was to impress a girl...


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## Iforgotmypassword

Well when I was about 18 or 19 I was just discovering a lot of bands/musicians such as Mastodon, Opeth, Buckethead, Isis, Meshuggah and Tool as well as others and I wanted to play more intellectually composed metal music. However I lacked an electric guitar as well as the ability to play it. I therefore decided that instead of learning to play a new instrument I would simply write metal songs on my violin. I could play just as fast as any of the guitarists and besides, the violin would be an interesting instrument in a metal band since typically violin parts in popular music were boooooring. 

I wrote about three or four instrumental pieces based around stories of tigresses attacking stalking their prey or thunderstorms... things like that. 

However as I dug deeper into music I began to realize that I would rather compose music that involved all acoustic instruments which might not have the harsh immediacy of an electric guitar, but had a more raw and complex timber to their sound which elicited more emotion, even anger could be easily portrayed better with the acoustic stringed instruments when played certain ways.
I therefore abandoned the idea of writing metal and moved on to writing slightly more complex, less repetitive pieces for solo violin. 

At this point I am attempting to write a few pieces for violin, cello and percussion in order to start my own small trio. I want to bring the depth of contemporary chamber music to people in a slightly less intellectual environment. As of now, it's just an idea, but I have talked to a cellist and percussionist so we'll see how it goes.

I wouldn't call myself a composer since I wouldn't know the first think about writing for an orchestra or whatnot. As of now I sit on the floor with my violin and write the parts for violin and with a printed off sheet of paper with the bass clef on it because I can never remember how it works, I write the cello parts to go along with it. I still have no clue how to compose for percussion, but I suppose I will work that out individually with my friend.


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## Klavierspieler

When I was about twelve, I started writing notes on pieces of paper. Then I took music theory.


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## chee_zee

I started composing a few years ago, I do it for the babes and the booze (and the money).


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## Klavierspieler

chee_zee said:


> I started composing a few years ago, I do it for the babes and the booze *(and the money)*.


Where? Where?!


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## clavichorder

chee_zee said:


> I started composing a few years ago, I do it for the babes and the booze (and the money).


That's called makin' beats!


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## chee_zee

my rhythmz is phat yo, gitz da honeyz hollerin' at ya boi and whunot know I'm sayin?


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## Klavierspieler

chee_zee said:


> my rhythmz is phat yo, gitz da honeyz hollerin' at ya boi and whunot know I'm sayin?


Not really...


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## kv466

When, was right around the time I became 16 years old. I had a piano in my home my whole life but had never taken lessons; still never have. I already had played guitar and drums for a few years but I was getting into that weird teen phase and decided to bring the piano into my room. It turned out to be a great idea! Since I could hardly read music (still the same) and didn't really want to play anything that had been done, I found myself sitting in front of the keys and playing my own stuff. Sure, a lot of my first stuff sounds a lot like Rachmaninov but he was one of my favorites so be it. The why is simply because I was born to be a musician and even though I very much like the way I play which is a lot more like jazz and in the moment,...I'm glad I have an avenue to actually lay down some stuff that I like very much myself and that is only on the piano. I can't write a song on guitar with lyrics I like to save my life! So that's my why and when, or when and why.


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## Tomposer

I've been on and off since learning the piano, age 5 ish...? Creating music and playing music have always held hands for me, even though I'm by no means an exceptional player.

I did my stint at university but didn't take it seriously enough and ended up in a full-time, non-music job. It didn't take much of that to ignite a burning passion to find a career which encourages composition (although I worked there for about 8 years). All the while working full-time I continued performing and composing as well as serving in more musically-technical roles. This effort (and it was tricky, with two very young children, often working the equivalent of 2 jobs) has paid off somewhat, and I'm now doing more post grad studies and casual tertiary teaching with a view of university employment in a year or two.


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## jani

I have always loved music, but when i was 15 i wanted a guitar. My parents said that if i want one i must get a job, so i tried to get a job but didn't find one, but i finally got a guitar on my 17th birthday. After a year of playing i got in to Classical music when i found out that one of my guitar heroes was heavily influenced by classical music. Then i heard Beethovens Moonlight sonata and after that i was hooked and after a while i wanted to compose my own classical pieces. They turned out to be very bad because i didn't understand anything about classical harmony& Classical music forms. So i quit the whole " i wana to be a classical music composer thing for a while". After that i started to study theory, and found an article about the " Sonata form" 
and started to compose again. At the moment i think that i have some compositions that sound Ok but not even nearly good as i would like them to sound.


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## Abracadabra

I'm 63, I started 'officially' composing music at 57. By 'officially' I simply mean that I started writing it out in sheet music programs. Prior to that I had written quite a few songs and created the music to go with them as well. But it just amounted to chord progressions along with lyrics. No melodies actually written down.

*Raw Beginnings*

At 57 I took up violin and piano (only played guitar previous to that). I also downloaded a sheet music program, mainly for the simple purpose of being able to type in certain lesson plans so I could print them out. I also used the sheet music program as a "cheat" of sorts. I would type in things like the Bach sonatas and partitas for violin, and then use the sheet music program to play back measures at reduced tempos so I could learn them slowly. 

Before long I found myself writing songs on piano complete with lyrical melodies. Then I started writing my own violin piano duets, since I was learning these instrument simultaneously anyway.

*The Duet/Ensemble Side-Track*

I became more and more interested in duets, and even ensembles using three or more instruments. This led me to begin to purchase new instruments. It wasn't good enough to just write the music for them, I wanted to have one in hand to see how it's played. So over time I ended up with a cello, viola, flute, clarinet, trumpet, alto and tennor saxophones, and even drums.

I just had to have the instrument in hand that I was writing for. Kind of like writing via "improvisation". I would improvise on the instrument, and then write down what I had done. This lead to more complex ensembles.

*An entire Symphony*

I soon found myself writing huge symphonies. Huge in terms of having lots of instruments in them. Not necessarily huge in terms of length. They were all just "improv" being written down. I would actually start something with one instrument, and then just improvise over that with the next instrument in hand, and so on. So I wasn't using "music theory" at all. I was just composing via improvisation. Of course I was learning a lot about music theory, especially in terms of music notation and what it takes to actually write out what I was playing. I also learned a lot about transposition since many of the instruments I was playing where in different keys, Bb trumpet, Bb Sax, and Eb sax, for example.

*Where I'm at Today*

Even though I was having fun composing (via live improvisation), it actually fell by the wayside. I started instead to just focus on learning to play all these different instruments. So I became focused on learning technique rather than compositions. This was partly due to the fact that I simply couldn't play some of these instruments well enough to improvise on them they way I wanted to.

So I've been doing that now for several years and I've now brought all of these instruments up to a more 'playable" standard. My taste in music has changed (or expanded) as well. I've moved from the classical music, into things like New Orleans Jazz, Funk, and other things like "Fantasy Music" which uses many different genres.

I'm currently working on a "fantasy concert", still using my "improvisational style" of composing. Although, ideas from music theory are creeping in as well, especially in terms of learning to modulate to new harmonic places, ect.

It's all just a hobby for me. No women, no money. 

Just me alone with the instruments and a sheet music program.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Abracadabra said:


> Just me alone with the instruments and a sheet music program.


And once you get _really_ good, you can use manuscript paper!


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## jani

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> And once you get _really_ good, you can use manuscript paper!


Yea, I have noticed it! I can compose music in my head without my guitar! and some degree for a orchestra!


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

jani said:


> Yea, I have noticed it! I can compose music in my head without my guitar! and some degree for a orchestra!


Manuscript paper definitely helps your inner hearing.


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## Abracadabra

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> And once you get _really_ good, you can use manuscript paper!


I'm too deeply in love with my sheet music program. The thought of divorce is simply unthinkable. :tiphat:


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Abracadabra said:


> I'm too deeply in love with my sheet music program. The thought of divorce is simply unthinkable. :tiphat:


Kill it. NOW!!!!


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## BurningDesire

I began composing sometime in junior high school, with short musical ideas, but I finished my first full piece at 19, a clarinet duet, and thats when I feel I truly became a composer. I've written a variety of pieces since then, mostly just chamber pieces and electronic music. I'm planning my first symphony now, for a concert band.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

BurningDesire said:


> I began composing sometime in junior high school, with short musical ideas, but I finished my first full piece at 19, a clarinet duet, and thats when I feel I truly became a composer. I've written a variety of pieces since then, mostly just chamber pieces and electronic music. I'm planning my first symphony now, for a concert band.


Symphony for concert band sounds awesome! I can't wait till its finished.


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## BurningDesire

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Symphony for concert band sounds awesome! I can't wait till its finished.


I dunno how much you'll like it.  Though I do intend some pretty crazy harmonic things, there will be alot of more traditional tonal parts. I'm particularly interested in jazz and barbershop quartets as inspiration on this one.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

BurningDesire said:


> I dunno how much you'll like it.  Though I do intend some pretty crazy harmonic things, there will be alot of more traditional tonal parts. I'm particularly interested in jazz and barbershop quartets as inspiration on this one.


Oh well. I'm not too fond of tonality, but the pretty crazy harmonic things sound like they're gonna be pretty awesome!  Why not try completely atonal for a while? I love atonal music!


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## BurningDesire

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Oh well. I'm not too fond of tonality, but the pretty crazy harmonic things sound like they're gonna be pretty awesome!  Why not try completely atonal for a while? I love atonal music!


TBH, I really love diatonic modes and consonant harmonies XD I love the expressive capabilities within tonal procedures. I do love atonal music as well, but, to me, most of the various ways of writing strictly atonal music limit the the expressive palette too much for me. I prefer freely working in both mediums, using modes and tonal procedures and pitch sets and rows and whatever else I may need (including stylistic variety too), like Stravinsky, Ives, Cage, Zappa, Schnittke have done. I love being a modern composer because there's so much we can learn from, so many things we can utilize to express ourselves


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## BurningDesire

I have composed 1 piece which was 12-tone, 1 that uses pitch sets and the aeolian mode, and one which combines a row and 3 different modes at once (diatonic, whole-tone, and octatonic), and I composed a piece of musique concrete that featured samples of a Webern piece. I am far from closed off to using atonality, I really love ambiguous, blurred harmonies. Just don't feel like completely ignoring cadences or consonance if they suit what I want.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

BurningDesire said:


> TBH, I really love diatonic modes and consonant harmonies XD I love the expressive capabilities within tonal procedures. I do love atonal music as well, but, to me, most of the various ways of writing strictly atonal music limit the the expressive palette too much for me. I prefer freely working in both mediums, using modes and tonal procedures and pitch sets and rows and whatever else I may need (including stylistic variety too), like Stravinsky, Ives, Cage, Zappa, Schnittke have done. I love being a modern composer because there's so much we can learn from, so many things we can utilize to express ourselves


I like the way you think, BurningDesire. 

I would really like for my future compositions to utilise both atonality, tonality, polytonality, diatonic melodies against atonal harmonies etc.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

BurningDesire said:


> I have composed 1 piece which was 12-tone, 1 that uses pitch sets and the aeolian mode, and one which combines a row and 3 different modes at once (diatonic, whole-tone, and octatonic), and I composed a piece of musique concrete that featured samples of a Webern piece. I am far from closed off to using atonality, I really love ambiguous, blurred harmonies. Just don't feel like completely ignoring cadences or consonance if they suit what I want.


I think I will greatly enjoy your compositions and would love to give them feedback and some constructive criticism.


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## BurningDesire

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I like the way you think, BurningDesire.
> 
> I would really like for my future compositions to utilise both atonality, tonality, polytonality, diatonic melodies against atonal harmonies etc.


just make sure you use the greatest chord of all time at least once :3

F, B, E


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

BurningDesire said:


> just make sure you use the greatest chord of all time at least once :3
> 
> F, B, E


I have used that chord many times! Works amazingly well in my classical guitar compositions.


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## aleazk

BurningDesire said:


> just make sure you use the greatest chord of all time at least once :3
> 
> F, B, E


I use that kind of chords a lot in my jazz-like compositions.


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## BurningDesire

FBE is was one I used in a piece I recently wrote for the new music group _pulsoptional_ who played through it and recorded it for me. Alot of the piece is based in F Lydian mode, so that chord is very prominent. I also used elements of ska-punk music and quoted Haydn's 'Farewell' Symphony :3 The ensemble, if you're curious was piano, oboe, alto sax, vibraphone, drum kit, timpani, electric guitar and 6-string electric bass guitar.

edit: sorry for off-topic post lol


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## Klavierspieler

Interesting that you should mention that chord: I just used it in one of my compositions.


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## Crudblud

Why, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper this black juice came out on a hard shelled chin, and they called that 'tobacco juice'. I used to fiddle with my back feet music for a black onyx. My entire room absorbed every echo. The music was thud like. The music was thud like. I usually played such things as rough-neck and thug, opaque melodies that would bug most people. Music from the other side of the fence. A black swan figurine lay on all colour lily pads, on a little conglomeration table of pressed black felt, with same colour shadows, in seamed knobbed knees, and what-nots. The long hallway rolled out into oddball odd. Beside the fly-pecked black doorway that looked closed on the tar-lattice street, up a wrought iron fire escape rolled out a tiny wooden platform with dark, hard, dark rubber wheels.

Roll! Skreek! Roll! Skreek! Roll! Skreek!


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## Ramako

I should probably have posted this when I joined, but never mind. 

Some while ago, but not that long, I attended an institution called a school. When I was about 9 I discovered that I preferred going to the library and reading books than going out to the playground to play with the other kids (yeah, I was that sad kid). Anyway, by the time I was 12 (my last year at that school) I was the only one in the library and one day the music teacher happened to walk in, thought it was a bit strange, me sitting in there by myself all lunch, and said I could go to the music room if I wanted.

That was when my life was changed.

I wrote some random stuff, but then decided to write a symphony. I knew that triads existed, things called chords, but that was about it, although someone told me the standard four-movement form for a symphony and I wrote it. Then my music teacher listened to it, and had it arranged to be played informally by the Durham (local) University Symphony Orchestra. My old music teacher has since helped me more by giving me two (this time public) performances of vocal works, one some a selection of movements from my Requiem, and the other a short piece she asked me to write for the concert. I owe a lot to her.

For a while I had decided to do maths (perhaps in order to fund my composition), but in the end I changed my mind, and I took a gap year this past year to consolidate my compositional style, and develop it and my own tastes as a composer, before going to uni to do music next year.

My style is largely tonal, but I not so much bothered by tonality or its lack as accessibility. I do not like to write pastiche. It seems to me that a new style can be forged for the future, classical, yet more accessible to the standard listener, and less "cult" than most contemporary works, but not just a rehash of old styles. This is my stylistic aim as a composer.


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## nicecomposer

I started writing music with a guitar when I was 15, and I fiddled around with it for a long time, but without knowing anything about guitar. I would just hit random notes and record it on my mac. Then my cousin gave me a copy of "Reason" and I started moving into electronic music. 

I made really terrible music for a bunch of years, but it was still fun. When I was working at a laundromat, I decided I would study at music school, to move from crap music to OK music, and so I did. Then I decided I would try to make money by doing music for commercials and independent video games, and I've been doing that for a while, but without making nearly enough to sustain myself.


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## oogabooha

I've always been writing my entire life, but unfortunately I didn't have any concise vision that composing was what I wanted to do until two years ago. At the time I was dealing with a hefty amount of paranoia and anxiety, and I started formally composing to write down the music I heard in my head that calmed me down so I could share it with others. Even though I still haven't rid my mind of the problems due to a variety of reasons, I've now spread out my composition styles. Instead of coaxing the thoughts I have, I've moved towards bringing them out in the music I write in order to keep a healthy cycle of feelings going in and out. I'm really glad I started, because I honestly couldn't picture myself doing something else.


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## Renaissance

I have started to learn the basic theory two weeks ago. Few days after that, I tried to compose something. Yes, I am aware that my "compositions" aren't really what you can call music, but I will put here some of them. 





















I also know that they are not pure classical music, but they are desperately trying to be so


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## BurningDesire

Renaissance said:


> I have started to learn the basic theory two weeks ago. Few days after that, I tried to compose something. Yes, I am aware that my "compositions" aren't really what you can call music, but I will put here some of them.
> 
> 
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> I also know that they are not pure classical music, but they are desperately trying to be so


I really love Descending Sun. I'll listen to the others as well. Who are your main influences?


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## Renaissance

I wasn't really expected someone from TC to love my work, but it is a pleasant surprise.  Thank you !

Well, Descending Sun has some Cage's influences. Especially his "44 Harmonies from Apartment House 1776".

As for the others, I can't really find what influenced me at that stage...


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## BurningDesire

Renaissance said:


> I wasn't really expected someone from TC to love my work, but it is a pleasant surprise.  Thank you !
> 
> Well, Descending Sun has some Cage's influences. Especially his "44 Harmonies from Apartment House 1776".
> 
> As for the others, I can't really find what influenced me at that stage...


 I love the music of Cage too. Its so beautiful. Do you fancy any of the great Japanese composers? Composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Yuki Kajiura, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda? any of those or others of that scene?


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## Crudblud

BurningDesire said:


> I love the music of Cage too. Its so beautiful. Do you fancy any of the great Japanese composers? Composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Yuki Kajiura, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Yasunori Mitsuda? any of those or others of that scene?


How can you list "great Japanese composers" and not include Takemitsu?


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## Krisena

Crudblud said:


> How can you list "great Japanese composers" and not include Takemitsu?


He meant great video game composers.


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## PetrB

....................


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## Piwikiwi

I really want to start composing classical music, I've written some jazz, but the amount of theory I have to work through is pretty intimidating.


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## BurningDesire

Crudblud said:


> How can you list "great Japanese composers" and not include Takemitsu?


I know its been over a year, but you're right. Takemitsu is a great Japanese composer. I think I just kinda omitted him because stylistically Renaissance's music is far removed from Takemitsu's, and plus he's sorta the only one that ever gets named usually, whilst alot of others are ignored in these kind of musical discussions, and I think their music is also brilliant and has alot of value. I think more classical enthusiasts should be listening to the work of Kajiura, Uematsu, Otani and others.


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## BurningDesire

Krisena said:


> He meant great video game composers.


*she

and no, I meant great composers. As a music lover and a composer myself, I hold the works of Yuki Kajiura and Nobuo Uematsu in the same kind of high regard as I hold the music of Frederic Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, Frank Zappa, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Gorillaz. I don't view music as having less worth because its being written in different idioms, or its written to accompany a different form of art. Why should video game (or film music for that matter) be viewed as lesser than ballet, or incidental music for plays?


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## Crassus

When i was 15 years old i guess.


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## PeterJB

I first started composing when I was 15 as part of school assignments. I'm now 21 and since then I've become more interested in orchestral music, and I have access to Sibelius software, so I compose and arrange when I can.


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## greybackshadow

I started writing a few years back, probably 4 - 5 years ago?
Here's how it goes;

My class had a music lesson once every week as part of our school curriculum. One of my friends play the piano and sometimes he would play it after lessons.
Then one day, he played Canon In D, beautifully, everyone including me gathered around the piano to listen and watch him play! After he finished the piece, everyone started commenting on how beautiful and amazing that was. I too paid him compliments by saying that he is an amazing pianist.
One of the girls said something like "That was super nice! How did you play it?" Then it struck me! I was thinking, "This piece was written by Pachelbel and everyone is amazed by the instrumentalist who played it! Why isn't anyone asking who wrote that piece? Why isn't anyone amazed by the composer? _(Majority of the class isn't very interested in the music lessons due to theory and they find it a drag, that's why when it comes to these kinds of music pieces, most of them will know the composer or artiste)_ It was the composer who written this piece of music, that made him wants to play it, that made us all amazed by him. My sister played this piece before, my friend just played it, and I believe that there are a hell lot more of people outside these 4 walls of the classroom who can play it as well! But how many can *write* it?"

That was the start of me wanting to be a composer. But I only started writing music about 1 year later when I started my Diploma studies.


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## greybackshadow

greybackshadow said:


> _(Majority of the class isn't very interested in the music lessons due to theory and they find it a drag, that's why when it comes to these kinds of music pieces, most of them will know the composer or artiste)_


Sorry, it is "most of them will NOT know the composer or artiste"

Typo error.


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## guy

I started last May, because my friend, Graham Cohen, is a composer, and I thought that was neat and fancy so I decided to try it. It began my love of classical music, too. However, I can never seem to finish anything. _*Ever.*_


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## PetrB

guy said:


> I started last May, because my friend, Graham Cohen, is a composer, and I thought that was neat and fancy so I decided to try it. It began my love of classical music, too. However, I can never seem to finish anything. _*Ever.*_


Not knowing enough and starting out "too ambitious" can do that. Too, some self-assessment part way through what you've got written as its being not 'all that' can inhibit, to say the least. But, here it is, _you've got to finish those pieces before you can have any idea of how to do more than just start pieces_ -- to get the 'data' and experience of starting a piece and bringing it through the middle to an end -- period.

Start small, short pieces, maybe even a 'tiny' piece of sixteen bars, is the usual way. I recommend it wholly. Do not begin to get so self-critical that you force yourself to stop, either. O.K. it is not great, but you really have to take it through to conclusion or you won't develop any further craft.

The other thing is just 'give up' on the first, or first hundred, pieces being those stunning and brilliant masterworks you want to achieve -- the likelihood is less than good for a masterwork straight out of the gate


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## guy

PetrB said:


> Not knowing enough and starting out "too ambitious" can do that. Too, some self-assessment part way through that what you've written is not 'all that' can inhibit, to say the least. But, here it is, you've got to finish those pieces before you can have any idea of how to do more than just start pieces -- to get the 'data' and experience of starting a piece and bringing it through the middle to an end -- period.
> 
> Start small, short pieces, maybe even a 'tiny' piece of sixteen bars, is the usual way. I recommend it wholly. Do not begin to get so self-critical that you force yourself to stop, either. O.K. it is not great, but you really have to take it through to conclusion or you won't develop any further craft.
> 
> The other thing is just 'give up' on the first, or first hundred, pieces being those stunning and brilliant masterworks you want to achieve -- the likelihood is less than good for a masterwork straight out of the gate


Yeah. I guess knowing how to modulate to a key other than the dominant might help a little bit, though :B


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## PetrB

guy said:


> Yeah. I guess knowing how to modulate to a key other than the dominant might help a little bit, though :B


Ask your precocious pal, young Mr. Cohen. He might be able to tell you a thing or two about how to go about it


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Tell Mr. Cohen, Froglegs says hi! What symphony is he working on now?


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## Igneous01

its a love/hate relationship... sometimes I can write for days and be in my own little world, other days I can't bare listening to anything, often avoiding music for weeks at a time.


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## Aramis

Igneous01 said:


> other days I can't bare listening to anything


Maybe you should just pause the music when you want to undress and then resume.


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## guy

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Tell Mr. Cohen, Froglegs says hi! What symphony is he working on now?


He finished number 10 last year: 



 My personal favourite is Water Lilies.


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