My Composition Process
Or at least some of my process. As my music and process has grown,
I've discovered that I've settled into a routine of how i compose. It's
not a rigid structure, as there have been pieces that have been exceptions to
this process, but for the most part, it goes something like this:
- First, I come up with an initial concept (as in what the piece is about) or
an initial gesture (for pieces that don't start out being about anything). Eventually
it leads to notes that I sketch out on staff paper. And I'll either sketch out the
beginnings of a piece or sometimes an entire piece. Sloppily, of course.
- Then I put the notes I have onto
[Finale]. Whether or not I
listen to Finale playback after i put in the notes is dependant on the type
of piece I'm writing. The playback option is very mechanical and dry and with
synthesizer sounds. For straightforward pieces, I'll use playback to double check
harmonies and mess with rhythm. For pieces where I'm more concerned about timbre
and/or suspension of time and/or severe dynamic contrasts, i don't listen to it at
all on Finale until the piece is done, relying on my inner ear. Then, if I do listen
to playback, I usually put all of the voices on piano, regardless of the real
instrumentation, so that I don't forget and cloud the actual acoustic sounds i have
in my head.
- For those straightforward pieces, if I only sketched out a few measures, then
sometimes after playback I can compose more of it directly on to computer. I have a
good sense of flow, i think, so it can be easy to hear what comes next after i've
heard what I've done from an outside medium in Real Time. It's easier to make pacing
adjustments that way as well.
- When I finish a good chunk of the piece or all of it, I'll print out a hard copy
of the notes, with some blank measures if I need to sketch out more on paper.
But the main reason i print it out has to do with phrase markings and dynamics
and articulations and such. The funny thing about this is that I discovered recently
that I can't do this directly on the computer. I need a print out of it to
sloppily put in a f or a mf or an accent or a swell here before I can put it onto
Finale.
- Having marked up my score in pencil, I then put those markings into the Finale
score. Usually by this point, I'm done with playback, since I use playback for notes,
rhythm, or pacing, and all of this stuff is done.
- The piece is completed when I look over the score and make any corrections, which
includes the score's presentation. I'm incredibly picky about the way my
score looks - dynamics have to go in a particular place under the notes, spacing
of the notes have to easily readable - basic things that will hopefully make publishers
love me.
Like I said earlier, there are always exceptions to this process. For example, for
the last movement of Desert Sculptures, i wrote almost all of it directly on the
computer. By this point, the middle three movements were frustrating me. I went
through this big process and mathematical grid and other crap to build it to what
I wanted, and while that's valuable, i was fed up with it. So i decided in the last
movement to move back to my intuitive process, using the computer not as a crutch,
but as a guide. So I wrote a bunch of measures,
would listen to its playback, adjust, write more, listen to playback, adjust, etc. etc.
Pretty much everything was done purely on the computer. And because of that, i was
able to finish it in about two days, which is very fast for me.
Another good example is my piano etude, which is so dependent upon being idiomatic
for the piano, that I pretty much 'winged it' entirely on the piano before I commited
it to computer.
So my process keeps on changing as well. Which is good, because it gives me a wide
pallete of resources and methods to draw from.
