What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Dave2002]

There are a huge number of reasons why one might do music.
"Emotions" are just one
as is passing the time between sleeps

But there are many many more

I can come up with a fair number, but I'm not sure I like many of them.

What are your top ten?

[Dave2002]

I've been working on what is effectively an orchestration exercise, a bit of an experiment with notation software (Musescore) and a DAW. I have wondered why some people seem to go straight to the DAW - just tinker with sound, get fragments up, move them around etc. On the other hand, it is still possible to write music by writing down notes.

The workflow "discovery", whch I'm sure many professionals will already have discovered, is that taking something small, like a piano score, and then expanding it, can become quite large quite quickly. If one is using software that may become hard, though obviously in the past composers used pen and paper.

I quite like working with scores, but it's not the only way. As it happens one can get audio and a rendition of the score from Musescore, either by using the inbuilt "instruments" directly, or by creating an audio file (which can be done offline) which may produce a better sound quality.

An alternative approach is to simply take the strands of music - even individual lines - and import them into a DAW. Then duplicating sections, changing instruments etc etc. becomes really quite easy.

Some people might bounce backwards and forwards between the different representations of the sounds - which as often noted here - might not only be in the forms of black dots with vertical lines. Depends what one wants to do, really. If one is aiming at live performances with instrumentalists playing "regular" instruments, then working out some form of traditional notation is probably the way to go, otherwise just work with the sounds in the DAWs. The different approaches are not completely incompatible.

[MrGongGong]

I can come up with a fair number, but I'm not sure I like many of them.

What are your top ten?

In no particular order
These are all reasons i've had in the past ....

1: To go to Japan because I had never been there before
2: In exchange for a large piece of cheese
3: To make people aware of sounds they hadn't noticed
4: To send people to sleep
5: To impress a member of the opposite sex
6: To spend time playing with people who don't speak the same language as me
7: In exchange for beer/wine/tea
8: To pay for children
9: To focus my mind whilst in the hospital worrying that I might be going to die
10: To communicate with birds

and lots more

[Dave2002]

In no particular order
These are all reasons i've had in the past ....

1: To go to Japan because I had never been there before
2: In exchange for a large piece of cheese
3: To make people aware of sounds they hadn't noticed
4: To send people to sleep
5: To impress a member of the opposite sex
6: To spend time playing with people who don't speak the same language as me
7: In exchange for beer/wine/tea
8: To pay for children
9: To focus my mind whilst in the hospital worrying that I might be going to die
10: To communicate with birds

and lots more

Many of those have indirect links to emotions or some form of emotional reward.

[MrGongGong]

Many of those have indirect links to emotions or some form of emotional reward.

Maybe, but one could assume that ALL human activity is connected to emotion

I'm not necessarily trying to convey my emotions when I make music.
I might be feeling very strongly about something BUT music isn't about that

and as the great man said

"One hardly needs to seek out personality as it can never be avoided."

[Joseph K]

I just figured out the intro of Wayne Shorter's 'Orbits' - the first tune from the Miles Davis album 'Miles Smiles'. I plan on learning the whole album.

[Dave2002]

Maybe, but one could assume that ALL human activity is connected to emotion

I'm not necessarily trying to convey my emotions when I make music.
I might be feeling very strongly about something BUT music isn't about that

and as the great man said

"One hardly needs to seek out personality as it can never be avoided."

One doesn't have to take everything Reich says or writes as gospel. However his writings do make interesting points for discussion.

https://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2018/01/

https://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/a-human-being-is-personified-by-his-or-her-voice/

[peterthekeys]

Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances (2 piano version). Not being able to meet up with any other pianists at the moment, I'm recording the first piano part, and then playing it back whilst playing the second part. Great way of learning both parts.

(A truly great work by a truly great composer.)

[Dave2002]

Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances (2 piano version). Not being able to meet up with any other pianists at the moment, I'm recording the first piano part, and then playing it back whilst playing the second part. Great way of learning both parts.

(A truly great work by a truly great composer.)

What do you use for recording, and for playback? I guess you're a good pianist, so can figure things out, but lesser mortals might want to slow down the recording or pause at some points, or run through a passage again. If you don't have software to do that you may be "condemned" to make a large number of recordings to play back with.

[BBMmk2]

With me getting over sepsis, it has prohibited me in playing my keyboard and writing music too.

[Dave2002]

With me getting over sepsis, it has prohibited me in playing my keyboard and writing music too.

I hope you get over this soon. It may take time, but I believe you'll get there. Not sure what to recommend. Is beer drinking incompatible with recovery? I think you used to like an odd glass of your local brews. In moderation might help. Best wishes, dave.

[BBMmk2]

I hope you get over this soon. It may take time, but I believe you'll get there. Not sure what to recommend. Is beer drinking incompatible with recovery? I think you used to like an odd glass of your local brews. In moderation might help. Best wishes, dave.

Thank you! Unfortunately, I’m on anteb’s and I don’t yet feel up to a real ale just yet. Thank you.

[Joseph K]

I've been practising 'Bluesette', a tune that is in 3/4, with the metronome only on the second beat. It's quite difficult, but I am sure once it becomes natural it will do wonders for my sense of rhythm.

[Joseph K]

Just finished a composition, although 'finished' isn't quite the right word, in a way: I mean, it has a form, a set of chords and a melody (which is quite heavily based around the set of chords) and I have figured out what scale would fit over each chord in order to improvise over it; but I reckon the work involved in learning to improvise over it fluently will be quite a bit longer than it actually took to write this, cause I wrote most of it a couple of months ago and have returned to it once or twice since.

It's in 3/4 and there's a scale-change for almost every bar, hence it will be tricky. But to really practise this, it's the perfect excuse to buy a loop pedal.

[BBMmk2]

I managed a bit of writing yesterday for the first time. Didn’t do,ich, but it’s a start.