My Composition Process
Hey Guys! Hope all is well! Today I’d like to talk about my composition process. It’s a question I get from a lot of young composers, and a process is an important thing to develop. But I also want to focus on what to do after you’ve finished a piece and how to take it to the next level. Any fellow composers who are reading this feel free to add or subtract from this list
1. Sketch your Idea: I’ve probably finished one fifth of all the composition ideas I’ve had. I’m not even kidding. But don’t let that discourage you. Anytime you have an idea, take some time to sketch it out thoroughly. You can do this on manuscript paper or on your piano or guitar. But you do want to have something down before you take on the daunting task of using notation software. Depending on the instrumentation, consult someone who plays those instruments to see if they can give you some orchestration guidelines to get you started.
2. Notation: A good friend and mentor once told me that software programs like Finale and Sibelius are for notation, not for composition. That means that the more detailed your sketches are, the easier it will be to put your piece into notation. Otherwise, your ability to work the software will hinder the composition ideas you might have. In general, give yourself 4 to 8 weeks (1 to 2 months) to notate a piece. That might not seem like a lot of time but you definitely want to build your composition speed
3. Seek advice: Once you’ve finished your first draft, start showing it to your peers to get some advice on how your progress is going. My advice would be to only show it to 3 people: another composer (usually a teacher, sometimes another student), a musician who isn’t a composer (usually the person you want to play the piece) and someone who isn’t a musician (my mother is my go-to). I keep the number low so you I don’t get a lot of conflicting opinions at once. It’s also important that you have a draft that’s complete enough to show, but not something so airtight that you can’t make changes to it.
4. Editing: Normally, I spend a whole week just editing the finished piece. The best part of anything I’ve written has been the last thing I added. Read that again. Now this doesn’t mean that you work on a piece indefinitely, which is why I usually give myself 2 months to get a piece as good as I can get it. Editing I usually divide into 3 sections. Listening without looking at the score, listening while looking at the score, and looking at the score without listening to it.
5. Engraving: Engraving refers to purely cosmopolitan aspects of composition, making sure dynamics and articulations are abundant, making sure your staff lines fit neatly onto a page, breath marks, bow marks, slurs, all of that. As meticulous and tedious as this can be, engraving really separates amateurs from professionals. The nice thing is that engraving doesn’t have to be done in isolation. I’ve engraved during class, waiting for the dentist, and even on airplanes.
6. Finding and confirming players: While sometimes it’s nice to write something just for the fun of it, everything you write should be with the intention of having it performed. This means be weary of investing time into a large ensemble piece unless you have a good relationship with that ensemble. Chamber pieces are easier to put together, but here are somethings to consider when finding players. If you know a player is really good, but you don’t personally know them, don’t be afraid to approach them, albeit respectfully. It’s nice to have close friends play on your pieces, but don’t assume they’ll give their all for a project of yours. Also pay attention to players who play on the pieces of your peers, the ones who do it often are the ones who will be the most comfortable taking risks with young composers. This is also who it’s good idea to communicate with players before you even begin a piece so that this step is a little less stressful. Commissions are rare blessings. If you are asked to write something by someone you respect and trust, move mountains for them.
7. Schedule rehearsals: It’s helpful if you have a specific concert in mind for a piece, this gives you and the players a clear goal to strive for. How many rehearsals and how often you rehearse varies from piece to piece, but keep in mind that your players often have other commitments, and your piece is very rarely their top priority. That being said, they will work with you if you work with them. Excel spreadsheets are great tools for getting everyone’s schedule aligned.
8. Rehearse: This is easily the hardest step, because leading a good rehearsal requires very different skills than writing a good piece. Here are some good guidelines to follow. Try to have your first rehearsal AT LEAST two months before the concerts. Try to have AT LEAST 3 rehearsals with the full ensemble and 5 rehearsals with soloists or smaller groups. Try to rehearse AT LEAST half an hour each time you meet. This might seem like arbitrary numbers, but I promise that you can never underestimate how much time it takes to put a piece together.
9. Promotion: Once you’ve confirmed that your piece will be performed on a concert, promote it earnestly. As annoying as social media can be, it can be a great tool for reaching people that you can’t reach personally. If your piece is part of a larger concert, make sure you promote the other composers/musicians that will be featured. That’s not as a formality, you really want to build a good relationship with your peers.
10. The Concert: Always a nerve-racking moment for me. A few things to remember: Dress well, if for no other reason than to get some good pictures. Be as early as the performers, even if you’re not performing, your presence makes a difference. Stay calm throughout, a musician/stage manager can handle any crisis better than you probably can. Don’t expect the performance to be the best the piece has ever sounded, if you’ve written the piece well and rehearsed with your performers adequately, the concert will always go well. STAY FOR THE WHOLE CONCERT, doesn’t matter if your piece is early in the program or not. Do crowd work after the concert, take all your praise and compliments with humility and without cynicism. Concerts days are the best, I’ve never forgotten the exact date that a piece was premiered.
11. Compensation: If goes without saying that performers should be compensated for the work, at the absolute latest the hour before the concert. If you are a struggling college student and you’re working with other students, financial compensation can be substituted with a nice gift card or handwritten card. I also like to take players out to lunch/dinner afterwards when feasible. Again, I don’t do this as a formality, you really want the players to view the experience as getting to work together on something rather than them doing you a favor.
12. Promotion (Again): Regardless of how the concert goes, social media is a great place to thank your players and collaborators publicly. Be articulate with how much their help means to you, how you speak about your work says a lot about you. Concerts are also great moments to get some good group pictures, hence the need to dress well.
13. Recording/Editing: Whenever possible, secure a recording of a live performance of your piece. Very rarely will you get hesitation or resistance from the stage managers or program directors for this, but I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Composer concerts very rarely get big crowds, and MIDI playback files are really only meant for your ears, so the vast majority of the people who hear your work will be hearing recordings of live performances. If you’ve got the time, make sure to edit the live recording through a software like Pro Tools (I’m cheap so I use Audacity). You can increase the volume, cut out applause, maybe edit out a mistake if you’re really good. Basically, the summation of all the previous steps is getting a good live recording so you really shouldn’t slack off in this step.
14. Approval: I like to send the live recording to the musicians involved in the piece before publishing it online. Very rarely do they get to hear themselves on recordings, so it’s a nice final thank you to all the hard work they’ve put in on your behalf. It also opens the door for future collaborations. Whenever possible work with the same musicians on different projects, composer/performer relationships are indispensable.
15. Publishing: Share the recording on SoundCloud, YouTube, a personal website, etc… You want to keep a good handle on your music sharing accounts, especially a personal website, it’s how most people will hear your music. Keep a healthy balance of old and new recordings, old and new pictures, and even a blogpost every now and then 😊.
Thanks for reading! Tune in next month for a new blogpost.