How do you guys do it?

I am just wondering. How do you form your ideas? Is there a thought process you go through, or just start writing down random notes and hope for the best? I personally hope for the best :blush:

I had to think about this for a minute, because I've been composing for a long time, and it's mostly second nature to me.

I've always had musical ideas floating around in my head, more or less fully formed. I remember being 6 or 7 and not knowing how to read or write music, but I had musical ideas I wanted to write down, so I devised a numerical system based on degrees of the scale as I understood them. I couldn't conceive of how to notate rhythm, but at least I could put pitches of melodies down. I still use a modified version of this system today to jot down ideas when I don't have manuscript paper with me.

Later, I usually noodled around on the piano until I found something I liked, then I wrote it down. There were some exceptions even then. My early sketchbooks have little fragments for violin and other instruments that I know I didn't try on the keyboard first.

Now, I almost never use a keyboard to try things out, unless I'm writing a keyboard part and I need to make sure it's playable. An idea comes to me, and I hear it basically finished in my head. The long process of learning how to write down exactly what I think I hear up there - as frustrating as it was satisfying - while following the rules and conventions of composition as laid down by the masters, has been the direction of my development as a composer.

The process is ongoing today. Even now, I falter, and can't get something onto the page as I think I'm hearing it - or what I'm hearing just doesn't work. That's when the skills I've developed with education and long experience really come into play. And there are simply times when I have to acknowledge that my idea isn't a very good one, and I need to let it go.

I usually either improvise on the piano and then run to my computer to get the ideas down before I forget them, or I just start notating random crap in Sibelius until I find something good. But often ideas are conceived and matured in my head over time, and I create the composition once they're all assembled.

For those of you that don't know here is some art psychology (it tries to explain how people get ideas about creating art or solving scientific problems):

1. Preparation Period - A period where a person learns skills essential to creating art or solving problems (ex. a violinist going through music schools or a scientist going through collage). This is the period of at most importance for the one that wants to compose. Gaining general knowledge is what will have the most influence in later work (doesn't even have to be too much education - if you posses the will knowledge will come itself).

2. Incubation Period - the most mystical and magical period in creating art. In this period an idea is born, but it's not yet strong enough too go into conscience. You cant feel it yet because its subconscial. No one knows how it works, but a few psychologists have tried to explain how those ideas are born. (i can't give much info on that if you want to know consult literature).

3. Inspiration Period - The part where you have gained enough information in your subconscial mind and you start to feel it and it can be of different intensity and form. Ex. - Lee said he felt tunes going around his mind (intensity is not big here) or you have all heard the story of how Beethoven wrote Symphony no.5 (The maid knocked on the door - for most people that was just a knock but for him that was a necessary piece of information to write the most famous tune of all time) where the intensity is very large. This is the period after you begin writing a piece (or drawing a painting or solving a problem in physics etc.)

4. Checking period - Added period to see the result of your idea and obtain feedback. doesn't necessary exist, but usually there.

There you have an scientific explanation of art! As you can see lots of it is still very mysterious and almost magical. That is why it's difficult to answer the question of How do you do it? - Everyone has his own way.

Mostly, I come up with my songs by just messing on the piano trying to find a sound I like. Then i just build off that and keep it going. VERY rarely does a part of a song just "come to me." I really wish it was as easy as that, but it isn't. It's hard work and you have to keep trying till you get it just right. And that's basically it.

Well, I lied, I don't use random notes and hope for the best. :blush: My ideas form when i'm thinking about anything. For example, yesterday I went to the nature science musuem and I was waiting for a friend to use the restroom. As I laid my back against the wall, I started to stare at the "push" lever on the drinking fountain. Then someone started to use the fountain. I started to think, "Hey! the life of the push thing must be pretty crappy. It's seems pretty lonely and the only human contact you have, you are being used! That must suck." I started to hear some music in my head, and thought that what I was hearing was pretty cool, so I wrote it down(always carry paper!). That is how most of my ideas form. :D

Well, I lied, I don't use random notes and hope for the best.

There is often the messing around on the piano thing, but instead of just writing something based on that, I kinda have to wait until I have a concept for the piece. It's often like the sort of little things Bach or Reich would put in (I'm not trying to say I'm Reich or Bach, by the way, but I find their little 'jokes' inspirational) - like making the second section the same as the first, but backwards - constantly cycling around the circle of fifths - making the theme 7 notes long in a bar of 4/4... stuff. Often the theme and concept are totally intertwined, which results in a chicken/egg situation.

Alternatively, a friend makes up something on the guitar and I add beats. ;)

As funny as it may sound it just might work. ;) :) If u put it in your computer be sure to post it let us hear it!

work_in_progress.sib

work_in_progress.mid

Interesting! :happy:

Wow! Very good and intresting to listen! Vrey good job so far, exept the string glissandos didn't sound as written ( maybe just on my copmuter). Anyway, be sure to finish it and good luck!

Does anyone else just randomly start humming things? I dont really think about what I'm humming except when I'm hum something I've heard before.

I should probably record what I hum cuz whenever I try to put what I've hummed (or something simmilar) into Finale it ends up not nearly as good as I thought it was and changes moods every 30 seconds or so. :P

Sure, that happens to me sometimes. But most of the time, an idea for a melody or something just appears in my head.

usually, I'll get a melody in my head, then in my head I start pieceing together what I would think the rest of the orchestra would sound like as well, and soon after, I usually have a full song buzzing in my head, and I go home, try to write it down, and hope that it sounds like what was in my head. Usually, it doesn't, but I have a melody to work with.

My best ideas have formed whenever I'm in transit or just doing something that doesn't require thought. Often ideas come in the car, in the bathroom, in the shower...

I'm pretty new at writing, but my best way of working seems to be juggling several things - it helps avoid writer's block. I can't just work on ONE piece until it's done. If I do that, I get stuck. I can't hear whole pieces in my head at this point, although I can already hear a lot so I assume that will eventually come. Right now I just sit down at my computer and try things. I never use a piano anymore except to test things I wrote down on manuscript, although the first two pieces I wrote were worked out almost entirely on piano, and they are still some of my best!

My own approach - probably relatively unusual around here - is to establish a form almost as soon as I have a melody or two. I'm definitely a structure-first composer, everything else follows from there. I also keep several pieces, or several movements, open at any given time, so when I have a musical idea I can try to fit it somewhere into one of them. (This usually works well because my musical ideas tend to be somewhat related to one another, at least over the short term.)

I rarely work out ideas at the piano, in part because these days I don't often have access to one, but also because I find that using a musical instrument to compose tends to distract me from the composition. I usually write things out on manuscript paper, avoiding musical instruments if possible (I've done most of my recent composition outdoors on campus), and working very slowly and deliberately. I'm usually very happy to finish 8 measures of music in a day.

I work slowly too, at least orchestrally, and I'm very deliberate. Instruments distract me. I checked your birthday - we're the same age. How long have you been writing music?

I've been composing for about three years. I'm still working on my third composition... the first, a horn concerto, took more than two years to finish, and my current project, a piano quartet, has been in the works on-and-off for about two years now (more off than on for most of the last year). I've posted everything I've ever written to these boards - very feasible when there's so little so far.

I've been reading about music and listening to music for years. A lot of my early music was a reaction to some other piece of music that I really like dand wante dto do something like that. In fact, a lot of my creativity lies in a reaction to something somebody else did that I really liked.

I have several handicaps when it comes to composition. First, though I can conjure up music in my mind, lush music that melts my soul, I have no idea what it looks like in terms of a score. I just don't hear chords and recognize what they are unless they are very, very simple. Or, unless I have the sore in front of me and I'm just following along.

One of the things I do when I compose music is take out the score of a piee of music I love and just follow along. I usually do this with orchestral music. To better familiarize myself with the way the music works, I'll then arrange it for concert band. I've the first movement of several symphonies arranged for concert band at this point. I tihnk I'm pretty decent at writing first movements now. Time to learn how to do a second movement. :o

For me, music is a journey. An idea is presented, and it is tranformed in a variety of wys, but this process of transformation and development carries with it certian feelings and character. When I compose, I try to convey a thought. It is not a thought in words, but in sound. But that thought has to start, it has to trverse some terrain, some contemplation or struggle before it can reach a resolution.

Now, when it comes to putting notes down on paper, I'll often sketch ideas out on paper, but I generally like to play them out at the piano before I go far with them. I do not have perfect pitch after all, and really need to hear it to know what it sounds like. Sometimes I extemporize themes on the piano as well. But once I have some themes, I will coe up with new and interesting ways to manipulate them in order to produce other themes that I can blend together in a piece. I'm a firm believer in making music cyclic to give the listener a connection and a better feel for how movements are related.

Once I have some themes and ideas for how they relate, I pick a structure to plant them in, dvelop in my mind the dramatic changes that will occur, and then, once all that is in place, I start writing. Often times I won't quite know how a section will go and I try out a few different things before I settle on something I like, but otherwise, I know what I want before I even begin.

If I want to compose something I mostly start just by improvising freely on the piano (which doesn't require any thinking, it just happens - like with everyone - automatic). Because improvisation is something I do daily after school to unwind, I seldom notate the ideas I have.

Occasionally a "really" interesting theme comes by, and then I consider making a written composition. I improvise further on that/those theme(s) until I have the basic ideas, forms etc. Depending on how much time I have (generally little), I write it down by hand and/or computer (the latter being the option when I don't have lots of time on my hands). Thanks to the fact that I make lots of mistakes doing that, I get some new ideas which I can also incorporate.

I've noticed that the best method for me is, to write it practically entirely by hand and then copy it into Sibelius (or any other notation program). Not only does it provide a much easier way to make the individual parts, it also enables you to check (to a certain point) if it sounds the way you meant it. As I said before, I always make notation errors, no matter how many times I check - which is a blessing and a curse...

Unfortunatly I only have 5-10 minutes a day to work on my compositions during school period, so I mostly use my computer to continue a piece (which I think makes the piece more "generic" sounding). In the end I have one semi-nice piece (because I follow a composition course during summer vacation) and a bunch of - excuse my language - crap (judge for yourself on: Voleriom Downloads).

Here are two impro's I once recorded, which - unfortunately (Boo! Every theme has rights! No discrimination! :unsure:) - never made it to a composition...

- Ideas for a 2nd movement in a piano concertino

- An idea for a very heroic song

That's how I "do it", but I've only been composing and following music and piano lessons for two years now so...

I have heard music (let me recapture that) composed music in my head, ever since I can remember. Not in a quantity that requires medicine, but it seems to have been always with me. (sometimes in sub or near concious, sometimes concious and on occasion vivit and almost like a virtual fever)

In retrospect I think it was something I devised not to be lonely or bored. There was no problem because I kept this for myself as beeing something most private. I studied graphic design, photography, and video art. Only to discover that I was in a sense always composing, slowly adding dimensions to this personal understanding of composition.

Effords to put music to paper at an early age stranded because at the time what I heard in my head did not work on paper (I was still thinking to liniar and less abstract) , I now have learned that I don't hear seperate notes but I experience the tensions that the chords, the melodies or combinations cause in my brain. This makes it possible to imagine/compose music in a more liniar way again. (am I making sense?)

Like Lee's shorthand, this has become my internal shorthand. It certainly boosts remembering music or grasping an idiom. Now, the difficulty is to translate it back again to a written score (and in the process learn the rules).

Like johannhowitzer the clear motives, melodies, frases or whole compositions pop up in situations that require some other brain activity like commuting, doing fysical work but also during halfsleep.

This state of understanding the innerworks of this virtual composition wears off, for me resulting in numerous unfinished doodles for now, I don't care. My stamina is growing as is the length of the doodles :closedeyes:

There is an other problem. I believe there is the handicap that you can't listen to your composition clearly, because youre also listening to your composition knowing what you intent to do. This renders ME a littlle (lot?) deaf to my own effords.

I am now experimenting with singing to a tape recorder (poor thing!) to develop ideas.

It also forces me to think through the measures, because in my head I tend to skip everything obvious.