Sometimes one feels like giving up .....

[Simon Biazeck]

I used to mainly compose at the piano, though when writing more contrapunctal music, it was largely working out me eye and ear combined and then played through again at the piano. I've found my ear has 'developed' considerably in the last few years. I've been able to pitch 'concert A' in my head for some time (the amount of Oboe As that are sharp when tuning seems to be more common, perhaps this is to do with the temperature of the concert hall and tuning slightly sharp or flat ensures the pitch stays stable through a piece). I can also now generally pitch the opening of a work from the score before I listen to it.
Nowadays I compose everything directly into score (including for orchestra) without sketching, composing straight through from beginning to end. I seem to be able now to hear everything in my head in advance, though not always the whole movement or work. Basically as I compose one section the next section seems to pop into my head and ultimately it all seems to work. I find I only have to make very limited changes after listening to the MIDI playback, sometimes none at all. I do though listen to a play back a few days or weeks later and decide to alter the odd bar or two, as I've found I've changed my mind or found I've thought of a better way to achieve what I want.

Wow - impressive!

It's interesting - when I have written to a deadline, I am less likely to change things, but if I have the time to write when I want I really enjoy leaving something for a week or so and returning to it. This is a luxury I can afford right now!

S.

[Simon Biazeck]

No - not really. Very limited. A long while ago I used to write a few scraps down on paper. I also used to go for walks and imagined things in my head. That was a very long while ago.

Recently I’ve been exploring notation tools and DAWs and have discovered a few ways of creating “sound pieces”. Very little worthwhile has come of this so far, but it keeps me off the streets. I think it would be good if music students could be introduced to this technology - as aids to their work, but many people seem to work with the technology and not really have so much understanding - whatever that is - of music. All seems to be EDM and “beats” these days. Also - music as a product - to gain fame and riches ....

if you want to try I can pass on what I’ve found, but with no guarantees that this will work for anyone else.

Re Britten and absolute pitch, he is supposed to have had that but commented that in later life his pitch centres had shifted. Someone else I know says this has happened to him in recent years.

How kind - thank you! I must confess, I have my own little processes with tech ware and try to avoid more for the little I do.

Yes, I have heard this too.

Cheers!

S.

[Dave2002]

Dave: I assumed that was what I'd find on your posted link but I didn't and perhaps Joseph K didn't either. Maybe our service provider(s) don't like Mendelssohn?

The very first link should have led to the IMSLP manuscript page - with what may be the original manuscript of the Octet - from 1825. The other two links - are both YouTube. One is to a pretty decent performance of the work, as we generally know it. The other links to a performance of the 1825 original, which as explained there is not actually the version normally played, which is generally Mendelssohn’s revised version from about 7 years later.

Maybe you’re picking up adverts at the start before the expected video appears. I don’t have a consistent way to stop that.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was once told by my piano teacher that I had perfect pitch. Thia, however, was of no importance whatsoever, he said, as being in possession of it was no indication of either musicality or musicianship. Since discovering both to be true, my "perfect pitch" may have slipped down a semitone, but it matters not one jot.

By the way, Britten is said to have claimed that he learned his usage of bitonality from his teacher Bridge. This has long puzzled me, as I hear no influence of the latter. For one thing, when Bridge used bitonality, he used it intelligently.

Using more than one key at a time in composition would undermine the salience of key choices to composers of older music, I would have thought. Unlike many composers Bridge used it as a gateway to atonality, though rarely completely crossing the threshold to breathe that "air from another planet". One of the most effective deployments of polytonality was by Holst, in several of his later works, but notably in his Terzetto of 1925, parts, at least, of which have each instrumental part in a different key, making for three keys in simultaneity, each part having its own key signature, as evidenced in the link below. Vaughan Williams is said to have uttered words to the effect that at least his friend could have resorted in the name of practicability to using just one, good, Christian key signature!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_DsQFfehGE

[Richard Barrett]

I would assume he had absolute pitch and could hear everything he was writing without recourse to a keyboard.

Although having absolute pitch OR composing at the piano are not the only alternatives. In any case, a keyboard isn't much help for writing music which contains pitches outside the chromatic scale and/or sounds without any pitch at all. Or music that contains as much simultaneous activity as Joseph's example. Or music that involves indeterminacy of one sort or another. So actually it can be more of a hindrance than a help, as indeed can absolute pitch!

[Bella Kemp]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxbpF_aW4vU

This is glorious! - a reminder why I like popping along to visit this forum from time to time. Thanks!

[Dave2002]

Different keys have different sound qualities - according to some - also, this is brought about by the particular nature of an instrument e.g. sharp keys sounding brighter on the guitar.

That is quite a complex issue. To some extent it will depend on the temperament used (particularly if a keyboard work) and the tuning. String instruments have characteristics depending on whether open strings are used etc. Wind instruments may sound different depending on how the length of the air columns is adjusted.

One thing which does specifically appear to be instrument related is the resonance of the instrument, which may depend on a whole lot of factors. For some instruments there isn't really much theoretical difficulty in making a note sound at different pitches. For strings - depends on length, for wind instruments depends on the length of vibrating air columns - but the interaction between the basic vibration sound stimulus and the body or other resonance can make a difference. Sometimes instrument makers have tried scaling up or down the size of instruments slightly in order to get instruments which work at slightly different pitches from normal, and sometimes they find that this just doesn't work very well at all. Sometimes they persevere, and by making (possibly small) adjustments and changing materials they can achieve something which they like, but it seems not a given that simply scaling an instrument size will produce a new instrument which sounds "the same", but at a slightly different pitch.

[Serial_Apologist]

This is glorious! - a reminder why I like popping along to visit this forum from time to time. Thanks!

(virtually, to comply...)

[Joseph K]

This is glorious! - a reminder why I like popping along to visit this forum from time to time. Thanks!

You're welcome.

This is one piece that I would especially like to hear live.

[Dave2002]

How kind - thank you! I must confess, I have my own little processes with tech ware and try to avoid more for the little I do.

Yes, I have heard this too.

I suspect that you're out of my league re composing and other music, but FWIW I'll make a few comments.

I try to set mini challenges for myself, which might be one of the following:

* write a folk song
* write in the style of plain chant
* write a definitely tonal piece
* write a definitely atonal piece - perhaps using some form of 12 tone techniques or tone rows
* write a piece based on rhythm
* take a piece and deliberately change the instrumentation, or even rewrite for voices - or vice-versa.
etc.
*write a piece in 3/4 or 7/8 or some other time signature (noting that most people stick to 4/4!)

You can think of hundreds of possible mini challenges like that. Also, if stuck, use some random method to decide what to do. That might involve throwing a dice, or spinning a disc.

I use various methods for attempting these. Some people go straight to a DAW - this seems quite common amongst people writing for films. I can't say I do that. I might go to a piano and try out ideas, and then write them down, or even try singing thm.

Nowadays I mostly try to get something written down and into a tool such as MuseScore, from which various forms of experimentation can be tried - sometimes with unexpected, and maybe arguably "good" results. For example, it's easy to take a piece and change the instrumentation. It's easy to replicate sections. It's quite easy to take one instrumental line - even a very lengthy one, and then deliberately set it against itself with another "instrument" - maybe in canon, or some other variant. Such instrumental lines can also be split up, and allocated to different instruments. Transposing sections is pretty trivial, and can be useful. Other modifications are relatively hard in free software like MuseScore, but I think better software such as Sibelius support those - examples - inversion, and retrograde versions of sections.

Midi is useful for output, and by feeding into a DAW different sounds can be tried out, and also mixed with live or recorded sounds, including synthesised sounds. Some of the techniques mentioned for notation software can also be applied within a DAW, which is useful for getting some ideas, but I prefer to go back to a notation system if the changes are significant. One problem with DAWs and people who write that way is that the dynamics are nearly always very limited. While it is a good idea to have each line in a DAW at a high level for quality reasons, few people seem to mix down to anything with the same kind of dynamics which a conductor might ask for from a live orchestra, or which could be produced by notation software. For an example of that take a single long melodic line, and input it to MuseScore, perhaps a double bass - but doesn't matter. Then set the dynamics of the first bar to fff and the last (could be many bars later) to ppp, then mark the section in between as diminuendo. I'm guessing that most people who work with DAWs would say that the bars near the end are far too quiet - but they may not be. Also I suspect that many people who work directly with DAWs don't realise that they lose dynamics - they can't even get from mf to ff because of the way they use the tools.

I also wonder whether this approach to using technology has also had an impact on live music and musicians - few people really exploit the possible dynamics to the full, since so many recordings - particularly "pop" music have hardly any dynamic range at all. I think the last time I was really aware of a conductor asking for really quiet playing was Solti, at the Proms - in Berlioz. There have almost certainly been others since - but that sticks out in my mind as he reduced the level to a very quiet pp. Few conductors or players would dare, I think.

Too often IMO creative artists use high volume levels (think theatre ... sounds) rather than wide dynamics, and often - if practicable - which it might not always be - wider dynamics should win over high volume - which can simply get tiring. Indeed, I think even classical composers such as Berlioz were aware of this, and wrote about it.

Most of this is still experimental as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to write more structured music, but that hasn't happened yet.

Those are just some of the ways I try to fill my time.

[Serial_Apologist]

I often sit down and just improvise on my electric piano when ad breaks come on the telly. It's a way of helping counter that feeling of despair which comes over me more and more often as I consider the products being advertised, the mentality of those hired to make ads for them, and the wastage in financing the publicity which could go to useful, nay vital purposes. Often the urge to go on playing overtakes me when it is obvious that the programme is itself no better than the ads; and before I know it, it's time to cook supper.

[cloughie]

I often sit down and just improvise on my electric piano when ad breaks come on the telly. It's a way of helping counter that feeling of despair which comes over me more and more often as I consider the products being advertised, the mentality of those hired to make ads for them, and the wastage in financing the publicity which could go to useful, nay vital purposes. Often the urge to go on playing overtakes me when it is obvious that the programme is itself no better than the ads; and before I know it, it's time to cook supper.

S_A I agree with you there the ads are dreadful, half the time I haven’t a clue what they are on about and they abuse music in the process. I also find joy in sitting at the piano - the results are often not brilliant but I enjoy doing it - and isn’t amazing how time flies!

[Serial_Apologist]

S_A I agree with you there the ads are dreadful, half the time I haven’t a clue what they are on about and they abuse music in the process. I also find joy in sitting at the piano - the results are often not brilliant but I enjoy doing it - and isn’t amazing how time flies!

When people tell me: "Well the adverts always were stupid and uninformative". I can offer chapter and verse to the effect of their deterioration by playing one or another of the programmes I videotaped back in the 1990s, when I omitted to press Pause during the ad breaks. Watching them brings me a feeling of smug self-vindication - firstly because anyone can see how purile, nay infantile, advert messages have now become compared with back then, when there was often a lot of charm and wit even though offering next to no information about the actual product; secondly because they now stand as fascinating metaphors for the times and ways of thinking back then, metaphors worthy of socio-anthropological research in preparation for a lifetime of zero hours contractual employment.

I must be careful here because I am feeling a thread on the subject coming on - which I need to resist, as most boredees will probably on thought be in agreement with me about the quality of modern-day advertising. What they may not agree with me on would be my contention as to what they say about the people assumed to be watching them, and the brainwashing they're absorbing subliminally, because I think what they're saying is, go on, you really do want it: all your neighbours have it (or something like it), and even though you might want to ditch it after only a couple of wearings, (we were hearing about this this very morning), think about the numbers of people you're keeping in useful work - (never mind in some sweatship in Leicester or Sri Lanka) - what would they be doing otherwise?

[Simon Biazeck]

I suspect that you're out of my league re composing and other music, but FWIW I'll make a few comments.

I try to set mini challenges for myself, which might be one of the following:

* write a folk song
* write in the style of plain chant
* write a definitely tonal piece
* write a definitely atonal piece - perhaps using some form of 12 tone techniques or tone rows
* write a piece based on rhythm
* take a piece and deliberately change the instrumentation, or even rewrite for voices - or vice-versa.
etc.
*write a piece in 3/4 or 7/8 or some other time signature (noting that most people stick to 4/4!)

You can think of hundreds of possible mini challenges like that. Also, if stuck, use some random method to decide what to do. That might involve throwing a dice, or spinning a disc.

I use various methods for attempting these. Some people go straight to a DAW - this seems quite common amongst people writing for films. I can't say I do that. I might go to a piano and try out ideas, and then write them down, or even try singing thm.

Nowadays I mostly try to get something written down and into a tool such as MuseScore, from which various forms of experimentation can be tried - sometimes with unexpected, and maybe arguably "good" results. For example, it's easy to take a piece and change the instrumentation. It's easy to replicate sections. It's quite easy to take one instrumental line - even a very lengthy one, and then deliberately set it against itself with another "instrument" - maybe in canon, or some other variant. Such instrumental lines can also be split up, and allocated to different instruments. Transposing sections is pretty trivial, and can be useful. Other modifications are relatively hard in free software like MuseScore, but I think better software such as Sibelius support those - examples - inversion, and retrograde versions of sections.

Midi is useful for output, and by feeding into a DAW different sounds can be tried out, and also mixed with live or recorded sounds, including synthesised sounds. Some of the techniques mentioned for notation software can also be applied within a DAW, which is useful for getting some ideas, but I prefer to go back to a notation system if the changes are significant. One problem with DAWs and people who write that way is that the dynamics are nearly always very limited. While it is a good idea to have each line in a DAW at a high level for quality reasons, few people seem to mix down to anything with the same kind of dynamics which a conductor might ask for from a live orchestra, or which could be produced by notation software. For an example of that take a single long melodic line, and input it to MuseScore, perhaps a double bass - but doesn't matter. Then set the dynamics of the first bar to fff and the last (could be many bars later) to ppp, then mark the section in between as diminuendo. I'm guessing that most people who work with DAWs would say that the bars near the end are far too quiet - but they may not be. Also I suspect that many people who work directly with DAWs don't realise that they lose dynamics - they can't even get from mf to ff because of the way they use the tools.

I also wonder whether this approach to using technology has also had an impact on live music and musicians - few people really exploit the possible dynamics to the full, since so many recordings - particularly "pop" music have hardly any dynamic range at all. I think the last time I was really aware of a conductor asking for really quiet playing was Solti, at the Proms - in Berlioz. There have almost certainly been others since - but that sticks out in my mind as he reduced the level to a very quiet pp. Few conductors or players would dare, I think.

Too often IMO creative artists use high volume levels (think theatre ... sounds) rather than wide dynamics, and often - if practicable - which it might not always be - wider dynamics should win over high volume - which can simply get tiring. Indeed, I think even classical composers such as Berlioz were aware of this, and wrote about it.

Most of this is still experimental as far as I'm concerned. I'l like to write more structured music, but that hasn't happened yet.

Those are just some of the ways I try to fill my time.

Thanks for sharing this - fascinating!

Sounds come into my head - sometimes complete movements in dreams and once an orchestration lesson with Bartok (!) whilst I was writing songs for a colleague.

Sometimes nothing comes of these sonic apparitions, but with so much time on my hands at the moment, the muse seems ever-present.

Cheers!

SBz

[Dave2002]

Sounds come into my head - sometimes complete movements in dreams and once an orchestration lesson with Bartok (!) whilst I was writing songs for a colleague.

I have in the past very occasionally had musical dreams. I've not had anything as stimulating as a lesson with Bartok though - wow! Oddly I've not heard so much music recently - under more normal circumstances I have days when music is going round in my head for a substantial time most days. Sometimes it can even be an irritation.