Composition o' music

[GraingerGuy]

As a music major, I had to take a composition class. For the final, we had to compose something kinda big. Well, I decided to do a choir piece which is something I wanted to do since I first started. When I finished I let my choir teacher listen to what I had done and she liked it!

I then asked her if we could do the piece with choir and she said yes! WOOHOO!!!!!! I'm so stoked!

Do any of you compose stuff?

[Cheesypuff]

no...but what choir are you talking about...pro musica? Boy...you sure are on a posting frenzy GraingerGuy

[mojo]

i used to do it all the time. i should do it more often. i did a baroch-ish piece in theory that my teacher dug (fred benedetti, he's listed in www.allmusic.com ).

i actually started a few songs that i never finished, too. i have a mess of progressions sitting around gathering dust....which is kinda disgusting if you consider the actual composition of dust. but anyways, ya, i got a bunch of stuff. oh, and some of it is complete

[GraingerGuy]

Originally posted by Cheesypuff
no...but what choir are you talking about...pro musica? Boy...you sure are on a posting frenzy GraingerGuy

No...Pro is going to be WAY to busy to learn this. She said that she was going to let me do the song with Kantorei and Bel Canto.

mojo - I hear you on the not finished stuff. I have a lot of stuff I have started w/ progressions and stuff, but no real set tune or words. Kind of a bummer actually....

[Nanotech9]

well, if you mean, can i sit at the paino for hours, and make up stuff, endlessly blending it together, that people cant tell i'm making up on the spot, then yes...

And i've helped my dad write down some of his music on paper... which is actually pretty tough, doing it the old manual way, note by note.

[welfareloser]

that's awesome!!!! writing music is even more personal than dancing or singing or playing music or even writing for other people, imo... so it's always a huge boost when someone really likes it.

i am useless at improvising. i am slowly growing into improvising and composing tho. i have altered a few of my fiddle solos to the bluegrass songs that we play to suit my tastes... and yesterday i started composing a solo from scratch (with the aid of a "hot licks for bluegrass fiddle" book) for the song paradise... spent an hour on it so far and have 12 of the 16 bars about hammered out... have no idea how it'll actually sound in context yet, even... i think i'll get faster and better at writing out solos fairly quickly, tho. i'm just now learning very basic music theory ... like the difference between keys. eventually (and i mean on the scale of years) i will probably be able to drop the crutch of written music, but i am painfully slow at memorizing songs and licks, and very uptight about just letting go and improvising, so we'll see...

[topane]

I was a music major in college and had to do a little bit of composition. Mostly short pieces for music theory classes, using whatever we were taught in that particular class. I also wrote something original for my orchestration final. For my final semester of theory I wrote a "modern" nine-minute piece for a string quintet which my professor likened to Arnold Schoenberg or George Crumb. In other words, very strange. Got an "A", though. I played jazz trumpet in college, but that was mostly improvisation.

Now I play in a rock band (with hoey222), and we write our own stuff. Mostly though, we just end up doing improvisational jams which last for about 20 minutes.

[BrewMaster]

i am an amateur guitarist and i like to write stuff. my problem is blending lyrics with music and vice versa. i have some songs with no words and some lyrics i like that i can't set to music. i've written 2 songs completely, but i don't like them much.

which do y'all write first, lyrics or music?

[GraingerGuy]

Originally posted by Nanotech9
well, if you mean, can i sit at the paino for hours, and make up stuff, endlessly blending it together, that people cant tell i'm making up on the spot, then yes...

And i've helped my dad write down some of his music on paper... which is actually pretty tough, doing it the old manual way, note by note.

I hear you on that! It is a pain in the butt doing it just with a few staves, a piano and a pencil...

And improvisation is awesome! I can do that on the guitar and the piano. It's so much fun!

And for Brew's question - I do the music first, then I do the lyrics. As far as not liking what you wrote, the more you write them better you get at it. I look back to a couple of the songs that I wrote at first....and I don't know what I was thinking. But as you go on, you get your own style that you put into your songs. Just keep on going and you'll get better at it!

Welfare - Yes! When I write music I pour my heart and soul into it! Every song I write it some I really want to say....but am too afraid to just tell anyone with just words. [yoda]Good times music is![/yoda]

[GraingerGuy]

Music theory...I didn't like it at first...but now I love it! (I know...I'm a sicko...)

[hoey222]

Originally posted by BrewMaster

which do y'all write first, lyrics or music?

i usually do the music first. get the form together of how i want it to go an d then piece lyrics to it later. but that's me. whatever works for you.


i took all the same theory classes that topane took. I really enjoyed the music theory courses.

[whitak24]

man, i just do not know anything about music theory, composing, or anything of the sort. and i can't really read music. and i have no ear for music.

which is why i play instruments that have music available that consists of letters or numbers (chords or tab)