From: fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields)
Subject: Re: Music composition
Keywords: music, composition, how?
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 14:32:26 GMT

In article <Bw5tC6.6J9@hsi.com> tankus@hsi.com (Ed Tankus) writes:
>In article <Bw308A.98@news.iastate.edu> jsturges@iastate.edu (Jason L Sturges) writes:
>> The information in the previous article about Music composition (807 from
>>fields) is quite good but may be hard to understand.  You've only been playing

"807" is a number on your host, Jason, not on the net at large.  On the net
at large, the number is: <1992Oct13.121209.11051@zip.eecs.umich.edu>



> I'm a lyricist but I really don't play.  I usually write lyrics based
> on some other melody, harmony, or bass line I've heard.  I'll actually 
> work with various musicians to work out the progressions, etc.  and 
> the final transcriptions.  However, before I get to this stage, I take 

I come from the operatic school: let the poet whip up a heck of a good
poem without regard for music, then work like heck to make good music that
accomodates the poetry, without ever backtracking to change the words.


>> One more important thing - never sit there are say "I'm not leaving this
>>piano until I come up with a composition."  This attitude never works.  
>>Some morning I get up really wanting to write, but it doesn't come out, so I
>>wait until it does.  Sometimes it's later in the day, or sometimes I have
>>to wait until tomorrow.  At the most extreme, sometimes I'm out of it
>>for a week or so.  You must feel imspired naturally, and not make threats.
>
>  I'm still working on a piece I started 11 years ago.  I think if I
>  forced myself to sit and write, and I have when frustrated, I would
>  *still* to be trying to write this song while none of the others I
>  have written since would have ever come out.

I've always got so many  ideas for pieces coooking in my head that  I ALWAYS
get my best work done saying "I'm going to get XXX amount done of this piece
today."  But then by the time I sit down to write a piece, I already have
a pretty good idea how it goes.  Mentally toying with different bits and
pieces of how various musics might go is something I do all the time, even
when I'm supposed to be getting other work done, maybe even when I'm listening
to other people's music ("is there a solution to my current phrasing problem
which L van B uses in this quartet which I might cheaply adapt to my own
situation and style?  what if I suddenly inserted a measure of silence
just before the climactic recapitulation that I've been moving towards for the
last 75 measures? would that silence be weakened or strenghthened if I threw
in a similar silence 250 bars earlier, at the rhetorically corresponding
but dramatically opposite anticlimax of the opening melody?  Hmm, the piece
would then go like this from beginning to end.... nah, too dull... let's put
a motivic sound into both holes...something mysterious...hmm, maybe the
primary rhythm played ppp on bass drum...now we're talking...boom, boom,
ba bbbbbbbbbbbbboom...well, but now it sounds too sombre...")... but
for lots of folks, pushing themselves like this would only lead to half-baked
decisions that sound neat in verbal description only, not in music.  Gotta
be thinking musically first, technically second.
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose