Hello everyone

I was just wondering how people go about composing? for e.g. do you write it down first? for e.g. the time signature, key signature, get everything on paper then work around it? do you improvise first?

I am wanting to get into composing and was wondering if anyone had any useful tips for me? would the FRSM in music composition be enough? to land jobs or is it simply a matter of "getting your foot in the door"

Special thanks to David Barton for his help, now i am just wondering what everyone else thinks.

Thanks

The fraction of composers who make a profit at it is miniscule, and of these, I suspect that for only a minority is it their main income.

Some examples of how composers got into the business:

Edward German started as a violinist and conductor and became musical director at the Globe Theatre; this gave him the opportunity of composing incidental music for plays.

Eric Coates was a viola player with the Queen's Hall Orchestra for some years before his compositions became popular enough for him to retire.

Although Robert Farnon was a serious composer before WW2, it was only after it that he became a commercially successful one. He was "the best trumpet player in Toronto" in 1940, was called up, and became director of the Candian Forces Band, in which capacity he would listen to the US hit parade on his short wave radio and arrnage them for his band long before the other two (US and British) bands got sheet music by convoy across the Atlantic. Much of the music for which he is known was written for the BBC from 1946 onward.

How else composers spend their time:

Of current composers, Alexander Goehr, George Benjamin and Sir Richard Rodney Bennett have spent considerable periods as teachers or lecturers; Pierre Boulez, James MacMillan and Oliver Knussen conduct frequently, Boulez having been principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra for five years; MacMillan also teaches.

There's a very, very long way from starting off composing and worrying about time signatures and key signatures to getting to FRSM level (not that I think there even is an FRSM in composition - aren't they just Performance, Teaching and Directing?). It's a bit like setting out to write a Booker Prize-winning novel before you're confident using full stops and capital letters.

You don't give any clue what level you're at, so it's a bit hard to advise, but assuming you're still at school it would definitely be worth doing the GCSE music course, a large proportion of which is devoted to composition.

People compose in different ways - some straight onto paper, some from 'noodling' on their instrument, some find a tune just comes into their head. Or it could be a combination of those things. You need to develop an understanding of writing and developing a decent melody, harmonisation, texture, writing for different instruments, musical form and structure - and probably loads of other things. Listen in detail to music you like and try to analyse it, both with and without a score.

Once you feel reasonably confident as a composer, see if you can find opportunities to write music for a specific purpose, such as a school play, the school choir, or to be performed by friends (again, I'm sort of assuming you're still at school). Maybe enter a composition competition.

Trying to be realistic, and not simply discouraging, composition as a career is intensely competitive and if it doesn't come fairly naturally it may not be the thing for you. I think compositional techniques can be taught and learned, but perhaps not the initial inspiration and creativity.

Good luck.

I think that to compose well your grasp of basic things like time signature and key has to be so good that they don't need any thought (similarly choosing and arranging harmonies). Like a good footballer does not have to think about trapping the ball and passing it on, no matter how awkward the situation.


As for where you get ideas from - I have no serious ambitions as a composer, but on some days, for no apparent reason whatsoever, my head is full of wonderful tunes and harmonies and musical motifs. It is quite overpowering, and the sound is almost as solid as real sounds in the world outside. I have no idea where these ideas come from (or where they vanish to) but if I don't want to lose them I need to get to a piano and record them (on disc or paper) before they evaporate and are gone. For some reason they are nearly always in F minor/C minor or Ab major/Eb major!


That is the inspiration part. The hard graft - the part that can be learned on courses about composition (and the aspect where I am almost entirely lacking in skill) is in creating a polished piece of music from these rough ideas.


But a great composer (like Beethoven or Mozart) could take a banal, ordinary idea (like Diabelli's Waltz or the Twinkle-Twinkle nursery rhyme tune) and create magnificent music from it - so the divine inspiration of a great tune is not absolutely necessary - but craftsmanship is.

p.s. There is a fortune to be made if you can write hit popular songs - but there are a lot of very talented and capable people in competition, and a bunch with established reputations that makes it very hard for the wannabes

Exactly. I doubt Mozart or Beethoven ever sat down and thought "Hmm, is this gigue I'm composing in 6/8 or 9/8? And how many sharps are there in Bb major again...?"