MUSIC COMPOSITION STYLE

for the song writers and music producers of Sup Forums,
what's your creative process like?
Do you tend to improvise on some actual instrument a lot? do you come up with melodies and harmonic progressions first? Do you do everything directly through DAW software? How does your music come out?

What works for me is usually something like:
1-starting with some catchy musical idea
2-improvising on it (either on piano or guitar) and recording everything (most of the work goes here)
3-rearranging those recordings into a song

I should say that I mostly write folk and neoclassical kind of stuff

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/rARC2TU7VjI
dave-roland.bandcamp.com/album/montreal
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>Coffee on top of scores and piano

NO

Personally I improvise then turn those (mostly melodic) ideas into a coherent piece.

I mostly write into the DAW, because it sounds 100 times better than the MIDI of sibelius, but writing at the instrument with pen and paper also works, and is preferable for guitar or singer songwriter stuff.

I pretty much exclusively write fugues these days, occasionally viking MIDI for a game and have a WIP symphony I need to finish

We have a composition general

i don't have one work flow

hell one time i decided i needed to make a drum loop while fapping.

...

>not having an orgy video playing besides your daw window

>>Coffee on top of scores and piano
>NO

I've been putting my coffee on top of my electric piano for years now and I've only come close to spilling it and then killing myself as a result of it maybe 2-3 times tops. It's not a big deal.

>Personally I improvise then turn those (mostly melodic) ideas into a coherent piece.
>I mostly write into the DAW, because it sounds 100 times better than the MIDI of sibelius, but writing at the instrument with pen and paper also works, and is preferable for guitar or singer songwriter stuff.
>I pretty much exclusively write fugues these days, occasionally viking MIDI for a game and have a WIP symphony I need to finish

I find that having the full sound of a piano or a guitar makes my improvs and compositions way better, as opposed to having a shitty midi rendition. Also the delay from the DAW (i can't get it below 10-13 ms) makes me not as quick- i think i spend too much brain power making up for the delay and less is left for the actual improvising.

>We have a composition general
I know I've just realized that. this thread is more kinda specific though maybe, idk
it's just about the creative process

kinda makes sense

2-3 times of risking having coffee spilled all through my keyboard is 2-3 times too many. Coffee goes on the desk, not the piano, and not on your scores.

Also you should use a DAW with ASIOALL, which reduces latency to pretty much 0.

Pen and paper is too much work.
It's all about the sound. Dealing with physical sheets and writing every note down and musical notation just gets in the way as far as I'm concerned

>inb4 pleb

>2-3 times of risking having coffee spilled all through my keyboard is 2-3 times too many. Coffee goes on the desk, not the piano, and not on your scores.
I know, I should really stop doing that shit

>Also you should use a DAW with ASIOALL, which reduces latency to pretty much 0.

that's what I'm using, but you can't get it to 0ms. Even if you have a proper sound card the best you can do is maybe 5ms or something like that. I think you may be reading that value wrong somewhere in your daw.
For instance, cubase says my delay is 13.7something

>cubase
found your problem

is this a meme? I'm not really up to speed with mumemes

if not, what do you mean?

Don't know about you but I get lots of musical inspiration from fapping sessions.

Hmm strange. 13ms is unacceptable, if its noticable, its too much. Google that shit, there's bound to be a way to solve it. DAWs are made to be able to play into with no noticable latency so there's bound to be a way.

Spotted the pleb. Cubase is fine.

Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic Pro are all industry standard, used by professionals.
Source: I know professionals that use them.

"where do you get your ideas from?"

>be me
>have the idea to go on Sup Forums and make a thread about music composition so maybe I can learn from other people and get better at it
...
>i get ideas from fapping

k guys

I bet u make hmvs

well?? where is it?

If anyone likes Talk Talk you should listen to Mark Hollis talking about his process on Laughing Stock. Doesn't cover everything, there are a lot of written interviews with other bits and pieces. He improvised a lot of stuff on his guitar as a guide track and then worked other elements in later

youtu.be/rARC2TU7VjI

It's hard NOT making music these days. You cross a busy street with change in your pocket and then you've written a noise masterpiece

13ms is just barely noticeable. You can offset your midi output (ie, what gets recorded) by the same amount so it sounds instantaneous when you play it back with other instruments, but the audio feedback you get while playing is still there. I don't think there's a way around it, unless like I said getting a better sound card

That sounds pretty interesting- I like Talk Talk a lot. I'll check it out later

i just pick up my guitar or get on the piano and start playing whatever. usually during that 'whatever' some triggers an impulse and i just go with it, usually writing out the harmony/chord progressions before doing and top line or vocal melody.

I post in bandcamp threads as Dave Roland. As such I have no training or real understand of music except what I learned by listening to music. Anywho.

>make some drum loop first
>improvise various parts (bass, strings, leads) on synthesizer for half an hour
>cut up recording, pick the best parts and try to line them up to make a song

That's how 90% of my music is made. It's pretty hit and miss but I don't know a better method of creating a song from scratch. Here's some of my stuff for anyone curious, I'd also love any tips on how to compose.

dave-roland.bandcamp.com/album/montreal

That doesn't really help but sure, I get what you're saying.
I'm not really into noise myself (unless it's good noise like gy!be, but that's relatively rare)

I usually just listen to music for inspiration, then produce, then take some time off to eat/piss/shit/smoke, go back to producing, and repeat.

listen to stuff, improvise on instrument when on hand, hum to myself, try to remember stuff when it suddenly hits me etc.

Then put it into music in Sibelius for quick results and fiddling around , and engrave the final score in Lilypond.
Postprocess the midi-file a little in a DAW to make it sound less shitty.

Me neither. Just recording jams, noodling on ableton, FL and another old program I use from early 00's that I'm embarrassed to mention. Just play and record instruments all the time and write any cool thoughts you have down. Keep doing it and eventually you find your thing.

i should get a bandcamp page too. Those bc threads look neat

>try to remember stuff when it suddenly hits me

I spent years improvising shit on my piano and then forgetting everything cause I never recorded a single note.
As a result I'm kind of obsessed with recording every improv I do now.

On the other hand they were probably shitty songs as I was just starting out with that stuff, so..
eh

I rearrange fragments of old ragtime , boogie woogie, and gospel standards I've learned by ear and put it in a "progressive" context while focusing thematic concepts of historical events and personal childhood anecdotes through occasional lyric, but it's really about the tonal colors , often recorded in brief steam of conscious segments .

Ive been doing it like this for a year but lost track and went into the context of plunderphonics and other recent passing sub genres of the internet

I hope this isnt too weird

more like hymns am i rite??

I've recently listened to some songs i wrote in GuitarPro back when I was in high school, and I was baffled by how little sense they made to me. It was so weird.

I think I got a lot better at making music over the years, but I can't exactly pin down HOW I got better.
I guess finding your creative voice just takes time, at the end of the day. You just need to learn your shit, and you can only learn one thing at a time, so... it literally takes years.

I tend to find myself starting with chord progressions first, usually arrangement. Then i improvise melody with my keyboard, then vocal melodies and vocals. Lyrics are usually what sounds better over actual meaning t b h.