Who of you is a composer ?

[Gheorghe]

I don´t have much hope to get any answers if I see that there is so little traffic on that forum. Where the musicians. 
If there is any, I´d like to read about you, and if you also compose ? 

And how you compose. 

I think I learned a lot about composing from Mingus, not that I would ever grow ten inches beneath that absolute and ultimate genius and giant, but it was a good point of departure, since until a few years I didn´t know to read or write music, and slowly learned a bit from some google tabels.....

So if I have a song in my head the hardest thing will be how to write it down on paper. 
I took music paper with me everywhere I went , last time this year during the summer spent in my second homecountry România, where I composed 3 knew tunes. 

Now I have luck, I have a young guy in the band who is a music student AND has them equipments for riting music on computer. 

Because he told me, that the sheet I rote is not useful (I can´t wright the rhytmic particularities though rhythm is the most important thing for me, but all them dots and breaks to write I don´t understand them.
So, since I don´t even know how to record my piano playing, he called me on phone and I played the shit and he recorded it on his cell phone, and he got it, I got all the stuff, written for C Instruments, Bb instruments and Eb instruments, for bass key which I don´t know and what you want....
So like that, composing is a pleasure! 

 

But, the most important thing, if there ain´t music in your head, you can´t compose ? 
As I am a piano player one might thing that I compose on the piano or at least work my ideas further out on piano, but NO. 

I don´t have no piano when I compose, it would destroy my imagination, since I have to hear the melody in my head, hear all the voices, all the instruments in my head, and the ideas never come when I sit at the piano, they come just on street, havin´coffee, lookin at something nice, or in musical dreams if I´m lucky and remember the melody when I get up....

One of my knew compositions will get performed on my next gig on 10 octombrie in Viena, the title is "Blonde Girl with Brown Eyes".......now who could NOT compose if he sees a magic blonde girl with the brown eyes, exiting exiting, and "poc" I head the melody in my head......was during a fashion shoppin tour, the inspiration was beautiful Serena.....

[Teasing the Korean]

For my last combo, which was active roughly between 2009 and 2018, I was the composer and arranger. I did everything old school, writing arrangements with pencil on paper.

I would typically start out with some some sort of overall mood/vibe I was going for, and then come up with a motif which I would expand.  Sometimes it would branch off and result in two different tunes.  

While I did write a few things in a more conventional song format, with 8-bar phrases, most of what I wrote involved thematic development, so there would be different sections beyond the typical AABA.  Some things were completely arranged top to bottom, and some included stretches with improvisation.

I would typically compose at the piano, but I have a good ear, so I can also compose when I'm taking long walks and record myself on my cell phone.

Keep in mind I was working in a peformative genre, in which the goal was create music designed to set a certain mood. 

[rostasi]

My composing days sprang from the 60s, but they were unusual in nature. I would sit and transcribe tunes (Buster Williams’ “Firewater” and Jarrett’s “Lucky Southern” being a couple of examples), and was a comp. major at North Texas in the mid-'70s. 

...but the reality starting in those '60’s/'70’s days was that I found writing little rat droppings on paper completely unsatisfactory for the sounds I was interested in. "Unlearning” was the preferred route for me. I still couldn’t tell you in any way what "key” something is in - and, frankly, never really cared. Theory class was a bore to me. I became disheartened in college by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to be in the electronic music classes until at least junior year - even tho I went with a reel in hand to the head of the electronic music dept. when I was in high school - looking to get approval to get into North Texas (actually, my first school choice was Naropa in Boulder - studying with “The Beats”). I was making electronic music in the early 70s already - why did I have to sit thru classes that I had no interest in and were completely unsatisfactory for the sounds I was wanting to create. My instruments of choice were percussion (early '70s: alto sax too because of Braxton) - and, yes, I went thru the rote of reading thru practice books for most of those days as well. Only one teacher for pitched percussion (Burton), but what I got from that were nuances of playing and not necessarily extreme technique.

Anyway, I still compose (audio, video, text, sundries…), but not in the usual manner. Most of my work is transferable to instruments if desired. I’m in the middle of a couple of large works - one of which that was begun in March of ’19 and expected to be done in Aug. ’25 - that have lately been reworked some due to the more public presence and ease of large language modeling.

tl:dr I don't hear music in my head (melodies, harmonies, etc)
when it comes time to compose.

Edited September 22 by rostasi

[Gheorghe]

14 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

 

I did everything old school, writing arrangements with pencil on paper.

 

 

 

So anyway you have more musical education than me since I just write the line for C-Melody Instruments and let others transcribe it into other keys, or clefs or what it is....
It´s quite a hard job for me to write notes on paper, I feel exactly the rhythmical particularities, but don´t know how to write them exactly. So sometimes I even tell the guys who make something useful out of it, that I was "too busy" or "too tired" or "I dreamed it and scribbeled it on paper after waking up and having coffee..." .....It´s like analphabets who are very inventive when asked to read or write something..., but anyway, the older guys know I never did learn to read or write music, and the youngsters let them believe my "stories"......😉

 

14 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

 

 

 

 I have a good ear, so I can also compose when I'm taking long walks and record myself on my cell phone.

 

 

Congratulations. That the most important thing. I also can compose making long walks, but when do I do long walks. In nature I usually go fishing, but fishing for me is like if my cat goes hunting. It´s pure hunting instinkt and sixth sense for the fish I want to get on the line, so  if I don´t cast lures or flies but choose that this time it wil lbe  "waiting game" with natural bait for peaceful fish like Carp, Tench or Barbel, I don´t have music in my head but concentrate 100% on the fish.
But I get musical sources they just come. 
But I don´t have the tehnical talent for record myself on cell phone: I gave up buying modern and performant cell phones many years ago and went all the way back to days when you just called or were called. I have the most simple handy and no one would steal it, and I have no headaches if some App doesn´t work since I don´t have any....

12 hours ago, rostasi said:

 

 

 

I still couldn’t tell you in any way what "key” something is in - and, frankly, never really cared. 

 

 

how comes ? The key is the musical colour. I must feel the key in the whole body, and know exactly in what key is the still in planning progress composition, because I hear the key. No keys, now music, of any kind..... at least for me....

 

13 hours ago, rostasi said:

 

 

 

Anyway, I still compose (audio, video, text, sundries…), but not in the usual manner. Most of my work is transferable to instruments if desired. I’m in the middle of a couple of large works - one of which that was begun in March of ’19 and expected to be done in Aug. ’25 - that have lately been reworked some due to the more public presence and ease of large language modeling.

tl:dr I don't hear music in my head (melodies, harmonies, etc)
when it comes time to compose.

Seems quite unorthodox for me. You don´t hear the instruments that will play your compositions, or with whom you gonna play them ???? 
You say you don´t hear music in your head ???? Especially when it comes time to compose. How could I compose if I don´t hear the music in my head ???? 

Or, is this other kind of music or more experimental. I´m "only" 100% jazz musican, never played any else music, never thought or heard in my head other music than jazz, and my compositions are here to enlarge the band book and to hear them beeing played, sometimes havin the luck they get radio play and I get some royalities...., but mostly because they are the best way I can express my feelings, and I feel very very honoured that the guys who play with me love my compositons and though they have more musical education, a longer list of star musicians they worked with or countries they traveled and three of them teach on top music institutes for jazz.... but those great and wonderful gentlemen like the way I compose and like to play it, what can I wish more.....? 

You.....are a serious composer, I mean music that´s harder to understand than jazz. I see on the thread of what music you listen very much other musical things, much of it autentical music from Eastern Europe ! 

[Teasing the Korean]

On 9/23/2024 at 1:03 AM, Gheorghe said:

It´s quite a hard job for me to write notes on paper, I feel exactly the rhythmical particularities, but don´t know how to write them exactly. 

I am able to write what I hear in my head, but if you put a strange piece of music in front of me, I may struggle with it.  

[sgcim]

I wrote a string quartet before I studied composition, and i went through this Amazing period where I heard the entire first movement in my head, and it came to me faster than I could write it down. I couldn't stop it if I tried. It was more like a psychic experience than the way I compose now. I was able to write it all out, and used it as an audition piece to get private, tutorial undergraduate composition lessons with the top graduate teacher, who never accepted undergraduates.

But by the time I started lessons with him, that 'magic' experience went away, and I couldn't write music like that anymore. He forced me to write twelve-tone music, and I hated that stuff, so the next semester I switched to the regular undergraduate tutorial teacher, and he told me he loved my string quartet, and said it reminded him of Shostakovitch quartets. I told him I never heard any Shostakovitch quartets. I then listened to Shostakovitch's quartets, and they didn't sound anything like my quartet.

He forced me to write 12-tone music, too, and I gave up and just wrote some crappy 12-tone thing for solo tenor saxophone., and never took another composition lesson again. Years later, there was a flood in the basement apt. I lived in, and my string quartet was destroyed. I wrote a symphony, and that was the end of my classical composing.

Now I only write jazz ensemble music on MuseScore, and I write what I hear in my head the normal way- one phrase at a time, slowly.

[Gheorghe]

On 9/28/2024 at 2:45 PM, Teasing the Korean said:

I am able to write what I hear in my head, but if you put a strange piece of music in front of me, I may struggle with it.  

Very similar to me, I can "read" only a tune I already have heard. 
And about writing I was stuck in a very very rudimentary kind of it. I can laborously write a sheet and when I show it my "cats", especially the youngest will say "I understand what you mean, but no no, I must re-write it. 
Or I play it on piano thru the phone, and he records it and sends me the sheet worked out on computer for Bb, Eb, and C-instruments so they  have the sheets for the next gig....

 

On 9/28/2024 at 10:58 PM, sgcim said:

I wrote a string quartet before I studied composition, and i went through this Amazing period where I heard the entire first movement in my head, and it came to me faster than I could write it down. I couldn't stop it if I tried. It was more like a psychic experience than the way I compose now. I was able to write it all out, and used it as an audition piece to get private, tutorial undergraduate composition lessons with the top graduate teacher, who never accepted undergraduates.

But by the time I started lessons with him, that 'magic' experience went away, and I couldn't write music like that anymore. He forced me to write twelve-tone music, and I hated that stuff, so the next semester I switched to the regular undergraduate tutorial teacher, and he told me he loved my string quartet, and said it reminded him of Shostakovitch quartets. I told him I never heard any Shostakovitch quartets. I then listened to Shostakovitch's quartets, and they didn't sound anything like my quartet.

He forced me to write 12-tone music, too, and I gave up and just wrote some crappy 12-tone thing for solo tenor saxophone., and never took another composition lesson again. Years later, there was a flood in the basement apt. I lived in, and my string quartet was destroyed. I wrote a symphony, and that was the end of my classical composing.

Now I only write jazz ensemble music on MuseScore, and I write what I hear in my head the normal way- one phrase at a time, slowly.

Twelve tone music....... and bein forced to write or play it......, I mean don´t play only diatonic, as Monk said "There is no wrong notes" , so even on piano with the flat finger position and different force for the keys you hit, you can make it sound a bit like that, or let´s say I hear Dolphy play solos. That´s not only diatonic and it is with heart, not worked down on paper. 
So for me "twelfe tone" is just a question of more emotion in the playing, let´s get far out if you want and can do it with sense. That´s why I also like good kind of 60´s avantgarde so called "Free Jazz". 
But European 12 tone.....oh no !!!!!

About string quartet: 
I really think that maybe if I have the money or someone may do some musical event for me when I´ll be older, let´s say 70 or 75, they will do somethin´for me and my musical wish would be to play the more "pretty tunes" I rote, (for example "Waltz for Serena") to have some dudes play it on strings. I think some of the musicians I know, know how to get some classical kids from some classic school and may write out the theme and solo and then do it on fiddle..... just soft played. Might sound pretty....

[sgcim]

14 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Very similar to me, I can "read" only a tune I already have heard. 
And about writing I was stuck in a very very rudimentary kind of it. I can laborously write a sheet and when I show it my "cats", especially the youngest will say "I understand what you mean, but no no, I must re-write it. 
Or I play it on piano thru the phone, and he records it and sends me the sheet worked out on computer for Bb, Eb, and C-instruments so they  have the sheets for the next gig....

 

Twelve tone music....... and bein forced to write or play it......, I mean don´t play only diatonic, as Monk said "There is no wrong notes" , so even on piano with the flat finger position and different force for the keys you hit, you can make it sound a bit like that, or let´s say I hear Dolphy play solos. That´s not only diatonic and it is with heart, not worked down on paper. 
So for me "twelfe tone" is just a question of more emotion in the playing, let´s get far out if you want and can do it with sense. That´s why I also like good kind of 60´s avantgarde so called "Free Jazz". 
But European 12 tone.....oh no !!!!!

About string quartet: 
I really think that maybe if I have the money or someone may do some musical event for me when I´ll be older, let´s say 70 or 75, they will do somethin´for me and my musical wish would be to play the more "pretty tunes" I rote, (for example "Waltz for Serena") to have some dudes play it on strings. I think some of the musicians I know, know how to get some classical kids from some classic school and may write out the theme and solo and then do it on fiddle..... just soft played. Might sound pretty....

Yes, I was talking about the European 12-tone music in the strict Schoenberg method of composition. It's good to know that even someone like you, from Austria,where it came from, hates it also!

You can go as far 'out' as you want to with tonal music, as Eric Dolphy proved.

[Gheorghe]

8 hours ago, sgcim said:

Yes, I was talking about the European 12-tone music in the strict Schoenberg method of composition. It's good to know that even someone like you, from Austria,where it came from, hates it also!

You can go as far 'out' as you want to with tonal music, as Eric Dolphy proved.

Well, my music is jazz and my mentor was the great Austrian pianist, composer and teacher , the one and only Fritz Pauer ! You can read it in my short bio on my homepage I think.....
It could happen when I was younger if some Engish speaking tourists asked me as a "local" about this or that about monuments from some classical composers and I´d answer "why not come to the Club so and so and listen to what´s happening NOW in terms of music in my town ?" 
We can´t denie some European influences in our "jazz" but it´s stuff that you can listen to.
And words like "strict method" sounds funny in my ears. I have heard some early Schoenberg stuff once and it sounded quite good.....

But I tell you what: In the late 60´s early 70´s there was Avantgarde snobs in the people of upper class, like Bankers who might "admire" "modern art", and "12 tone music° and say it´s fantastic and go to all them events to be seen and so, but I am sure they couldn´t even understand a 12 bar blues.....
It was just to be "in". 

Now it´s else: Bankers go to clubbings and so......

[sgcim]

Early Schoenberg was before he developed the strict 12-tone system. I like Transfigured Night. Then he turned into a mathematician, like Webern.

One of my composition teachers said Webern's music sounded like little farts.

[Gheorghe]

Music should be played from the heart, feelings, emotions, everything. 
I don´t know how music might sound, thats done as a mathematican´s work.....as I said, take it out in different direction, like Free Jazz was, but you have to feel the soul, the pulsation even if it is not a straight ahead. 

About me living in Vienna. Sure, my hometown but it´s always amusing how guys from overseas might ask me what kind of churchs, muzeums and stuff I could recomand to visit and I´m quite embarrassed by it. I live there, I know places that is groovy where I feel good, but let´s say, if I go to another country I also don´t do the typical cultural touristic hotspots.....I´d look how is the scene, have a look at peoples on street, might look if they have some cool fashion stores or malls, just discover it by myself with my priorities. 
Let´s say, doin´ sightseein by bus with a tourist guide would be a nightmare for me. That´s like a lotta sheep beein´ led by the shepherd......, not for me......