Learning to compose?
Hannele...@gmail.com
different ways or just one? How could I learn?
LJS
<Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
Well, the short answer is: Listen to music in your head and then
write it down.
Composing is simple. That is all there is to it. If you want to
compose in a particular style or genre then you have to learn to hear
music in a particular way that will fit the style or genre that you
want to recreate. If you think that the music you hear is not of the
quality or artistic merit, then you have to study and learn what
qualities need to be present to reach those goals. Looking at it that
way, there are many different ways to learn those aspects of
composing.
As to the last question, the way that you can learn will depend on
your own learning style and the amount of work and study that you put
into this vocation. In order to determine this, one would need to know
what you have learned so far and what exactly do you want learn. To
say simply that you want to learn to compose music really doesn't
allow for any detailed pointers. Listen to some music in your head,
write it down and then decide what you know about how to do this OR
why can't you do this and what do you need to learn in order to be
able to do this.
In short. Tell us a bit more and maybe we can point you in the right
direction.
LJS
Richard Schultz
: On Apr 28, 9:11 am, "Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com"
: <Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com> wrote:
:> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
:> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
:
: Well, the short answer is: Listen to music in your head and then
: write it down.
:
: Composing is simple. That is all there is to it.
"Composing" in that sense is simple. Composing something worthwhile is
a lot harder, even if you are Mozart.
-----
Richard Schultz sch...@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
It's a bird, it's a plane -- no, it's Mozart. . .
Steve Latham
<Hannele...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0c415052-c317-41fa...@i76g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
First and obviously, you should listen to a lot of music.
One of the foremost problems I encounter with people wanting to compose is,
in their mind "composing" is like what Mozart etc. did, and they are totally
unfamiliar with Mozart's, etc. music. They've heard one piece by Beethoven
and decided they want to do that, but all they've ever listened to is Pop
music.
So if you're in that kind of category, you'd need to listen to more of
whatever style it is you're interested in.
Secondly, you need to study the music - if you can read from scores, or even
better, become an active performer of music as well - knowing how to play
music certainly helps one be able to compose with less encumberments!
Third, it would not hurt to study with someone. Could be privately, or in an
academic setting, along with other instruction. You can spend your life
working out things by trial and error, or, you can use the experience of
someone who's already gone through that process and cut out some of the
trial time (errors we can never be to sure about :-).
Obviously, there's more to it than this, but, it's a start.
HTH,
Steve
Steve Latham
"LJS" <ljsc...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:77e4acc5-be6c-4bb1...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 28, 9:11 am, "Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com"
> <Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
>> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
>
> Well, the short answer is: Listen to music in your head and then
> write it down.
>
Oh shit, I've finally figured it out - LJS is Julio Laredo!!!
LJS
> "LJS" <ljsche...@gmail.com> wrote in message
More mindless name calling. I am glad that you are so easily amused!
LJS
Fiona Abrahami
<Hannele...@gmail.com> wrote
> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
Do you play an instrument? If not start having lessons. Then start making up
your own tunes. Then learn to write the tunes down and develop them.
Scientific research has concluded that it takes about 10,000 hours of
serious study to become an expert in any given subject, so study, practice
and experiment with our ideas 10,000 hours and you'll be a composer.
That's:
3.5 years at 8 hours study a day
7 years at 4 hours a day
13.5 years at 2 hours a day
etc.
The harder you work at it the better you'll be, sooner.
HTH
Fiona
Hannele...@gmail.com
(If you want to see/achieve my starting point, please watch my video
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hml78qvZoAI.)
I guess that I just have to start making the little pieces of music
that I can and then figure out what is most lacking in them. To begin
with, it sounds somewhat like folk music...
Julio Laredo
Name calling?
Hans Aberg
> Scientific research has concluded that it takes about 10,000 hours of
> serious study to become an expert in any given subject, ...
This is incidentally the time it takes to learn how to drive and speak
in the phone at the same time.
Hans Aberg
Fiona Abrahami
"Fiona Abrahami" <fiona@NO_SPAM.intxtdoc.demon.co.uk> wrote
> <Hannele...@gmail.com> wrote
>
>> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
>> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
>
> Do you play an instrument? If not start having lessons. Then start making
> up your own tunes. Then learn to write the tunes down and develop them.
I should have added: Your instrument teacher will set you going with the
basic theory and notation skills you will need for writing down your own
tunes, but unless they also compose well, you will want to think about
finding a specialist composition tutor at some point.
Fiona
LJS
> "LJS" <ljsche...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:f7aeb68e-6ed8-41e6...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Apr 30, 1:06 pm, "Steve Latham" <llat...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> "LJS" <ljsche...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >>news:77e4acc5-be6c-4bb1...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> > On Apr 28, 9:11 am, "Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com"
> >> > <Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
> >> >> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
>
> >> > Well, the short answer is: Listen to music in your head and then
> >> > write it down.
>
> >> Oh shit, I've finally figured it out - LJS is Julio Laredo!!!
>
> > More mindless name calling. I am glad that you are so easily amused!
> > LJS
>
> Name calling?
Steve seems to think so. Since I have no idea of who you are, I really
don't have an opinion on if it was a good name calling or a bad name
calling, but in the context that Steve referred to you I would tend to
think that a comparison to you is a put down and that your information
is, shall we say, not fully in agreement with his? So, if you were in
doubt, I guess you now know where you stand with Steve.
LJS
LJS
<Hannele.Terv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you very much for the answers!
>
> (If you want to see/achieve my starting point, please watch my video
>
> I guess that I just have to start making the little pieces of music
> that I can and then figure out what is most lacking in them. To begin
> with, it sounds somewhat like folk music...
Sounds like you have the idea. After listening to you on the video, I
see that I had it right for your needs. You seem to have a natural
appreciation for music and the way it fits into life. Theory is great,
learning is great and studying composition all have their place, but
when you get right down to it, if the music does not come from your
inner being, it is only exercises that reflect someone else's
experiences.
Folk music is the foundation of so much of what has been composed in
so many different styles of music. It crosses all borders. If you are
writing tunes that have folk quality, you are certainly on the right
track. You are also (by your short statement here) learning to listen
to your inner voice and you are learning how to bring this to
realization. (music does not have to be written on paper to be
composed) As you do these short compositions, you are also building
your ability to conceptualize music and this will broaden in the
directions that your personal philosophy dictates rather than
following a formula that will lead you to recreate what has already
been done.
And you have the right idea as to how to study. Prepared theory and
composition classes are usually set up to show you what has been done.
If you are fortunate enough to experience nature and live and
conceptualize sounds that are a result of your experiences, theory
will only get in your way. Your approach is perfect. Write your music
and then if it is missing something, look for that. You are at a point
where you are not confined to what has already been done. Try not to
lose that perspective.
I hope that you will continue to do what you are doing and I will be
happy to try to help you over any stumbling blocks about theory
without forcing you into the theory mill. If you want to write like
someone in particular, theory is great and a useful tool. But if you
want to write like you, you have to balance everything. A little
theory can go a long way. If you have something different to say,
theory books will be written about your music.
Good luck, and please try to keep in touch with your music.
LJS
Alain Naigeon
message de news: fvb354$akr$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
Poor pregnant Mozart's mother, it must have been embarassing to feel her
future baby playing piano :-)
--
Français *==> "Musique renaissance" <==* English
midi - facsimiles - ligatures - mensuration
http://anaigeon.free.fr | http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/anaigeon/
Alain Naigeon - anai...@free.fr - Oberhoffen/Moder, France
Julio Laredo
Before, when someone asked how to learn to compose, I would send, "Hear in
in your head and write it down." I didn't, this time, because you did it
before I did.
LJS
Oh I see. I don't recall seeing you posting that before. Sorry if I
stepped on your line. In the end, it is really the best answer. If the
student understands this simple method, they can then find their own
best path to composition and will have the best chance of keeping
their original inspiration that led them to wanting to compose in the
first place.
Steve has been inferring that I should be ignored. He has trouble with
different approaches or something and he doesn't like my calling him
on some of his references. So I assumes that he considered you as
something less than ideal when he made the reference. Now I am not
sure what he meant by the remark. He doesn't seem to like to talk to
me lately. But still, sorry to step on your toes. I certainly didn't
mean to use your statement. I merely stated what I though was the
obvious.
LJS
Julio Laredo
Well, it is obvious. A distillation of what I learned from my teacher,
Roque Cordero. If you don't hear it, what you write down is, well, a lie.
Anyone who disagrees can give me a list of significant composers who didn't
hear it in his or her head first, then wrote it down.
Steve Latham
"Fiona Abrahami" <fiona@NO_SPAM.intxtdoc.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:fvb354$akr$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk...
>
> <Hannele...@gmail.com> wrote
>
>> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
>> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
>
> Do you play an instrument? If not start having lessons. Then start making
> up your own tunes. Then learn to write the tunes down and develop them.
> Scientific research has concluded that it takes about 10,000 hours of
> serious study to become an expert in any given subject, so study, practice
> and experiment with our ideas 10,000 hours and you'll be a composer.
Fiona, I find these statistics interesting. Do you have a source?
TIA
Steve
Steve Latham
Steve Latham
> Before, when someone asked how to learn to compose, I would send, "Hear in
> in your head and write it down." I didn't, this time, because you did it
> before I did.
Sounds like copyright, or trademark infringement to me Julio.
Steve
LJS
How true it is! The problem is that if you say a lie long enough and
loud enough, people start to believe it as truth. I think that in
todays society that this is the new definition of "promotion" in music
as well as many other aspects of our life. I know that in general,
that the music industry is geared to make more money on the lies than
they are in making it in truthful music. Once they sold the public on
cranked out pop, they didn't have to have artists play it, they could
hire anybody to crank out another formula.
That was the real fun and excitement of live jazz in the late 50's and
60's. It was all about truth. Musicians played what they heard.
Period. There were lick players, but they didn't usually play the
after hour sets. The late crowd wanted truth. Feel it, hear it , play
it! All of the studying was done some other time. On the band stand
when the musician heard the fruits of his labor for the first time.
Everyone enjoyed listening to what was inside the players head,
including the player. There were surprises for the audience as well as
the player as they both were hearing the music in real life for the
first time.
LJS
Fiona Abrahami
"Steve Latham" <lla...@verizon.net> wrote
> "Fiona Abrahami" <fiona@NO_SPAM.intxtdoc.demon.co.uk> wrote
>> <Hannele...@gmail.com> wrote
>>
>>> How does one go about learning to compose music? Are there many
>>> different ways or just one? How could I learn?
>>
>> Do you play an instrument? If not start having lessons. Then start making
>> up your own tunes. Then learn to write the tunes down and develop them.
>> Scientific research has concluded that it takes about 10,000 hours of
>> serious study to become an expert in any given subject, so study,
>> practice and experiment with our ideas 10,000 hours and you'll be a
>> composer.
>
> Fiona, I find these statistics interesting. Do you have a source?
Interesting insight into learning indeed, something inside tells me that had
I know this when I first started learning I would have had a target to aim
at, but something else tells me that had someone said that to me when I was
anywhere between six (when I first had piano lessons) and 16 (when I first
started gigging semi-professionally) it might have put me off entirely. :-)
Anyhow, I got it from Daniel Levitin's "This is Your Brain on Music" (page
197, para 2) - a great book. Unfortunately, although he lists his sources in
a bibliography he doesn't cross-reference them to the text, an annoying
oversight if you ask me, so I'm not sure where he gets it from. However, the
way he words it in the text, he suggests he got it from a number of sources,
he says: "In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction
writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and
what have you, this number comes up again and again." So it seems to be one
of the 'common knowledge' facts in the cognitive science fraternity that is
only just filtering down to the educators and students who would this
information useful.
Of course we all know the simple formula of "more practice equals higher
attainment," but this 10,000 hour thing underscores how people like Robert
Johnson (who "went to the crossroads" for three years and came back a
blues-master), Charlie Parker (who, after being "burned" at a jam session
locked himself away and practiced 14 hours a day for two years), and Jimi
Hendrix (who, like Parker reputedly walked round the house all day playing
his guitar) managed to achieve such greatness so young. The rest of us mere
mortals "pay our dues" of years, decades even, building up this kind of
flight time. I guess clocking up those hours early on is what hot-housing
and schemes like the Suzuki method are all about.
Fiona
Steve Latham
>
> Anyhow, I got it from Daniel Levitin's "This is Your Brain on Music" (page
> 197, para 2) - a great book.
You know, I think I actually have a copy of that laying around somewhere. I
think my wife (who's an insatiable book reader) got that at one time, or got
it for me, etc. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find it.
The rest of us mere
> mortals "pay our dues" of years, decades even, building up this kind of
> flight time.
>
Hmm. Let's see. I played, conservatively, starting from age 13, 1 hour per
day 5 days a week. That's 5,200 hours by 33. By 43 (which I'm only getting
close to at this point) I will have amassed only 7,800. Damn, no wonder I
still suck :-)
Interestingly, I play very little now a days - sometimes I'll go a week
without picking up my guitar, though I might grab one to play a lick on or
to test a sound. However, I do play 3 hours at gigs, twice a month. For a
period, I did that, on average, 3 nights a week. During that time, I was
also teaching lessons, so I played probably 4 hours a day on weekdays, and
maybe 6 on Saturdays (likewise, I probably played 2 or 3 hours some nights
when I was a kid, and sometimes all day on a Saturday - and I mean
literally, except breaking for meals and bathroom breaks). I have to say,
during that period, I was better than I've ever really been - though lately,
it's been more about mind than technique, which I think is important to.
Clementi apparently practiced 16 hours a day. But after his competition with
Mozart, Wolfie declared Clementi to be an "automaton" and played very
mechanistically. And I think we know who history decided upon in that
contest (though I think Clementi actually won during the original duel).
I also spend some time composing, some time playing piano, some time
recording, some time teaching, etc. So I've become more a jack of a few
trades, and master of even fewer, rather than a master of any one.
Well, damn. I guess I better go practice!
Steve
Hans Aberg
> I played, conservatively, starting from age 13, 1 hour per
> day 5 days a week. That's 5,200 hours by 33. By 43 (which I'm only getting
> close to at this point) I will have amassed only 7,800. Damn, no wonder I
> still suck :-)
Might you have had periods in your life where you played considerably
more? Also, different people learn at different speeds. And the figure
10000 hours is clearly approximate - for speaking in the phone while
driving, I think the figure was 8000 hours.
But in music, it is important to practice a lot developing new neural
connections that can correctly compute the time delay - the signals in
the nerve paths only travel a few meters a second, so the brain must
send the signals to the muscles particularly in the hands a considerable
time ahead in order to achieve proper musical coordination.
Hans
Steve Latham
"Hans Aberg" <haberg_...@math.su.se> wrote in message
news:fvio6u$jlg$1...@aioe.org...
> Might you have had periods in your life where you played considerably
> more?
Yes. As I said, I was being "conservative" in my estimates.
Steve
Hans Aberg
>> Might you have had periods in your life where you played considerably
>> more?
>
> Yes.
I think such periods are very important in order to learn things.
> As I said, I was being "conservative" in my estimates.
If one really likes something, one is likely to spend a lot more time on
it than one thinks. This a problem with an investigation saying how much
time someone has spent, as it may be difficult to reconstruct it.
Hans
Steve Latham
That's true - They may have been being conservative in their estimates as
well.
Steve
>
Hans Aberg
>>> As I said, I was being "conservative" in my estimates.
>> If one really likes something, one is likely to spend a lot more time on
>> it than one thinks. This a problem with an investigation saying how much
>> time someone has spent, as it may be difficult to reconstruct it.
> That's true - They may have been being conservative in their estimates as
> well.
Unless they compensated fr it. One should really know how it was derived.
Hans
Hannele...@gmail.com
>
> Searching on:
>
> "10000 hours" expert
>
> Yields quite a few, including this one:
>
> http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html
>
> (Ericsson is reckoned to be an expert in this field), which contains
> this paragraph:
>
> "Among investigators of expertise, it has generally been
> assumed that the performance of experts improved as a direct function
> of increases in their knowledge through training and extended
> experience.
I wonder at this because based on my own experience in an entirely
another field and on my interest in oriental philosophy (zen & tao) it
seems that knowing a skill that is natural to humans, like I think
composing to be, is a question of reaching the natural way to do that
kind of things: the guide in our very nature for that task. So it
means dropping away all misconceptions, all wrong kind of habits, and
ending immediately at the right answer to that task at hand. So it is
the letting go of preconceptions that teaches you the right natural
way to live, which at once bring you for example the skill to compose
and at the same time, same very moment the skill to think objectively
which could help you to sound arranged enough in what you do and maybe
learn the rest of that skill's practical side: the things like writing
music down on paper, which are not in our nature since writing and
paper are entirely artificial things, only tracks of actual happenings
are there in the nature. At least this is from where my touch with the
possibility of composing comes from. I call it meditation in motion,
you could call it the healthy natural way to live.