How do you compose?

[Herzeleide]

I've decided that when I finish university for this year I'm going to spend an hour a day on each facet of music: rhythm, melody and harmony: just concentrating on one of these things for a whole hour. I was inspired by George Benjamin recounting how Messiaen would make him just write thousands of chords for weeks on end.

It's a relaxed kind of sketching and although all of these facets are linked, generally for me one grows from the other...

[birabiro]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

I've decided that when I finish university for this year I'm going to spend an hour a day on each facet of music: rhythm, melody and harmony: just concentrating on one of these things for a whole hour. I was inspired by George Benjamin recounting how Messiaen would make him just write thousands of chords for weeks on end.

It's a relaxed kind of sketching and although all of these facets are linked, generally for me one grows from the other...

He told me to quit fooling around with exercises and write music!

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by birabiro

He told me to quit fooling around with exercises and write music!

The exercises do involve composing/writing music.

[Brewaeys]

When I was a student, American composer/conductor Lukas Foss told me that the only way to learn how to compose music is to compose. I would add now that listening to music, old and new, also helps a lot, especially if you can do that with the scores.

[shaunieshammass]

I compose by combining classical form with motifs from the middle-east - Persian, Arabic, Hassidic.
Shaunie Shammass

[Neumerologist]

Originally Posted by birabiro

He told me to quit fooling around with exercises and write music!

An appropriate quote of Vladimir Horowitz: "Formal exercises are bad for the ear and touch. They are not alive and are merely mechanical"

[Neumerologist]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

The exercises do involve composing/writing music.

I agree, I think it's a responsibility of the composer not the exercise as well. Writing a piece of music with the wrong mindset can be equally as bad. Writing exercises, approaching them as miniature additions to your oeuvre, seems like a very worthy endeavor. This is a misconception I personally struggled from early on...

Your endeavor of focusing on one aspect is bar none one of the most enlightening things you can do to broaden your pallette. There are many similar "types" of exercises like this too. One for example, composing a piece using solely a single note and it's octave transpositions. This can be taken very far, to two notes, three notes, etc.

[Organum]

It's essential for me to find a good theme, so I can work it out. The pieces I wrote (I am not very active anymore) were almost always fugue-like, or something that resembles that principle like e.g. fantasias, ricercares etc, almost exclusively for keyboard instruments and within a tonal context.
Normally I was composing at the piano, but in my head with pen and paper as well.

[nikitema]

Hello everybody.
Which music notation software do you use in composition?
My programm is MagicScore Software 7.

[Ariii]

Usually I just take ideas that I have and try to string them together into something that sounds musical .