# How do you compose?



## Kopachris

Just asking to get a feel for how other people compose music. Is it spontaneous, or well thought out? Do you compose by writing notation, keeping with good theory, or do you just try a few things out to see what sounds good and write that down? What instrument do you compose on, or do you just write without seeing how it sounds first? Mostly, how do you know it sounds good?

Personally, I mix a lot of those together. Sometimes I'll improvise short themes on a keyboard and then maybe they'll work their way into a larger piece. Other times, I'll just write according to theory. Sometimes I'll compose on the computer, in a midi sequencer, other times, I'll compose on paper. I just ordered a midi-usb adapter, so I'll likely be doing a lot more with my keyboard and a midi sequencer.

So what's _your_ studio like? How do _you_ compose?


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## Edward Elgar

My studio is my bedroom. It's a bit of a tip!

I have recently devised a way of maintaining spontaneity while keeping to a plan which I'll keep close to my chest until it's fully developed. My method of composition involved coloured pencils.

If you are worried about how it sounds, don't be. The most creative ideas yield the best results.


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## Aramis

I come to sea shore during the storm and I climb into deserted cliff. I summon the waves, stormy clouds and ancient winds to dance around me and after they arrive and begin ritual dance I throw empty cards into the air. I sing wonderous musical phrases, the spirits of all kind gather around me and accompanies me, all elements are raging around me as I stand with my hair dancing on the wind and keep on singing. When all calms down, with the first sunbeam, Hermes descends from the sky with sheet music with my melodies and phrases written with the divine hand of Apollo himself. I receive them solemnly and in the beautiful light of sun appearing once again I sing the last phrase and jump down the cliff into the sea as the echoes longingly repeat reminiscences of my inspired music.


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## emiellucifuge

Its a very difficult question.

The best compositions I feel have a well-planned structural and harmonic blueprint. For that reason I always plan precisely the tonal centres and how I change between them, also I choose maybe when I would like to write without a tonal centre. 
Another important thing to plan is the dramatic line of the piece, where the climax is, when you want it to relax, when you want the piece to build up etc...

Having this you need to actualy write the notes to enact the drama, I like to write melodies that serve the harmony, and therefore they actual make sense and can be quite beautiful! Also my rhythms entirely serve the harmony, using rhythm to emphasise or demphasise certain harmonies or chords that may be important in the planned structure.

I dont often have those fantastic strokes of creativity where I hear an amazing melody, but when I do, I often find it hard to continue the music past that short brilliance. Therefore careful planning with all aspects of the music serving the harmony and therefore the dramatic line is how I do it.


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## Earthling

When I have the time to compose, and when I have the energy to compose (becoming more rare as I get older...): I do best with a piano, no matter what instruments I am writing for, preferably with a real piano, though for some years I have been stuck with a crappy electronic keyboard. I want to hear all the chord voicing-- music is a very physical thing to me, feeling the sound waves as well as hearing them (which is why an electronic keyboard, even a really good one, can never replace a real piano IMO).

Generally speaking, at first I might accidentally stumble on an unusual series of chords or a melody, sometimes just a motivic idea and build on that-- usually just from doodling on the piano-- the melody rarely originates in my head but from actual physical sound. Sometimes a strictly rhythmic idea comes to me. Once I get a few bars sketched, I start thinking of the general structure, trying to insert very little "new" material as I can unless it is based on somehow on the motivic material already composed. I really prefer that sort of "motivic economy"-- even if it is not always immediately obvious to the ear.

I'm working (hopefully not in vain!) in re-working portions an old piano sonata from my music school days that has potential but there are plenty of flaws in it and I'm re-scoring it for string orchestra. The main theme begins with an interval of a major third, then a fourth and then a fifth and that forms the basis for the majority of all the music, including chords in certain places involving a series of stacked thirds, fourths and fifths. Every note has to have a reason for being there, and drawing from the original motivic or thematic material is what helps to "justify" each note. Each piece I feel should have its own internal logic and individual sound world. If I can do that, then I am happy.

I used to write everything down on paper with a mechanical pencil (it used to be my ONLY way of doing things), though nowadays I might only sketch the first bits on paper and then begin working things out on Noteworthy Composer, which is _OK_. I despise MIDI, but right now I'm stuck with it and my piano skills have gotten quite rusty. Also, I write VERY slowly and I scrutinise every bar before moving along to the next few bars. Its a wonder I write anything at all.

Usually I will have one larger project going on and compose shorter, simpler, and much smaller scale pieces off to the side for a change of pace, and experiment a bit.

My approach to rock music is totally different, and my ambient music I've recorded is different as well-- I imagine I uses different parts of my brain for all three kinds of music. But I haven't worked with rock or ambient music in a couple years and its more of a recording studio thing for me involving layers of guitars and other complicated things-- its too overwhelming for me because I am a perfectionist about it all.

I am _terrible _with counterpoint.


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## teknoaxe

Well, what the hell? You guys aren't thrilled with my compositions, but I think you guys would at least be horrifically interested in the way I compose.










So that's pretty much the entirety of my last song above, give or take a minute. There's probably a few tracks that are hidden as well, because there were so many different ones to take into account.

The blue lines on most of the tracks are .midi volume sliders that I used to get the crescendos and decrescendos I wanted. Do I use a keyboard in writing the notes? No, and it's not because I suck at the keyboard. I'm not completely terrible at the keyboard, but the VSampler plugin that stores all the sounds has something like a 300 millisecond delay between the time a controller key is pressed and the time the soundfont registers. This makes it somewhat impossible to play against a metronome or a beat. I'm working on this, though, by finding a replacement plugin to play all the sounds with little latency.

I have a "layout" that's supposed to mimick the exact positions of an orchestra. That's just an abstract way of saying that I pan each different instrument to where they're supposed to go. The violins on the left, the double-bass on the right, the violas in the middle, the percussion to the extreme left.  My rock setup uses something like one guitar extreme left, other guitar extreme right, possible lead guitar center, bass somewhat to the left, drums somewhat to the right. But in effect, it achieves similar goals to what panning orchestra instruments achieve, which is those instruments not bleeding together and being very clear for the ear to pick out.

VSampler itself has volume knobs for each different soundfont, so everything is about the right volume as well. All of the orchestra you see in front of you is then mixed to an effects track, where I apply a warming tube amplifier effect and then a reverb, which pretty much completes the setup.


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## MJTTOMB

teknoaxe said:


> blah blah blah


That doesn't explain what sort of decision making process goes into how you choose notes, harmonic progressions, rhythmic figures, etc. It's just a description of a midi setup.


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## Krummhorn

In my church position as the organist, I often, and without any advance notice, have to provide music during the service to cover this or that ... basically "filler music" for those unplanned blank spots within our liturgical service. There isn't time to grab any music, much less leaf through any book looking for something to play ... so I improvise something - whatever happens to come into my head at the time. 

If it turns out to be something that I like, I will recall the tune and later expand on it, notate it in NWC perhaps, and make it a work in progress piece. I have composed several pieces in this manner, two of which are memorized and have not been written out. 

Most of myy inspiration comes from within the instrument itself ... the pipes that I command from the console to create music ... the pipes and I become one, breathing together, almost trance-like. Sounds a little crazy, but it's what works for me, and my parishioners love all my creations.


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## teknoaxe

MJTTOMB said:


> That doesn't explain what sort of decision making process goes into how you choose notes, harmonic progressions, rhythmic figures, etc. It's just a description of a midi setup.


Well, since you so kindly asked, I'll tell.

The basic premise for "Kate and Beth Escape London" was the story. I didn't write an exact script for it, but this is the way it went down...

I divided the story into basic parts to basically cover what I thought would happen in the 9-minute time-frame of the story. Those titles are on the video.

Infested London was supposed to paint London basically overrun by Undead/Zombies and basically the danger and grotesqueness of the result of the infestation with a lot of chaotic, asynchronous voices, including dual harps following different paths. The chaos then would culminated with a brief and tense strike by the orchestra, indicating some action, like some zombies getting wiped out by people wielding shotguns.

Things calm down in order to set up the introduction to the characters (named in the title of the track), punctuated by two thunderous bass drum hits that roll off into the distance. After that, the motif of the two characters are introduced in "Kate and Beth", for which the latter half is replayed in various forms in other sections, such as "under cover of the mist", the end of "on the train", and the end of "on the way home".

"Kate and Beth" was supposed to be both delicate and creepy at the same time. Like these were the guys that you were gonna root for, but they're still in the infested London scene.

After the motif is introduced, then the two characters start towards the train station in "Under Cover of the Mist". This was meant to be a fun piece to kind of relieve the tension for a little bit with a little bit of rock drums mixed in to the extreme right. The choir offsets the graveness of the strings before getting more serious to transition to "The Bowels of the Station".

"The Bowels of the Station", where the characters are basically trying to sneak through a train station filled with Zombies/Undead just barely not aware of their presence. Once again, I was painting the scene here, where the station was literally rotting in on itself. Some more dissonant chords and tones, led by a choir with 11-step intervals. I tried to get some realistic string bends from the violins here. This is where the wheel control comes in. It worked okay, I would say. Basically the movement starts out trying to paint the graveness of the situation, then then scene unrolls to show the distance the two characters have to cover. That's where the dissonance melts away and then the drums kick back in to transition into the climax of the story.

"The Rush" Self explanatory. The characters were running for their lives. They needed to start a train and they needed to get on the train, so they were running for their lives through the station. This is where my headaches usually happen, because most of the time the violins lose their realness and start to fall apart. This time it worked, though, because I let the octave layering go all the way down to the Cellos.

"On the Train" They're on a train, but not out of the woods yet. The train is running, but some of the zombies made it onto the train. "The Rush was short because too much of the quickness would have been tiring, so the brass kicks in to...be more trainlike. To convey that we've moved from in a blistering rush to defending the air tram the characters have boarded. This parts end with a victorious mod on the character motif, which is what I meant it to do.

"On the Way Home", the start of this part began with some of the feeling that I started with the "trailer" to this soundtrack, with the creepy violins fading in and out. As I rewrote that section for this, I realized that these high and dissonant violins kind of remind me of the air-train at JFK. I wanted some of the tension to remain just a while longer until the mid-point where the lower strings take over the theme and resolve itself into a more delicate and happy ending.

So...that's it. That particular song was motivated by the story. It's not actually what I do most of the time, most of the time, there is kind of a theme that I repeat, but this one followed the story instead of the story following it.


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## dmg

I usually have a spontaneous idea for a short melodic segment, and it is usually in a very inconvenient place (such as in the shower). So I do my best to try to remember it, and when I can, I write it down as quickly as possible. I then look through all the sketched phrases I've gradually accumulated and try to use them in a broader melody. Then once I get a melody, I begin to harmonize it. Then I figure out what instruments work best, and go from there...


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## Guest

When I first started composing it was all at the keyboard, but since I've begun studying music at university I can do much of it in my head. Occasionally I'll sit at the piano and try different things with a passage I've worked out to see how much I can draw out of it, but I've been trying really hard lately to finish pieces without that advantage.


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## Nix

I'll usually come up with ideas in my head, and keep them there for a couple months before writing them down. Let them digest and see where they go- do all the planning beforehand. Then I sit down at the piano, just to kind of reinforce what I've created. Then I'll write it down- usually not exactly how it is in my head, with a few spontaneous ideas along the way.


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## Rasa

badly

5char


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## Kopachris

For a little more insight, anyone else care to share autograph scores?

BTW, those triplet crochets are supposed to be triplet quavers.


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