Composing Insights Blog

    
Composing Insights Blog    10:43 on Monday, August 20, 2007          

cooppress
(177 points)
Posted by cooppress

Hi Everyone,

I want to invite all composers to visit my blog site that is like a daily log about my composing activities and a place for readers to comment and ask questions. I have created this site in order to provide performers, listeners and composers with a detailed description of a composer's daily experiences with the creative process. The posts will provide discussions of the inspirations, challenges, and successes of a composer from the inception of the piece to the culmination in performance. I will provide a link to where you can see and hear the works in progress. Comments and questions are always welcomed. Here is the link: http://www.composinginsights.blogspot.com/

Dr. Sy Brandon, composer
Professor Emeritus
Millersville University


Re: Composing Insights Blog    14:04 on Tuesday, August 21, 2007          

Account Closed
(394 points)
Posted by Account Closed

Please pardon me, but I don't have a google account, so I am leaving my reply from your blog here. This is more than a reply, it is a little bit of my technical approach to composition as well.

..."a lot of general planning goes into creating a piece of music before a note is written." -Dr. Sy Brandon

This sounds EXACTLY like me talking. I preach that music is so much more than notes on paper. I feel this gets lost in the training of musicians. Because the mechanics are so very hard to master at times, the feeling for the song is sometimes lost. Planning is so important too like you said, it lays the backdrop for the notes, and prepares a moment ready to be captured in song! Who would care about Darth Vader's Theme if we didn't know who Darth Vader was? Seeing him, hearing the theme, and we have a full appreciation for the moment he enters the scene and we hear the "evil notes". Somtimes we don't even see him, but the notes tell us he is coming through the mist.

Planning also has the roots in place that make the song work for us at all the levels in music. Music can tell a story as well as describe a scene. Breaking the piece up into movements like it so often is in Orchestral pieces allows this story to be told in intervals, and allows us time to ponder what we heard before proceeding on to the next chapter. Another important part of planning can also use the tools of theory and composition techniques like 3 times and out. (repeating a phrase 3 times, and then moving on to the next phrase). The 12 tone method sometimes used by composers like Mahler. I like to get creative and intermix all of them while at the same time trying to convey an emotion or tell a story, or paint a picture. A picture is worth a thousand notes!

Another thing to remember is that people like what they are famliar with in music. If they hear a bunch of notes that are never repeated in the song, then it will be hard for them to like it. The song will become random noise to them. That is why I often make an attempt to use the 3 times and out method, (or other repeating techniques) this forces them to hear the melody, and the untrained ear is then more reseptive to the melody. The more trained ear can accept longer passages and actually becomes quickly bored with simple phrases that are repeated over and over. I like to come up with very complex phrases and then repeat them or simple very long slow ones that repeat. This deeper phrasing is kind of like the middle ground for everyone.

These are some of my thoughts after reading some of your blog, and you got me to thinking deeper about my own composing.

-AZFlutist

<Added>

I need to give credit for the 12 tone method to the man who actually gets credit according to most music sources of the 20th century, Arnold Schoenberg. I know I have heard these techniques in Mahler, yet Mahler was earlier and perhaps might have been the true inventor? There has been much discussion on this subject over the years. I do not want to invoke a debate on the topic, both were well known and both composed great music. Schoenberg embraced the techniques of Mahler in his later years, and really did a complete turn around from his earlier negative statements on the 12 tone system.


Re: Composing Insights Blog    14:26 on Tuesday, August 21, 2007          

cooppress
(177 points)
Posted by cooppress

I'm glad my blog got you thinking. The 3 times to repeat something before going on is a good guideline. Be careful to not make that a rule. Sometimes the music you are writing will tell you otherwise.

Dr. B


   




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