I heard my teacher say that to a student who hadn't completed his assignment (a composition in Dorian mode) for the umpteenth time and this time used 'no inspiration' as an excuse. Inspiration is for amateurs.
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I agree. Work for inspiration by making the conditions right for it to appear. Do that via technical/exploratory work and open ears.
To me, it needs inspiration with the art of translating the emotional or quasi-emotional into a tangible result that can be communicated (even if to self alone, as if a mini catharsis - it's something you've got out of your system)
Otherwise, what have you got? Procedure?
I'm proud to be an amateur, answerable to no one unless I agree to a commission!. I once enquired of a composer about becoming "professional". He said, "Don't turn a wonderful hobby into an awful job of work."
Personally I find the prospect of payment concentrates the mind beautifully, although what I really mean is "they have a recording budget! Nice! And I get whatever's left over"
Tbf I've done some jobs for free or very little because the work being recorded was a sufficient payment, given my obsession with hearing my stuff played for real. I may be the worst businessman alive.
Yep, nothing quite like a media music deadline to focus the mind, the succes of which sometimes determines whether one gets the real muso or the sampled one, the Moet or the Blue Nun. Your obsession is a healthy one Dave so long as there is something to eat on the table...
As someone once said (suitably rephrased),
🤣
Once upon a time, composers, like goldsmiths or furniture makers, were simply craftsmen, and they took pride in that distinction. They referred to themselves as masters, but only when they had earned the title. Problems started when these craftsmen began to identify as artists. It did not result in better music. On the contrary. You can really suck as a composer and still be an "artist". Or put a few crooked lines on a canvas, as an artist.
I call myself a craftsman... woman... Or is it craftsperson? Whatever. I'm a skilled and handy composer. That's good enough for me.
Haven't people, including other composers, been saying that other composers suck for centuries? Including composers now generally acknowledged as masters? Disliking current trends is a standing wave in the arts. Dislike everything, and save time :)
Whilst I accept that modernity in music can semingly push boundaries too far, the irony is that learning to become fluent in the musical language(s) and techniques of the last 100 years, composers have to study very hard to develop the skills and artistry required. I believe the learning curve to be a lot harder than acquiring fluency in common practice technique because of the 'expansion' of all aspects of music. Emancipation of rhythm, timbral opportunities arising from extended instrumental techniques, function and/or non-function, vertical democracy, all of these components require a vast knowledge and skill base in order to manipulate them with meaning and the journey to acquiring such skill is an intensely profound one aesthetically and artistically.
The last 100 years has produced works of great stature equal in depth and expression to any work from previous periods imo.
Dead on.
Those who've "pushed the boundaries" (as the platitude goes) tend to be of independent means - independent of earning from music, that is.
I had a brief involvement with college; chucked it. You can teach people the tools but you can't teach them to create. Forced to learn procedures like serial and dodecaphonic.and all the jargon just to make common sense and good taste difficult...simply so an institution has things to examine people on, was not for me. I ended up with a couple of private teachers empathetic to my aims and took my diploma externally. My real teachers, sadly, had passed away but I was most happy to receive their lessons.
Said diploma declares I am qualified to teach musical composition.... a joke if ever.
^ This cuts through much of the smokescreen that is indigestible modern art. Rowy, I believe, pointed out that 'good' music making is a craft, like building furniture, a notion I've myself floated out there on the old forum quite a few times, with mixed reception. Now, I do personally prefer music created in an era when composers generally adopted this utilitarian perspective (Renaissance - Baroque), but would refrain from implying that that personal preference carries any objective weight.
The crux of the problematic nature of defining what is good art, and the proper motivation and method behind its creation, is the presumption that there is, or possibly could be, a single answer to such a overly broad question. For the professionals, who must produce marketable product, composing is necessarily craft, but that pragmatism doesn't preclude that they might find inspiration, self expression, and a great sense of artistic accomplishment in their work. Some amateurs too, might have the same sentiment but not the commensurate skills. nor financial or technical means, to produce marketable music, and only endeavor to one day breathe the air of the pros.
Other amateurs, I do truly believe, are engaging in sincere artistic expression, and perhaps even personal and emotional expression, without regard for objective standards of what is good product or proper method. I've met people on this forum who could pen very compelling music, sans any theoretical method whatsoever, acting only upon experience and intuition and hadn't the the least expectation of earning a single dime off their arduous efforts. These are, by definition, 'artists', who've contributed vast amounts of time and toil to their craft. i would refrain from dismissing their proper representation as legitimate 'composers'..
I would place myself in the tiniest minority of amateur composers who write for none of the above reasons. I've never felt the slightest inkling that I was somehow expressing myself through music, although I would freely admit that an examination of one's music undoubtedly lends some insight into its author. Neither have I ever deluded myself to confer, upon the oddities of my fancy, the merits of being some sort of great contribution to the realm of musiccraft.
Music is as volatile as stochastic chemistry and as mercurial and mysterious as sorcery, and it, being viewed as a 'system', is certainly one of the most fascinating with which to tinker and experiment. I would cite pure abstract mathematics as the only field equally fascinating to me. So, I write primarily motivated by curiosity, and hence place myself as a distant outlier in the sense that, this is probably the least frequently cited motivation for composing music, in my experience.
Inspired? Only in the sense of thinking of some clever or uncanny method of constructing a piece, and carrying that vision through to something i might regard as musical product worthy of examination and consideration by worthier composers.
I apologize for the typos in advance; Ning's specllcheck feature needs some tweaking, I fear...
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