Finding Your Music? Pre-Composing Rituals?

Hey,

I was wondering if many of you have "Pre-composition" rituals to prepare you for the task ahead?

I'm basically curious how you each find that place or get into that creative zone where you could just write and write and write for hours?

I'm sure we've all experienced what I'm talking about. You know, when you realise after about 6 hours of deprivation that you haven't eaten, drank or been to the bathroom in a painfully long time?

lol

So how do you get in touch with your inner composer? (haha)

Chris :-)

"Sometimes you get it from chicken. Sometimes from coffee."

- Frank Zappa (on inspiration)



Other than that, I usually just sacrifice a black chicken under moonlight (it has to be approximately 3 past midnight in medieval time), drink its blood and boil its intestines (apart from the liver - you save the liver for dinner) with 3 toad nails, 1/2 a bat's ear, fresh dirt from outside your house, and 7 quite long witch hairs (the older the witch, the better the effect - never try it with red hair, it might have a negative effect) in a saucepan at moderate fire (modernised rituals...), simmer for 3 minutes, remove from fire and set aside for 2 minutes to cool down, and then sprinkle with lots of salt and pepper. Save it for the next full moon.

Goes well with red wine.

Just write....

All I do is think of some idea to write about - nature, sunset, a poem, the month of August, whatever - and go. Either that or I've just come up with a progression I like and try to write around that. That method is less successful though.

Me? I look under the bed, in my drawers, and under rocks....

I often find inspiration out of necessity, or a deadline.

Well, this is two questions, really. For inspiration, I just let my curiousity find a subject to study. You'd be amazed what you can find just surfing random links on Wikipedia... Once I have an inspirational concept, I either do tons of research on related concepts or I just jump in and start writing or improvising (I rarely improvise, however). I'm very verbally inspired, so I get a lot of use from my beat-up old thesaurus. Also useful for inspiration is other pieces of art - sculpture, prose/poetry, paintings, etc.

As far as actually getting ready to sit down and compose, the only thing I need to do is grab a huge glass of water, turn my monitor to portrait mode, grab my research notes or write-ups, and fire up Finale.

I usually am sitting in the farthest place from a computer or manuscript and i'll start hearing a melody in my head then try to let it form chords a drum-beat and so on and then try to remember it until i get home.

I shoot up heroin every night

I shoot up heroin every night

Well at least there was ONE helpful answer! Will try it out tonight and If I can still think afterwards, I'll post the results here.

LOL

Interesting... Everyone here writes very programmatically. I guess half my problem Is I don't know where I want the piece to go until it gets there lol

Chris :-)