Planning a new piece of music

[Kevin]

Just exactly how much planning do you do before you actually start on a new piece?

[steve]

Greetings all! I'm enjoying a rare day off and thought to catch up a bit on back reading here.

I consider my compositions divisible into three different styles:

1. Improvised into sequencer - no planning here.

2. Light throw away pieces written for fun and to alleviate boredom - next to no planning here.

3. Compositions proper, with which I struggle the most to develop my abilities further and further with each attempt. The planning is extensive and never really ending as even afterwards new ideas about the pieces creep in and demand investigation, and sometimes reworking of existing material despite all the previous planning.

[Ed Sharpe]

You might wnat to define what you mean by "planning".

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is: depends.

The size and length of a piece influence how much planning is needed.

A “simple” one page piano piece like San Antonio Rainbow required very little if any planing. The only plan might have been “write a short one page piano tone poem”.

A piece like Insomnia take just a little more planning: explore 5 against 7, work out the sequence of tri-chords to use, and decide on a form (ABA).

A longer and larger piece takes more planning and “documentation”.

A piece like Black Fire with 19 instruments, 281 bars, 51 pages, and 12 minutes in length takes a lot more planing and documentation. For this piece I created a spreadsheet to document the form of the piece. I was constantly updating and revising the spreadsheet to reflect the changes in the piece as I worked on it. The spreadsheet served as a guideline, but not as a ridged blueprint.

I have started working on my Symphony No. 0. It was in what I call the pre-planning stage for over a year. I have built a large Mind Map to document it. I have now started working on the symphony using the mind map as a guide line, but updating it as I go along as things change.

Planing does not stop once you have begun “writing” the music.

Tools I have used: Spreadsheets, Mind Maps, Graph paper, Colored Pens and Highlighted.

[Kevin]

I wonder if you would like to share the tools that you use and how you use them because they are all new ideas to me.

[Ed Sharpe]

Free mind mapping software: sourceforge.net/projects/freemind/

[Ed Sharpe]

Are you asking how to use a spread sheet?

[Kevin]

Oct 5, 2011 21:59:20 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

Are you asking how to use a spread sheet?

Only in it's use to help planning a composition Ed!

[Kevin]

Oct 5, 2011 21:49:50 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

Free mind mapping software: sourceforge.net/projects/freemind/

I missed school the day they did this! In fact I have never used one. ;D

[David Stowell]

"Just exactly how much planning do you do before you actually start on a new piece? "

None.

For me, planning everything in intricate detail before starting would stifle the creative urge, and I would lose interest. (I had to do all that kind of stuff when I worked for a software company and wrote detailed specifications).

[Kevin]

Do you find that the music flows better that way David?

[Joseph]

I think my efforts may be more in line with David's process. The best parts in general have been what one might call mistakes. I usually make more interesting mistakes than notes I may have planned.

[Ed Sharpe]

Again I ask; define planning.

What I am really describing is documentation.

[Ed Sharpe]

Again I ask define planning.

I think you are jumping to conculsins when you state "intricate detail". I am not planning things at an intricate level, but a high level. General outlines, large forms and structures.

I do not know about you but I need to keep notes on what I am doing when dealing with larger forces. It may seem like a lot of "planning" for my symphony, but we are talking about a piece that calls for more that 50 parts, five movements, and more the an hour of music. Keeping that all in my head is a bit much.

[Ed Sharpe]

Simple Spread sheet documenting Black Fire [http://www.scoreexchange.com/scores/88632.html] . If you examine the score closely you will see that it does not match exactly with this as I did not update it with the final revisions.

Attachments:

[Deleted]

While writing my piece "Escape," my spurious creativity was feeling pretty stifled. I found out that doing some planning really helped. After not being able to write anything for awhile, I eventually sat down and wrote down exactly what I wanted my piece to sound like. I devised thirteen or fourteen sections, notating for each the overall chord quality of the section, as in major or minor, and which themes I wanted to use where. The piece still took a few months to finish writing (not to mention the multiple months following that I spent in final editing stages), but I consider that time I spent planning a little to be highly critical in the completion of the piece.

[Ed Sharpe]

Oct 9, 2011 3:44:49 GMT @hdavidm said:

While writing my piece "Escape," my spurious creativity was feeling pretty stifled. I found out that doing some planning really helped. After not being able to write anything for awhile, I eventually sat down and wrote down exactly what I wanted my piece to sound like. I devised thirteen or fourteen sections, notating for each the overall chord quality of the section, as in major or minor, and which themes I wanted to use where. The piece still took a few months to finish writing (not to mention the multiple months following that I spent in final editing stages), but I consider that time I spent planning a little to be highly critical in the completion of the piece.

Exactly!

[Kevin]

Good to know that planning helped you hdavidm! I wonder if Mozart planned or did it flow?

[David Stowell]

Contrary to the myth that grew up (and perpetuated by the play/film Amadeus), Mozart actually did write quite a few sketches.
Only a few survive. Most, it is believed, were destroyed my Mozart's wife and her subsequent husband(?) - apparently sketches for incomplete works were kept (just in case someone wanted to complete them) but sketches for completed works were discarded.
In hindsight, a major loss to musicology.
I am not sure, though, whether they were sketches in the Beethoven sense - musical ideas wrought out through sweat and tears - or more like musical post-it notes, aide-mémoires.

[davidmonks]

For me, as a choral person, I generally have to find a text that evokes something of the creative spirit in me - something I respond to. After that link has been made, the music usually flows well enough.

I do have the strangest feeling, usually when a piece has flowed spontaneously and very easily. Looking back on it, and playing it through, I often have the sensation that, although it was clearly written by me, it is not OF me. This can be quite a strong sensation. Eventually, though, it wears away. But while it lasts it is a bit spooky. Does this sort of thing happen to anyone else?

Also, the more spontaneous the flow of music, the less likelihood there will be to revise it later.

And no! Neither Schubert, Chopin or any other composer who has "passed over" stands beside me and directs my work. I could do with that kind of help sometimes, mind!

That said, the Rosemary Browne story is a curious one.

[Ed Sharpe]

Do you just start writing the music? Or do you take time to analyze the text and the words; breaking each word down in its component syllables?

[ttw]

Oct 14, 2011 21:22:57 GMT Ed Sharpe said:

Do you just start writing the music? Or do you take time to analyze the text and the words; breaking each word down in its component syllables?

When setting words to music, I start by scanning the lyrics. I get the pattern of accented vs unaccented syllables. Accented syllables may be (usually) attached to strong beats or to longer notes (half vs quarter) or the like. It gives one a (partial) rhythmic skeleton as a starting point. Then one can consider (for example) strong-weak-weak as fitting a measure of 3/4 or half-quarter-quarter in 4/4 or the like.

[Ed Sharpe]

Would you then call that planning or even pre-planning?

[davidmonks]

Ed,

Like ttw, I also would scan the text to see where the natural stresses fall. 19th century material is very regular so it is fairly predictable, and therefore quite easy to get this right without much/any preparation.

More modern poetry, or even prose is another matter, and can lead to the need for time signature change/s. On a personal level, I tend to dislike repeating phrases to make the music and text fit together. This is one reason why is am less than enthralled by Mendelssohn's Elijah. But sometime it can be unavoidable.

I am not sure if I would call this preparatory setting forth of rhythmic patterns part of the actual act of composition. I would tend to put it on the level of sharpening my pencil, or turning on the computer.,,unless someone can persuade me otherwise.

[Ed Sharpe]

Oct 15, 2011 14:58:01 GMT davidmonks said:

...
... or turning on the computer...

Well for me turning on the computer is a post composition act.

[Kevin]

It is just the ability that I wish I ha Ed.