So, the forum's up and running nicely, and we've got a lot of good topics. Composing is one that hasn't come up yet. I guess in the videos of your bands there are original songs written by you, etc, but not much talk of it, still. So, this is a thread to talk about composing in every way possible - the working process, ideas, styles... Anything you want. Also, post your own compositions here for feedback, and for exposure.

I myself have dabbled a bit with composing. It has started slowly, by occasionally writing my own solos to some jazz songs, through improvisation. Still, a lot of my writing (which isn't that much, tbh) is based on me improvising on the piano, and picking up the things I like. Then, a couple years back, I was on a music camp in the States, and took a composing/improvisation class held by a Finnish professional composer. We played around, and he taught me some basic techniques for composing. The target was to compose a song to play after the week was up, in the final concert, in front of maybe 200-300 people. With his assistance, I wrote an improvised song. I came up with a couple good licks, and we built a song around it. The paper I played from read pretty much like this "A - melodies, B - chords, C lick 1, D lick 2 ---> A". So there I was, looking at this piece of paper, first improvising flowing melodies, transitioning to weird slow chords progressions, then into a bass movement, with improvisation over it, onto another bass lick, and some other improvisatino, finally moving back into the higher keys and letting the tune die.

The composer happened to live in the same city as me, and when he saw my father downtown, he had told him that I should contact him, or he'll be disappointed. He wanted to work with me again.

So a bit later, I contacted him, and we started arranging meetings, where we talked about composing, came up with ideas, etc. Every time I came there with the song more progressed, with more ideas, with better arrangement. He gave me good tips, and theoretical knowledge, and finally, the piece was ready. The idea for the piece came to me when I was reading the autobiography of a Finnish jazz pianist, Iiro Rantala. He talked about how he had written songs to some of his musical heroes, and I figured, I'd sort of write a tribute to John Lennon. The motive for my piece was the chromatic movement by the piano accompaniment of Imagine. I used it in many forms, the original key, minors, other keys, etc. Slowly the song built itself around these small ideas, being influenced by other pieces I've played, Mozart's Fantasy in D, for example (the structure). I named the piece Imagination. Here it is.

Great thread idea! I guess you took my idea from my comment in the 'post your band' thread to the next level.

I like that piece you played here. Well done imo. Believe it or not (as a drummer), I started writing a symphony It is nowhere near complete and tbh, I haven't touched it in a number of months now. This thread reminded me of it and maybe I'll finally get around to putting some more time in to finish. Naturally, I don't have an orchestra at my expense so it is all just in Finale for now.

I too have written some things on piano, but nothing quite as nice as what you've done here. I seem to approach it in the same manner as you, diddle around for a while with some improvisatory stuff and when something comes out that I particularly like, I start to build around that.

Edit: I'd also just like to say that I love e-flat minor 7 chords and intend on writing a piece around it one day.

Very nice piece Jabonator. I think composing is so self rewarding. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will be at. Its just like anything else, practice, practice, practice and you will see massive amounts of improvement.

I look forward to hearing more compositions from you in the future.


I think this tread idea is great too.

I use Finale for all my arranging. I am glad there are other people in this forum who use it to. What verson do you have? I upgrade it every year so I will be on 2012 pretty soon.

One of the cool things about Finale is that my buddy writes all the brass and woodwinds stuff, emails it to me, and then I tack on the percussion. This works great considering that we are in different parts of the country.



Does anyone else use this program, or any like it?

2007

that's a great thread.
I was thinking about the following : why not make a kind of band between 2+2ers ? i'm sure there are some great players out there on piano, guitar, drums, bass etc...
What do you think ?

Interesting to see a thread like this here! I'm a professional composer, got my degree in composing a few years ago. Since then I've been composing some solo and chamber works, but my main income has come from orchestration and arranging for symphony orchestra. Have been fortunate enough to get to work with several world class professional orchestras over the past few years. Sorry I won't provide any links to my stuff here, because I prefer to stay anonymous at these forums and at the poker tables and not to have my real name revealed. But I'll be following this thread and perhaps I can chip in with some feedback every now and then. If you have any questions about composing, feel free to ask.

PS. To you guys using Finale: switch to Sibelius, it will make your life so much easier!

Quadas, I actually was interested in Sibelius at one point for this special feature the software provides. It seems you can create a kind of MIDI sequence playing an instrument or even singing.
Could you give a feedback please if you tried it ? That would be nice

Not quite sure what you mean..? You can of course input notes by playing an instrument, or even singing, but I guess this is not what you are asking about.

The main reason I suggest Sibelius is ease of use. Since magnetic layout was introduced with Sib 6, the time I spend editing the layout of scores and parts was probably reduced by 80%. Everything just falls right in place and you rarely need to adjust positions or spacings manually. If you are a hardcore avant-garde composer who use a lot of microintervals, graphic notation or other special modern notation, then Finale is still a step ahead, but for basic notation Sibelius is just easier and faster to use.

Subscribed. I wouldn't mind doing some analyzing and discussion of works like we did in music school. It doesn't have to be classical type music either. I remember I did some crazy Zappa piece for one class and it took forever. I'm pretty sure I have it stored away somewhere still. We also had a teacher for our sight singing class that would make us analyze chords from obscure Beatles tunes for ear training in chords. As a percussionist, those classes were really tough for me at first. Luckily I did have piano training when I was in grade/middle school so it got easier after some pitch work. I'm sure it'd be a great refresher at the very least. Ear Trainer Pro is also cool software and I think there is another ear training program that is pretty cool but I haven't messed around with them since I was in school and forgot the name of it atm.

Here's an electronica instrumental I wrote while goofing around on Ableton Live. I guess it would be considered electronica. I'm not terribly familiar with that genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2atU6...ddAUAAAAAAAAAA

+1 to Sibelius. I just upgraded to 7 and I'm very pleased with it so far (though its taking some time to get used to the new taskbar).

Had to do Peaches en Regalia.... I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I love Zappa though and still love listening to peaches, even after that.

Ditto

My first ever youtube vid

This is a piano piece I wrote a few years ago.



Original recording was a bit dodgy, my sound engineer friend spruced it up for me.

FYembed

I really like this

Sibelius ftw!

Jabonator

That's a lovely song, I got a feel of JS Bach from the part just before the minor chording came in (which itself was rather fine), and the latter part I could definitely feel the Mozart influence.


Please take these as compliments, I hold Bach as the absolute best

Definitely complements. Bach is the greatest when it comes to flowing melody. I believe my teacher told me to think about Bach at one point as we felt I should write one part where the left hand takes command. And just how I tried to create some of the harmonies between the hands were heavily influenced by bachs inventions.

Here's a couple of midi sequences I did when I was 15/16 years old.

(I just chose the first random picture to upload them with, so disregard that.)





I have a few more lying around, but it's late and uploading takes a while, so I'll start with two and maybe post more if anyone's interested.

Normally, my stuff is piano-based, so maybe I'll record something or whatever.

Tooooooothy

very nice tti. i have never been able to compose for ****. jealous of those who can for sure.

Nice work TTI. Would love to hear an actual live recording of the second song.

Some nice stuff ITT. Here's an idea I've been wanting to develop that I ended up forgetting about until just now when I visited my soundcloud for the first time in a few months: http://snd.sc/HvZ7sL

Unfortunately my familiarity with this type of music is probably on par with the software I used for the sounds, which is not great, so I don't really know where to go from here.

very pretty. the counterpoint in the voicings are really pretty. i think it could use a bass line of some sort to round out the sound. really slow legato strokes.

Thanks for the compliment and the suggestion. Found the track and threw together a bass line for it. My ears are tired so the levels might be off but the notes seemed to work: http://snd.sc/IlYBvk