How to go about your composing? Do you hum and record... or do it on paper?

[AMELius Lum AYANA]

I am just wondering. How do you compose?

- Do you flinker with your instruments and write in on paper?
- Or do you record the process whilst you are doing it...
- Do you use any cool software to manage your songs...
-...??

[Dankk]

More times than not, I will come up with a melody in my head... sometimes only a second or two long, then go to my keyboard and play it... then to the DAW to write the rest of the song.

I have likened the way I write to an art teacher that gives a student an arbitrary line or squiggle. The student then makes a picture from that first line or squiggle.

[William Edwards]

I have an mp3 player, and it's pretty good for recording audio. When i'm at home, and I have an melody in my head, I usually sit beside my piano, set my mp3 player, and record the audio.. Just as a rough melody.. And then I go to my room, and workout my melody on Cakewalk. Humming would be pretty good as well.. lol...

[Daniel Calvo Rodrigues]

I usually have a tape recorder around to record any melody that might come up. If it is something i cannot play in a certain instrument i figure it out on the guitar, put in in midi and my good friend Mr. VST plays it for me.

Over the time i´ve come to realize that if i come up with something and don´t have anything to record it i will most likely have forgotten in when i do have the chance to record... Like most of us here i believe when i have an idea or melody i can imagine a whole band, orchestra behind it but of course it does´t write itself so i have to re-construct slowly with my mind all the melodies and rhythms etc as fast as my mind will hold that musical thought.

But sometimes, mostly often i just pick up the guitar, start improvising and some nice stuff comes out once in a while

[Thomas Hay]

I mostly just hear a melody, but sometimes, it comes into my head all at once - melody, harmony, countermelody, chords, style, etc. I think I churn out my best works when I hear everything at the same time.

Sometimes, I'll skip the instruments, and just go straight to the laptop and put it all down in Sibelius. I orchestrated the form for Soul Drifting, a big band chart I'm currently working on, in around five hours on my computer.

Like many of you, I leave pencil and paper completely out of the equation. I, personally, have never liked writing manuscripts, and although I am decent at it, I make far too many edits and rewrites for it to be an efficient method of composition for me.

[Jacob Royal]

Sometimes I just sit at the computer, and put down whatever come to mind. Other times I write the theme on staff paper after humming it, or fiddling around on my viola. Then I put that in the computer, and write the rest from there.

Simon - Great idea carrying around a notebook, I'll have to start doing that!

[jessica]

i find making an outline on paper writing the time and key changes with what instruments im using . then i go directly to staff paper. never been much of a person for playing and writing at the same time.

[Russell Scott-Johnson]

I can guarantee that when my head hits the pillow at night, then a fully blown, symphonic orchestra will take the melody that i've been humming and run with it. It's then a mad dash up to my studio to get the bugger down before i forget.

[Fredrick zinos]

I always work at a keyboard. I love the live sound, it stirs what little I have by way of creativity. I initially write in the old style, notes on manuscript paper.. by hand. Very rarely will i write something directly on the computer. If I think I have a good idea (that's happened to me twice in my life) I try to come back to it a day or two later after the bloom is off the rose so to speak, and evaluate it, looking for places where it doesn't work or where one set of sounds is not connected to the surrounding material. I tinker with the idea. If it gives up without a struggle I usually lose interest, and if the idea is beyond my ability to develop, I give up and go to something less challenging.. But if the musical idea fits into that tiny realm where I can do something with it I will spend some time with it.

The reason I like to compose on paper is that most of what I write is trash and goes to light the fireplace... and winter is coming.

[AndrewG]

I record the process whilst playing my instrument. I spend more time and efforts developing the instrument than playing it. Today I have about dozen 2-keyboard setups, which allow me playing simultaneously 5-6 or more instruments. Unfortunately, I have only 2 hands -:). Music is constantly in my head, day and night. Almost newer use paper and classic notation. A simple sequencer is enough for me, but the instruments I use are quite sophisticated (several pedals, knobs for chosing instruments, building the performance setups etc).

[Roger Noren]

Interresting to hear how different we create music...

I can hardly compose when I want to, I'll get empty in the head. The ideas comes when I'm doing something else, often while driving. I always have more ideas than time to arrange it, so I don't need to compose at will.

I use the simple sound recorder in my mobile phone to capture the ideas, so I hum och sing the different parts. (I wouldn't like other people to hear those recordings...)
Some times later I go back to the recordings, to sort out what's good and what's not. After that I develop the ideas in cubase, playing guitar or keyboard, depending on the style, and create the lacking pieces.

Arranging then... The crucial parts are always played, edited afterwards, but some instruments or parts could be clicked in the piano roll. I don't use pen and paper at all, except for lyrics.

[Stephen Main]

I had a film-scoring professor (Jack Smalley, wonderful veteran of the trade) who once gave me a great piece of advice: "the WORST way to begin a piece is by writing the first note."

What he meant was that by the time the first notes are written, the composer should already have sharply limited and defined the piece. What's the instrumentation? Roughly how long are you envisioning the length? Is it part of a multi-movement work? Are there solos? What's the mood? If it's a film cue, what's the time in/time out? Etc., etc.

The good thing about this way of working is that it gets you past the dreaded "blank piece of staff paper" paralysis. If you make all those decisions ahead of time, by the time you sit down writing, the piece is already beginning to develop in your mind. Makes the work much easier, at least for me.

Steve