Someone posted a thread about writer's block and I have a theory that might help this. I posted this as a new thread because I'd like your thoughts on it. Feel free to rip it to shreads, or whatever.

[I intend to write a paper on this, but I don't know when I'll get around to it (see *draft at bottom of post) and I'd like people to benefit from it now. So here's a brief outline...]

Basically, I've identified only three general avenues to composition:

1. via Deliberate Appropriation: Learning materials (scales, chords, rhythmic patterns) and formal techniques (counterpoint, harmony, figured bass, etc) and 'constructing' music rationally.

2. via Serendipity: relying on free experiments, randomness (e.g. sitting at a keyboard and thumping out combinations until you hear something good, joining up written musical fragments, chords and phrases together to make chance discoveries that might lead you somewhere (also works for poetry and lyrics).

3. via Intuited Composition: This is getting your subconscious/superconscious mind to compose music intuitively and automatically, by listening to your mind's ear, or trying the musical equivalent of 'automatic writing' (jotting down notes that occur to you without hesitation, or singing/whistling into a recorder, or only if you're a good ear-player: play any notes that occur to you into a recorder) so that we might encourage a kind of 'purge'.

As far as I can tell, all creative processess involve some combination of the above avenues. I do have quite a few other approaches that fall within these three aspects however.

Kind Regards,

José

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*Formal Draft 'The Three Avenues of Composition'

1. Formal Composition: In the purest sense, this would be the deliberate appropriation of pre-prepared materials (tuned scales and modes, neuma and ragas, chords, arpeggios, progressions, rhythmic patterns, etc) using formulated techniques (species counterpoint, figured bass, chord-scale improvisation, ornamentation, use of dynamics, thematic development, polyrhythmic techniques, orchestration methods, etc.) This may involve traditional techniques, or methods devised by the composer, or both.

2. Serendipitous Composition: This is the use of various degrees of randomness to inspire new music-making, for example, listening to pitches with no discernable order to inspire new musical ideas that might not otherwise occur to the rational mindset. In this case, the composer would listen to pure, random, untuned pitches and wait to hear some string or cluster of tones that might appeal to the ear. These would then be cut, recombined, crafted. However, this technique can also involve facets of Formal Composition, such as a tuned scale or instrument. For example, the composer sits at a keyboard with a tape recorder or blank manuscript and plays randomly on the instrument, perhaps singing over it without fear of discords and without attempting to form known chords, scales or rhythmic patterns. When something appeals to the ear, it can be jotted down or later played back from tape machines. The most famous application of ‘Formal Composition’ to ‘Serendipitous Composition’, or rather vice-versa, is the use of pre-composed fragments of music that are recombined according to the throw of a dice, and if agreeable to the ear, used. The Musical Dice Game was popular in the 18th century as "a tabular system whereby any person without the least knowledge of musick may compose ten thousand different minuets in the most pleasing and correct manner". Mozart, Haydn and others are known to have experimented with it, perhaps merely as an aid to avoid common clichés.

3. Intuited Composition: This is music created by the unconscious mind, often appearing to have written itself, unbidden as though simply 'received' by the composer. Thus, the composer acts as an unconscious channel, like some kind of conduit or radio. This music comes during trance-like states or even in dreams, or perhaps only occasionally in the most inspired moments. It may be more common when the ego is transcended and the artist is able to let go of intellectual notions and ambitions that restrict openness. This can happen with the use of certain drugs (e.g. opiates), or through meditation, or as part of the natural course after many years of dedication to the art. It can also be encouraged through techniques such as a musical form of ‘automatic writing’ (i.e. on waking or after meditation, jot down whatever ideas come to mind.) Alternatively, sing or whistle into a tape machine any ideas that occur to you in real time, no edits or reshaping. Perhaps eventually, a new creative gear or plateau will be reached and ‘it flows’. (Like Serendipitous Composition, it should at least yield some interesting ideas to then develop by more conventional means.) It is also vital to set a minimum, regular time to compose daily that never changes, even when you have done enough at other times. This is because you are inviting the subconscious to ‘off load’ any harboured creativity, thoughts or ideas, habitually. © Copyright 2012, José A. Sotorrio. All right reserved.
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Quote J.A.S:

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Basically, I've identified only three general avenues to composition

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I think you may have overlooked the most commonly used compositional method. Plagiarism

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Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

RE: "I think you may have overlooked the most commonly used compositional method. Plagiarism"

1. via Deliberate Appropriation

Plagiarism? That's what I said ...

V interesting. This deserves further cogitation.

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Ohm's Law states, "Your PA isn't as powerful as you think it is".

Jose, Good observations. I don't know which catagory this falls into, but I find myself writing for the people at the venues I play. (Deliberate Appropriation?) I craft my tunes to appeal to the particular crowd response. The ambiance of the establishment is also a source of inspiration that figures in right along with my audience.

Actually, in this case, it's a "Three Venues" theory!

Your final paper should be well received.

Best
Rick

These represent a familiar pattern with people beginning composition. And they can be separated fairly easily with beginners - my S4 pupils for instance. I throw different ideas and methods at them and get them to try them. But it takes more than that to produce anything I would call music.

By way of analogy, every physical skill which you posess you start by consciously doing, and over time it becomes first natural and then subconscious. e.g. walking - watch the huge effort on the face of a toddler consciously putting one foot in front of another and maintaining balance. But when was the last time you consciously thought about walking? So it is with music. You must learn harmony, counterpoint, et al, but you need to first develop a knowledge of them, then a facility with them, and over due course they become second-nature. At which point separating your categories becomes both difficult and perhaps even unhelpful. There is no contradiction between good technique and intuition, so your categories of deliberate and intuition break down. Similarly I've heard several organists improvise fugues - so clearly the deliberate and seredipitious categories also breaks down.

What I think you have crystalised here is a helpful categorisation which might be beneficial to beginners and, might I say, also to teachers trying to help students in their compositions. But I believe that a natural synthesis of these categories occurs over time as the composer gains competence, and that in mature compositions disappears altogether.

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Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

Edited by Daniel Davis (18/02/12 01:25 PM)

Thanks. I did suggest that all creative processess involve some combination of the three avenues, not that they should be used completely seperately. But there are people who do approach it in such a way. Bob Dylan and others composed lyrics by cutting up words and joining them up until something appealed, which provided the rhythms and melodic phrasing (by some compromise). Perhaps just for fun, Haydn and Mozart had a go at an equivalent approach with groups of bars containing accompanied melodic fragments. So I don't think it's just beginners that might consciously focus on one avenue.

As a combination of avenues 1 and 2, there are professional song writers who sing nonesense syllables into a recorder over chords they're either improvising or have composed. I also know people who make albums of layered sounds, but they tend to start with a guitar part or idea they've composed quite 'logically', and then add layers of instrumentation and sounds based on what sounds appealing. A few of them pull off some good stuff but it depends entirely on their ear and taste, which can't really be taught (yet).

"What I think you have crystalised here is a helpful categorisation which might be beneficial to beginners and, might I say, also to teachers trying to help students in their compositions."

Thanks. One of the reasons I posted this is just to get it out of my 'things I should do' list. I know it's not fully explained (although absolutely everything can be criticised even with 1000 pages of justification). But as someone who is something of a 'musical expeditionary', I feel that we're all beginners in certain areas anyway. Fifteen years ago I understood western counterpoint and harmony techniques (probably better than now), but I was a complete beginner when it came to African polyrhythmics, Indian classical music, and early (pre-'common practice') western music.

My experience of western music education is not good. I absolutely despise it in fact, so we're perhaps on a different wavelength in that respect. The whole culture is far too self-conscious and scared of artistic failure to be creative. The fact that most people involved in music would be too embarrassed to sing spontaneous harmonies and rhythms (or to dance) is just absurd to me. And the fact that this is not a part of the curriculum is even stranger. Creativity is simply not encouraged. The main ambition seems to be about becoming a competant reproducer or 'elite interpreter' of other people's music.

"You must learn harmony, counterpoint, et al, but you need to first develop a knowledge of them, then a facility with them, and over due course they become second-nature."

I think this more true of (western) counterpoint than harmony. Everyone struggles with counterpoint and those who don't are perhaps not using their ears enough. But by listening to a lot of music, enjoying it and being interested in it (absolutely vital), some can develop such a great sense of harmony and can compose fine examples by trial and error (with careful listening) without proper training. With other forms of counterpoint, people can come up with surprising results from singing layers over a fixed melody -an approach that is popular in South Africa, in American folk and Sacred Harp music, etc.

All conscious (verbal) understanding has to involve categories to some extent, since words themselves are categories that combine to form concept categories. (Ironically, my facebook page has quotes about the inevitable problem with language that you mention). But unless we renounce language as a means to teach altogether, categorisation will always be necessary as an efficient means of digesting information. I think most people will agree that experience is far superior to any knowledge gained from description. If anything, the three avenues is an attempt to simplify and avoid numerous standard categories. I have another idea to re-catagorise instruments according to how they sound rather than their construction, but that'll be a later post.

Kind Regards,

José

Zawinul talks a little about composing at 25:50 ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs7LhL_I9kE

" Not thinking . Just concentrate . "

-( Easy for him to say .... )

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Music is it's own reward .

Never mind free harmony on the curriculum, I tried to get a class to sing today - oh no - won't sing in front of other people, and that was my best 2nd year class!

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Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

Exhaustion and a lack of decent nutrition is often behind it. Dinner, cigar and good nights sleep. Sorted!

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17ft here! Too deep for non divers.