Colin - I must have had that experience at one time or another, although I don't know that there's anything special about classical music to increase the likelihood of that being my reaction. But we all hear music differently - I think, anyway - and of course some music takes a while to grow on you.

And sure, some music is more "difficult" to listen to, e.g. a pointilistic percussion ensemble piece is likely to take more work than smooth jazz.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

My fingers find things my ears don't and v.v.

For me, this sums it up succinctly.

Fred Story

Yes, and your painter comparison earlier in this thread was interesting as well, siince I don't think that there are these two antipodes. Also the concrete painter will be influenced by the feedback of his painting process.

This question of workflow - what/which to do first etc. - is a constant nag on my brain.
Very interesting reading all the comments here.

In the light of all the fantastic technology we have to hand.. sample libraries, soft samplers etc. - I've found it worthwhile to keep in mind something Boulez once said:

"The idea must be compatible with the material, and the material compatible with the idea".

I take that to mean that it's pointless beginning and progressing with a composition until you have at least a) an instinct of what the piece might be "about" - even if only in an abstract sense - and b) you have sound material/instrumental forces in mind that are likely to be well-suited to the exploration of a).

That may seem sort of self-evident, but I try and remind myself of it every time I sit down in front of a bunch of sample libraries, samplers, endless other bits of distracting music tech gear, and start getting intimidated about how I'm going to write and what I should do first (improvise on sounds? doodle on paper? etc.)

So these days I don't start writing at all until I have at least a sense of *why* I'm about to write.. i.e. what the purpose is. That purpose can be a deadline, or just something I'm excited to explore - but there has to be that something.

The very next thing I do is try loosely, freely and non-judgementally, to play around with sound material and instruments. Twiddling around on the keyboard etc., but with my choices of sounds guided only by the purpose I have in mind.

Only once I have those two pre-requisites - the idea and the appropriate material - do I feel that sitting down and writing dots on paper/Sibelius or going to straight to sequencer, makes any sense.

Adrian

What Mathis said is something I momentarily thought of - how interacting with the materials at hand can be a composing process. The exact opposite of writing everything out ahead of time.

@mathis said:

Yes, and your painter comparison earlier in this thread was interesting as well, siince I don't think that there are these two antipodes. Also the concrete painter will be influenced by the feedback of his painting process.

I'd be interested in having you elaborate on this.

Fred Story

Well Mathis has his own ideas but mine would involve how some great painters such as Tanguy, one of my favorites, had no idea of what they were going to paint prior to doing so. And yet the final painting is highly perfected, not at all messy or disorganized. And so that was part of what inspired him - to actually discover what the work was about as it was being done. It is quite possible to do music this way, and of course samples facillitate this approach immensely.

@Another User said:

When you are recording it, do you usually play the melody, or harmony first?

I record the tracks first who are relevant to play/record the rest with the right time and feel. Or I start at the top of the score with the piccolo going down to Cb's. As long the number of tracked instruments is low, a click will give the musician and player the information where he is, later, the recorded tracks will replace the click, the click gets muted, or is taken down in volume. Many of my earnest orchestra works have a driving rhythm section, playing irrational rhythm and odd time signatures and compound meters. If the percussion is the heart & pulse of the work, then I may record the percussion first, so the recording keyboarder and wind controller player can adjust to the pulse and groove. I record the percussion with a Mallet-KAT and the Drum-KAT percussion controllers.

http://www.katpercussion.com/

.

I would think that a composer of any talent would know (or find out soon enough once he's started writing) whether or not he needs to work things out on paper or not most of the time. If there is an established groove that things are going to be layered over then why write it down? Conversely you could construct the groove in midi and then compose a highly polyphonic four part texture over it that would only come together if carefully composed on paper. A less complicated polyphonic texture however could be put together without writing it down.

I think I'm saying that one should use the most effective technique in order to achieve a specific sound. Many film composers today just don't have real composition chops like Williams or Goldsmith or Herrmann or North et. al. So they don't get that particular sound that only comes from a certain compositional/structural integrity. If your not after that sound I wouldn't sweat it. If you are then writing it down is probably the only way. I would site the Fuge in Jaws or the Passacaglia in The Blue Max as extreme examples. These things are the result of real hard writing that would (I think) be more difficult if not impossible to do with a midi approach than on paper.

Improvisation IS Composition but reallyfast.

Composition IS Improvisation but rrrreally slow.

These days, the question is not “What you can do,” it’s “What can you do in two hours?”

Lots of times I’m working really really fast, just winging in parts, so naturally the orchestration and part writing is not as “Classically Legit.”

It’s NOT a fault of the process, it’s just that my mental toolset (and my computer setup) doesn’t work that fast. Composers that DO have super fast arranging and orchestration chops tend to use paper for a lot of stuff, because:

1. They were trained that way so that is their comfort zone,

2. They are typically in demand so they can get a budget and a live ensemble so why sequence?

A friend of mine is just this kind of person. When composing a big band chart, for instance, he goes straight to a transposed score. When composing a jingle, he’ll do all the rough tracks in his sequencer to get client approval then replace parts or all of it (depending on budget) with live musicians later.

SO, my point is:

All my stuff stays in virtual form. No live musicians. So there is no need to write stuff down. Therefore, all intricate part writing is sequenced as well.

So, Dave, I must respectfully disagree with you. "Real hard writing" is unique to the process, not a result of something like pencil and paper.

Multi-voice fugues are easily manipulated in the matrix window and I can copy, drag and transpose themes and do all the things that paper does but better and faster. Plus, I get instant feedback on how it all sounds. I can make orchestration/arrangement decisions while this is happening as well, avoiding wasted time away from the “canvas.”

The Boulez quote and the "interacting with the materials" idea is right on the money. If the composition is meant to remain a virtual orchestration, then I would strongly urge the composer to train themselves away from paper.

The ONLY reason I would use paper is if I had a really slow computer system (or if I was writing for live ensemble).

Clark

Clark,

I don't think anybody is writing intense counterpoint for any length of time via midi, at least I haven't heard anything like that. If you have an example perhaps of your own work of a polyphonic texture I would love to hear it. The polyphonic textures I have done in film are all quasi and not what I would call hard writing (not hard as in difficult but as in a major application of the compositional technique of species counterpoint.)

@Another User said:

Composition IS Improvisation but rrrreally slow

It depends, I think. There's speedwriting, as a friend calls it, and there's composition.

And then there are composers who treat music as a sort of crossword puzzle, and you can't really improvize that. "This section is really lovely - I took each digit in my ex-wife's lawyer's telephone number and assigned it a note, which I then multiplied by 3.9 (to symbolize the barking of Pythagorus' dog) and then retrograde-inverted and randomized the result. Can't you hear that?!"

"There's speedwriting, as a friend calls it, and there's composition."



And which would you say Handel's Messiah was?

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

@clarkcontrol said:

These days, the question is not “What you can do,” it’s “What can you do in two hours?”

[:D]

That's the way it is, and in my case two hours in the composing tariff are over after 600.00 Swissfrancs

.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Hans Zimmer for example doesn't sound like a pencil and paper kind of composer to me. His music at least doesn't shout that kind of detailed composition. Don Davis on the other hand very much has the sound of a composer who sits down and composes which of course he does. Obviously John Williams does the same. It is a quantitative and qualitative difference.

Interesting you would mention Handel, Colin - the Messiah was written, in its entirety, in two weeks.

That is a level of musical intelligence, speed-composing, genius, and orchestrational knowhow that has no equal in the history of music.

And he didn't have MIDI, Logic Pro, Cubase, quad core Macs, 8 gigs of RAM, etc.

Just a pen, a bottle of ink, some parchment, and a brain...

@William said:

Interesting you would mention Handel, Colin - the Messiah was written, in its entirety, in two weeks.

That is a level of musical intelligence, speed-composing, genius, and orchestrational knowhow that has no equal in the history of music.

And he didn't have MIDI, Logic Pro, Cubase, quad core Macs, 8 gigs of RAM, etc.

Just a pen, a bottle of ink, some parchment, and a brain...

Three weeks and three days! And he recycled older works for the Messias," for example the Italian Duettkantanten.

The Oratorium Messiah (HWV 56): Composition beginn 22. August 1741. First act finished on August 28th, Second act finished September 6th, and the third act on September 12th. Instrumentation was "Soli Deo Gloria" on September 14th. All together in 24 days.

.

@Another User said:

And which would you say Handel's Messiah was?

Speedwriting. That crappy piece will never last.

He just noodled it into a sequencer.

btw, I'm not saying great music can't be composed in the midi environment (we all hope to do that) only that certain kinds of detailed composition will not tend to come together this way as they would when done on paper. At least this seems to be historically true. The waltz variations or operatic cues in Citizen Kane or Korngold's and Steiner great classic cues up to guys like Broughten and Morricone seem to confirm this.

Oh thanks Angelo, for your correction! You are so smart aren't you?

You got your little nudge in, didn't you? Three weeks instead of two.

Your entire conception of reality can be boiled down to "look it up on the web. " I spit on your knowledge, because it has no basis in life or experience. you told me I knew nothing, my experience in orchestras was worthless, ridiculing it and me, calling me names, etc. All the while ignoring the music I post here and never posting any of your own. Because you have nothing to post.

Everything you write here is just dry facts, assembled in a stupid attempt at impressing people. So you think that Handel is no good because it took him three weeks, not two, to write the Messiah. And he used some earlier works. What a bunch of bullshit. It is still the most amazing feat of composing, despite what people like you try to say.

O.K. Collin, you now know that you should not be impressed with Handel's Messiah, because he wrote it at the age of 56 from August 22 to September 14, 1741, within twenty four days. Though immediately after he started work on the opera Samson which was completed on October 29.

yeah, Angelo, other people can flip open a reference book too. That's from Pahlen, Music of the World. Assuming you ever open a book, as opposed to surfing the web. Which I doubt...

@William said:

Just a pen, a bottle of ink, some parchment, and a brain...

Hehe, now you're talking........

Is three out of four ok?

As for the Messiah, there's a lot of works that took little time to complete, because the composers were a) talented, and b) needed to eat, c) driven.

I will add here that writing, be it real or virtual, is a different proposition to performing (be it real or virtual). Computers can help make our written work look 'tidy', but performing with them is a different kettle of squid, and it's in that category that many of us are still learning. I dare say that many colleagues here could notate a sizable work in a fairly short time.
Handel had the advantage of being able to summon an orchestra at short notice, and not have to play all the instruments at once, himself. I think it's amusing that we're using such powerful music to determine what's the best direction, writing or not. It doesn't matter. Whatever the medium or workflow may be, it's the end result that counts.


I like my parchment because i guess i'm a bit old fashioned, and i feel some sense of.....right, when jotting notes. That's ridiculous of course, because parchment is just another medium for communication, and storage. But still..........

For me it's parchment first. But there have been occasions when i've written into the box, letting the mind roam free, and seeing what happens. And sometimes, i've been almost pleasantly surprised at the result.

But then i immediately dash away and write it on paper.

As civilised composers do........

Regards,

Alex. [[:|]] [H]