My Approach to Composition
The only rule of composing is that there are no rules. It's like Calvinball. As for my approach, I try to take a new perspective with each new composition. This might mean beginning with a title instead of a song structure or chord progression or melody and letting the rest follow. It might mean composing outside on some days, inside on others, sometimes standing on my head. I might choose an absurd set of instruments before I start writing, just to see what happens.
All this variety has a real purpose, and it's not just for variety in my music. I'm not particularly interested in variety in my results. I'm interested in inspiration. The phrase above, "just to see what happens," gets to the core of it. I've actually never tried standing on my head while composing yet, but when I do, it will be in pursuit of inspiration.
I think of it as if I have two minds that contribute to art: a conscious, judging, analytical, inhibited mind, and an unconscious, embracing, emotional, divinely-inspired mind. These might equate to left and right brain, but I prefer to call them front and back. The front is always on when I'm awake, while the back turns itself on and off willy-nilly. The front is where I store music theory, deadlines, distractions, instrument ranges, Sibelius chops, etc. The back is the source of all that is good, but because I can't turn it on at will, I need to prepare with the front mind, prodding the back to open up and drop me some gold nuggets. If you've ever had a great melody pop into your head, and you wrote it down so you wouldn't lose it, that was your back mind offering up a gift and your front mind accepting it. You need both to compose anything good.
My front mind is the reason I can crank out a tune in a couple hours. I wrote one today. I can make a bunch of random choices about the structure, progressions, etc., enough to form a complete piece, but without any inspiration, it's worthless. (Someone else might enjoy it, but until I do, no one else will hear it.) That's why I consciously vary my composing situations. Repetition and familiar settings don't yield much inspiration, but discomfort in a foreign environment might do the trick. Ever found yourself suddenly able to write a paper in the final hours before it's due? The pressure does wonders for creative juices.
This visualization revealed itself to me after I wrote "Defending Their Turf" last year. I started with a random sequence of chords (literally; I used a random number generator to produce the chord progression) just to see if it would work musically. I liked the first chord, then for the second chord I heard something a little different in my head, so I changed it. Then I lost a few hours to a frenzy of inspiration, changing every last pre-selected chord to what was coming out of my head. The piece that emerged is still my favorite original piece to date.
Douglas Welcome (17 Nov 2011 at 11:43am)
I am writing a personal statement right now in applying for a theory program. Czech out Rameau's preface to his Treatise on Harmony. He gives a little too much weight to reason (it was the enlightenment after all) but that balance of art and science, creativity and logic, reason and experience is being fought out to this day. I will send you this statement when I finish it. I think you may dig it.
I think Rameau says it best when discussing the principles and laws of music theory: "the mind may thus understand its (music's) properties as easily as the ear perceives them"
Also czech out some reading on lateralization of brain functions and how it really isn't the case. A good analogy for the actual harmony of logic and inspiration.
Hope all is well.
Joe (27 Nov 2011 at 7:42pm)
Hiya Doug!
I'd love to read that personal statement. More school, huh? Doctor Doug?
That quote from Rameau sounds like he's forgotten what art is. Remember Zappa's "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." If you can consciously understand a piece of art as well as you feel it, if you can put everything that it is into words, is it really art? If nothing is left to your senses and emotions, what artistic value remains? Reason is great for understanding sound, music theory, tools, mechanics, real things. But art is magic. I wouldn't dissuade someone from trying to understand it completely (I'm as analytical as anyone I know), I just think it's futile.
How's your life? Got any recital videos?