Questions about how others on here compose their music

[Babaluma]

I had a few questions I wanted to ask the other players on here re their composing that I thought I may get interesting responses to.

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Please note I may not immediately reply to answers due to hectic work but I will read and appreciate all replies

[James W]

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Bit of a false dichotomy, in my experience. I come up with things that sound good, and experiment with them - which may or may not involve analysing them with what I know to develop it, as well as simply improvising to discover something I might not have done had I just relied on the analysis. So for me these are the two approaches, both valid: 1) systematic application of for want of a better word 'theory' and 2) improvisation - letting my hands wander and indeed wonder in a kind of 'what if I went here' way.

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Sure. The emotional appeal resides in the listeners' mind.

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

If I think it's good enough, I'll share it.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Learn and study more music.

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

My gut reaction would be that preserving a tradition is kind of inimical to what I want to do or indeed do (however incredibly modest). However, everything comes from somewhere, so I guess I want to preserve the tendencies of music of the past that I admire, in a way that - rather than facilely copying them - acknowledges that they themselves were trying to do something different at the time.

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

I studied composition at uni, but I am very much more focused on improv these days.

[Jim Soloway]

I generally start with a single chordal idea that intrigues me and build out from there in whatever direction that the spirit takes me. The music generally dictates the emotional direction rather than the other way around.

I believe that all music can have an emotional impact regardless of the source of the inspiration.

I like to share my music if it's reached a point where I believe in it.

Most of what I write (but not all) tends to fall into somewhat recognizable musical traditions. I find that there is a different sense of satisfaction when I write something that "feels like a standard".

These days I am much more focused on composing than improvising but the compositions then allow me the freedom to improvise within that framework.

[pauln]

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Ideas are emotion.

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Yes, sometimes no.

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

Nothing beats performance.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Inspiration seeks me.

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

Transcendance is traditional.

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Improvisation is composing.

[Gilpy]

I have written and recorded over 100 songs and had a few covered by other artists. Never a great success, but I have received some royalty checks and had some national airplay. (quite a while ago!) I should add that I've written relatively few jazz tunes. Mostly rock, country and R&B/funk.

I view writing as a necessary part of my overall job of being a musician. I write when I need songs, though sometimes they happen by accident. Whenever I get a musical idea I record it. I have many, most never get used. But I think it's important to just fool around and see what happens and keep the good ideas.

Writing good music is hard. You must be critical of your own work, reject cliche's, be prepared to discard something cool if it isn't working for that particular song. Having a deep reservoir of musical knowledge is a must, and the only way to get that is by listening to a lot of music in every style.

When it comes to lyrics, it's OK to use personal experience but ask yourself: "is this going to be interesting to anybody besides me?" Never try to cram the literal facts of your story into a song. Play with the facts to make a better song. Don't try to be clever. It wears thin after one listen.

So, to sum up, inspiration is a must but is only the start of a song. It takes skill, knowledge and practice. And most music is meant to be shared. Why bother to go through the formal process of writing a song if you're not going to share it?

[PatrickJazzGuitar]

I had a few questions I wanted to ask the other players on here re their composing that I thought I may get interesting responses to.

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Please note I may not immediately reply to answers due to hectic work but I will read and appreciate all replies

I write what I like, which are basically brazilian jazz and vintage jazz styles.

I compose only when inspired and I don't get inspired that often. On one occasion, a melody came to me in my sleep, and I woke up and remembered it, went to my guitar to nail it down. Usually, the melody and chords just erupt in me, organically. I don't really craft. I write lyrics either simultaneously ore later. But rarely do lyrics first. I mostly write using a piano, but sometimes a guitar. I'm a songwriter, mostly, and my styles are traditionally.

[ragman1]

I don't compose as much as I used to. Generally it starts with an idea, like writing a tune using, say, only the Locrian mode (because it's the hardest).

Then I wrote a chord progression using Bm7b5 as the tonic and started to solo on it. Afterwards, the first effort I heard that seemed decent became the melody, repeated at the end. Slick trick but I'm not good at original melodies.

Another idea was using the 9 of minor chords as the main sound. That was quite popular here. Written in 2017!

It would be nice to wake up like Paul McCartney did and hear Yesterday in my head! Hasn't happened yet :-)

[Babaluma]

Interesting replies, thanks all!

[emanresu]

1.Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

2.Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

3.Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

4.How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

5.Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

6.Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

1.never. never ever intellectual
2.yes
3.I share and present sometimes. The moment of sharing is exciting but since no one gives me money instead "nice!", sharing has no practical value.
4.forget about the thing completely, be fresh and good spirited. well rested. not in a hangover. get back to it when feeling good. <--- none of that forced and premeditated - that would be crap.
5.just see what happens.
6.improviser

[rpjazzguitar]

I almost always start with a melodic phrase I like. Then, I try to empty my mind and imagine that the song is telling me where it wants to go. I write it in Musescore as I go along

After I'm done, I find the harmony, which was probably in the back of my mind.

At that point, I take the chart to a rehearsal or jam and adjust it as needed, usually tweaks of melody, harmony or hits.

[mr quick]

I had a few questions I wanted to ask the other players on here re their composing that I thought I may get interesting responses to.

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Please note I may not immediately reply to answers due to hectic work but I will read and appreciate all replies

I'm no compositional expert, but I'll answer the questions regardless. I agree with both Jim and rpjazzguitar in spirit and method.

1: I rarely have very intellectual ideas to start with. Usually I'll be noodling and something will catch my ear, something which sounds musical and interesting. I'll noodle some more on the idea and make a quick recording so that when I forget, I can find it again.
These moments of inspiration are somewhat rare, but ever since I "gave up" on guitar it's been a luxury I can afford as I don't have any deadline to meet or anything like that. I've been working on a single idea for what must be close to a year now, and I only have two or four bars depending on how I want it to be counted. I try to let the music tell me what it wants to be, if that makes sense. When I wrote these first bars, I wrote it to be in the spirit of Luiz Bonfá and 4/4. One day, as I was noodling on it, it just started feeling like it wanted to be a waltz in the spirit of Chick Corea, and that was it.

I do think that it's unrealistic to be dependent on inspiration and emotion, and if one wants to be prolific, one should have the capacity for an intellectual, methodic approach too. My dear friend Afonso is a hundred times more prolific than me, and a hundred times more methodic.

If I were to return to focusing on guitar as anything but what it is today, I would want to focus on methodic and even somewhat mechanical composition. This would be to keep my "muscles" fresh and strong so that when inspiration strikes, I can really run with it.

2: Why not? I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. Didn't "Bright Size Life" start out as an exercise?

3: I do not need to share my music, and my satisfaction has always been just doing it for myself. I do have a degree in guitar performance, but even then I was reluctant to share. These days, I have a couple of people around me (my partner and the aforementioned friend) whom I like sharing my music with, and I've recently started uploading a few clips to my instagram. It's actually fun to share, and the social component of music can be so wonderful.
All that said, I could live the rest of my life never showing a second of music to anyone and be more than happy.

4: I think one trick is to consider something "done". Even if it's dissatisfying, because I believe it frees up your mind. Change it later when you have a better idea, but let it be done for now.

Sometimes, you don't have that luxury, and you have to get creative and methodical. I actually used this method to finish a tune years ago. I had a jazz funk band going and we had our first concert coming up, and I'd started writing this song in a moment of inspiration, but got completely stuck on the B section. I took the metro to some high ground in nature and sat in the sun while writing methodically with my guitar; if an idea was "acceptable" I'd write it down as a number, and then work on variations on that. I did this until I felt I had a great first half, circled that, then did the same for the second part. In the end I was happy with the song, and this is what it sounded like at rehearsal when I brought it to the band:

I think this method works for me. Even if it's not great, call it "done" and move on. When you get a better idea, change it. I think that if you're writing and have a great A and C, you'll use what you know from them to "fix" the B.

5: I don't care much about tradition for myself, except when I'm writing Samba-inspired music, out of respect. You can't escape your sources of inspiration anyway!

6: I think composition should come first. Improvisation is on-the-fly composition, so I think it's smarter ot start in that end. The more I compose on guitar, the more prolific and comfortable I feel when improvising. I think it helps build a subconscious instinct as you're working methodically, which over time creates improvisational intuition.

[Peter C]

It absolutely matters to share my music; I once complained about how little feedback original music gets on this forum in general for example, so yeah, it's important to me.

It would be very helpful if everyone replying here could post a link to a couple of their compos so the words can be matched up to the music. Mine are down for the moment, being re-worked but I could post old versions if required.

Personally, I have no conscious method for making up tunes; many days I'll pick up the guitar and just run through some changes or arrangements. Occasionally, something just "appears" on the fretboard, and I just know that it's the beginning of a story which will gradually unfold over a period of weeks, months or even years. That's all I know.

[Hep To The Jive]

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Neither, just byproduct of noodling around.

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Sure why not? Worked for Bach.

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it

.
It matters a lot, naturally I wanna it to sell and be popular! anyone who say otherwise are not telling the truth.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Gotta do it a lot, that's the trick. Write 100 tunes, maybe 5 will be any good. That's what famous songwriters say anyway.

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

It doesn't matter to me.

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Both.

[Alter]

I do all of these. I usually go into writing mode when i 'm working on a project, otherwise i prefer working on improvisation and technique. If writing an album, i choose tempos, moods, create the framework and then start working on individual tunes. It might be a chord progression, a melody, something i sang, something on the piano, a composing exercise or vehicle. Some tunes i like and i finish them, others just don't go anywhere.

Composing is like improvising, you just practice it and get better at it in time.. hopefully!

[henryrobinett]

More and more I mainly consider myself a composer. There’s no rhyme or reason how I write music. I just start. For me it rarely, if ever, comes from noodling. Well that’s not quite true. Seriously I have no idea. Each song I’ve written was different. I kind of wish I had a formula. The main thing I’ve learned is to try and not second guess my intuition or first blush of an idea. Nine times out of ten that’s the right one for me.

Sorry I don’t remember the question. I’m writing music music right now.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[henryrobinett]

I’ve been a reluctant composer in the sense that I’ve always tried to advance myself as a player. But it turns out most people see me as a writer. It used to frustrate me. I wanted to be known as a player. It seems people are ok with my playing, I guess. But I rarely get compliments on that. But very often I get compliments on my writing, both from musicians in the band, other musicians and the audience. So I’ve decided not to fight it. I have a lot of people request songs I’ve written years ago. It makes me happy.

Writing for me is not an intellectual exercise. IOW I never try an intellectual concept. It’s always a melody, groove, chords, rhythm or an aesthetic concept of emotion. Like feeling of romance or anger or beauty- then it might come out if I do enough conjuring and string pulling. Whenever I tried to write something like XY it never worked. I need to write a complicated fusion song. Or a Trane changes tune of a beautiful ballad or something to go with this key or scale I’m jamming in. Nope. I’ve never done that. That cheapens the experience of being a composer FOR ME. IOW writing I see as a self expression of something personal. Not an intellectual exercise.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[PatrickJazzGuitar]

I had a few questions I wanted to ask the other players on here re their composing that I thought I may get interesting responses to.

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Emotion, nothing intellectual in my music. Though I appreciate some of the experimental things that Brubeck did.

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Well, Bach certainly proved it, with Prelude No. 1 in C Major from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (think 'Ave Maria').

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

I get a lot of satisfaction from just doing it, but sharing it is at least half of the joy of doing it.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

I don't. I'm incredibly lazy. Inspiration comes whenever it comes, I do not try to bring it on in any way. I should, though, but I don't.

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

I write what I like, and that tends to be traditional. I admire those who come up with new stuff, and still sound great, like Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan.

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Composing.

Please note I may not immediately reply to answers due to hectic work but I will read and appreciate all replies

I learned early in life, my forte was composing and not improvising, which is why, though I played sax and flute throughout my formative years, by my late teens I switched to guitar, and eventually piano, which are much better instruments for composition. I mean, what's the point of focusing on horn playing if you are not either into classical music, or improvising jazz?

?????

[Christian Miller]

Speaking of Bach Figuration preludes - it’s very difficult to make a piece based on such a simple idea tell a story over the course of several minutes. These are far from exercises but actually in their own way more virtuoso than any fugue.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[pauln]

One of my first jazz compositions went like this...

Back in the early 90s before I gave up TV, there would be late night commercials of pretty women encouraging gentlemen to call them (and pay to "talk"). One night the same commercial ran a few times and the ending had the beginning of a slow jazz tune that faded out after the first three chords...
Just out of curiosity I found them on the guitar, but then began to try things to extend and finish the tune. After a while I noticed that the chords' roots were employing about half of the various notes of the chromatic scale, and I set out as a compositional challenge to make the progression roots ultimately encompass all of them.
I cheated a little by using a device I call "diffuse modulation". The result was a twenty-two chord progression you may imagine in the form of a figure of eight loop, where the loops are in different keys, but it is not clear at what point the keys exchange, it's just somewhere within the area where the paths of the figure of eight are around the region where they cross themselves - these were kind of lush, inversions with extensions and alterations hiding any particular change you would hear as the locus of modulation.
I also failed a little; was never able to include a chord that was rooted on the four.

[James W]

Bit of a false dichotomy, in my experience. I come up with things that sound good, and experiment with them - which may or may not involve analysing them with what I know to develop it, as well as simply improvising to discover something I might not have done had I just relied on the analysis. So for me these are the two approaches, both valid: 1) systematic application of for want of a better word 'theory' and 2) improvisation - letting my hands wander and indeed wonder in a kind of 'what if I went here' way.



Sure. The emotional appeal resides in the listeners' mind.




If I think it's good enough, I'll share it.




Learn and study more music.




My gut reaction would be that preserving a tradition is kind of inimical to what I want to do or indeed do (however incredibly modest). However, everything comes from somewhere, so I guess I want to preserve the tendencies of music of the past that I admire, in a way that - rather than facilely copying them - acknowledges that they themselves were trying to do something different at the time.




I studied composition at uni, but I am very much more focused on improv these days.

Interesting reading this from the perspective I have now. I took up playing classical instead of jazz guitar at the beginning of March and not long after my thoughts (re-)turned towards notated composition much more than they were mostly before. So now I am not so much focused on improvisation in my composing, but rather finding ways of developing and milking ideas that I've already had - I guess you do that in improv too, but with notated composition one can afford to be much more systematic e.g. I like to use rotational arrays which is something Stravinsky used in his for his serial music. Otherwise it's similar - creating chord progressions, searching for the nice and colourful notes etc.

[ragman1]

Good questions!

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas, for example based on a particular scale or are they emotion based, like a musical portrait of a friend?

Probably what you might call an intellectual idea.

Can music created as an exercise still have emotional appeal?

Rarely, imo :-)

Do you feel it matters if you share your music or not? Do you get satisfaction just from doing it.

I just did it by myself for a long time. When I found this forum I posted some stuff which, admittedly, has its attraction. On the other hand, once it's posted I tend to completely forget about it. You'll have to figure that one out.

How do you progress with your writing to seek new inspiration?

Listening. I listen to a lot of classical music. That kind of music is much, much more interesting and eclectic than people give it credit for. It's not just Beethoven's 5th and all that.

Do you look to transcend or preserve a tradition? (not a dig at traditional forms, I was not sure how to phase this but I am sure you get what I mean!)

No.

Are you more focused on composing or advancing as an improviser?

Improvising, but I don't much think in terms of advancement. Self-interest is not very ennobling.

[kris]

I like composing my own musical tunes.
This requires imagination and creative inspiration.
It was often the case that I was inspired by the sound of keyboard instruments, but also by playing solo guitar.
You have to listen to a lot of music and be a universal musician - it helps.

[Cunamara]

I enjoy composing- following a musical idea where it wants to go. That's how I experience it- I am not writing the piece, it is revealing itself to me. Bob Weir (considering the source) has stated in multiple interviews that he believes songs already exist somehow as entities and seek out receptive individuals to be written and come into the world. I would go that far, but I think that a good song may already exist subconsciously and that my composition process is basically accessing that.

When composing, my experience is emotionally-based. When I have specifically written things from some sort of theoretical basis, the end result is usually not very interesting or satisfying. It sounds like an exercise. When songs have seemingly fallen out of the guitar, those are usually the best results. When I hear things written by others that sound like they were following some theoretical construct, it might be intellectually interesting but usually is not personally effective to me. There is a whole range of musicians I don't listen to very much for that reason- the music they play sounds like solving puzzles rather than music. Other people may dig that, which is fine. We like what we like.

Composition and improvising are essentially the same process, except that improvisation is in real time: one minute's composition for one minute's music. Composition can be hours of time for one minute's music. Developing each supports the other.

I find that moderately skilled jazz musicians don't want to play original music. If the music moves in odd ways instead of ii-V-I or something else they already know how to play over, they'll be unenthusiastic at best and are uncomfortable. They'll do you the favor of going over your little tune. Well-skilled jazz musicians, in my experience, are excited to play new music and see what they can do with it. They'll see you as doing them a favor of presenting something new to play (and if the piece sucks, they'll let you know which is really valuable).

[Bob_Ross]

Do you come up with tunes as intellectual ideas ...[snip]... or are they emotion based ?

[Apologies if someone's already pointed this out, I haven't read any replies beyond the OP]

Your supposition that Intellectual vs Emotional approaches are antipodal, and mutually exclusive, is misguided. They can be -- and almost always are -- some combination of both.
And, arguably, some combination of neither.

Many years ago I was sitting around with two other composers talking about that mythical Intellectual vs Emotional/Head vs Heart dichotomy, and Composer #1 asked "So tell me, how do you come up with a new piece?"

Composer #2 started "Well, I get an idea, and then..." but Composer #1 interrupted with "Ah-ha! See?!?! You get an 'idea' ...you think of something in your head! When I'm writing a new composition, it starts with a feeling...in my heart!"

To which, bless his soul, Composer #2 calmly replied "You only think it comes from your heart."