# Learning to write more quickly



## tarantulis (Mar 7, 2016)

A 12 hour day of nonstop work, having left me with about nineteen seconds of music so granular and overworked as to be almost completely unusable, has led me to this question.

I'm having to write in a style I'm not accustomed to, for an April deadline. Some ideas are there, I've studied the style and have some confidence in emulating it, but whether its at the DAW or at my piano with pencil and stave, I get lost in chord construction, variation, and possibilities.

Any suggestions for speeding up the workflow, for turning off the filter and fully fleshing out the idea, regardless of its inherent worth/shittiness, and just write?


----------



## gsilbers (Mar 7, 2016)

I think you answered the question. turn of the filter/bias and go at it. and just write.
use what works. keep a frame of mind that you are not creating anything new, just putting existing things in another way.
same with the sounds.
I have the same, its a frame of mind which is sometimes hard to get.

also, transcribing stuff that you like and think you could find useful.then that's built in your arsenal of devices so you don't have to second guess or think too hard about it. 

at the end, think of the music that "works" for your project rather than making the greatest track so you'll (insert insecurity here - be best composer, be hired again, be employed, etc)

I also work on several tracks at the same time. so I can go back and forth and that way not loose too much perspective on being on the same track all day. once I am stuff with something I move on to the next cue... stuck on that then go back. maybe a melody change by one note is all it takes so you go back to the other one track and gets you moving on.

sometimes is easier said than done


----------



## resound (Mar 7, 2016)

I would recommend checking out Mike Vertas master class called Putting it All Together if you haven't already seen it. He goes through his entire process from composing to orchestrating to mockup to recording. I found it extremely helpful.


----------



## Sebastianmu (Mar 7, 2016)

Do you guys also have that: You work on something for plenty of hours, and you're really enjoying yourself and you _love_ what you made in the evening; and then you get back to it the next morning and it hits you like "GEE, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!"


----------



## RiffWraith (Mar 7, 2016)

Honestly, there is one thing that helps you to write more quickly. And that's writing. The more you write, the faster you get at it.

I realize that doesn't help you short term, but it is something to think about it for the future.

Cheers.


----------



## TimCox (Mar 7, 2016)

Sebastianmu said:


> Do you guys also have that: You work on something for plenty of hours, and you're really enjoying yourself and you _love_ what you made in the evening; and then you get back to it the next morning and it hits you like "GEE, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!"


I think some of that is just inherit to being an artist. But there are definitely times where I feel like I'm doing God's work only to realize it was utter crap the next morning


----------



## JohnG (Mar 7, 2016)

Good advice in some of the other posts here. 

Suggestions for moving fast when you need to:

1. Map out major signposts (if it's for a film). Then try to play / write some material that works for that mood / tone away from the picture for a bit. So you don't get mesmerised by what's on the screen; or

2. Write the percussion first, maybe just one key instrument; or

3. Write the bass line and melody first; or

4. Write just the bass line first.

Remember that music can't do everything. Focus on what you're trying to achieve -- an emotion or simply some energy.

Try not to be distracted by:

1. What someone else is going to think of it (eventually, yes, but wait on that),

2. What you learned in school that you're "supposed" to think about it or how it's "supposed" to be, analytically.


----------



## wpc982 (Mar 7, 2016)

Ask yourself what you were really doing during those 12 hours. While it may be possible to work 12 hours at a stretch on many things, including semi-musical things like setting up templates and doing notation, being creative is (imo) not one of them. Mozart wrote pretty darn fast, but only for about 4 hours a day, according to his own letters.


----------



## JohnG (Mar 7, 2016)

Ok. I'll explain to whoever's hired me that I'm only working 4 hours a day from now on...

What kind of advice is that?


----------



## dgburns (Mar 7, 2016)

JohnG said:


> Good advice in some of the other posts here.
> 
> Suggestions for moving fast when you need to:
> 
> ...



Couldn't agree more.


----------



## Whatisvalis (Mar 7, 2016)

I think what was being implied above was that creative work is not a 9-5 thing. You can't expect 12 hours of good writing everyday, creativity just doesn't work like that.

One good technique I've always found is to build a sound from scratch rather than waste hours diving through presets looking for whatever it is you hope to kickstart the writing. Experimentation and constant recording to push the writing forward, even if most of it is shit.


----------



## JohnG (Mar 7, 2016)

I think what is implied is totally impractical and, as far as I am aware, totally unknown today if you want to make a living at music in TV or games or movies.

Unless of course you are Mozart and great music pours out as fast as you can write it down. In which case...


----------



## Florian_W (Mar 8, 2016)

RiffWraith said:


> Honestly, there is one thing that helps you to write more quickly. And that's writing. The more you write, the faster you get at it.
> 
> I realize that doesn't help you short term, but it is something to think about it for the future.
> 
> Cheers.



I totally agree! That is exactly what I am experiencing. But good things need time. Do not rush if it is not necessary. Sometimes I am really quick and have really good results.. but on other days it just takes long.. and sometimes at the end of the day I only have some new seconds of music. Creativity is always ups and downs...


----------



## SillyMidOn (Mar 8, 2016)

tarantulis said:


> A 12 hour day of nonstop work, having left me with about nineteen seconds of music so granular and overworked as to be almost completely unusable, has led me to this question.
> 
> I'm having to write in a style I'm not accustomed to, for an April deadline. Some ideas are there, I've studied the style and have some confidence in emulating it, but whether its at the DAW or at my piano with pencil and stave, I get lost in chord construction, variation, and possibilities.
> 
> Any suggestions for speeding up the workflow, for turning off the filter and fully fleshing out the idea, regardless of its inherent worth/shittiness, and just write?


If they'd given you a deadline that was just 8 hours away would you have been able to write the track?


----------



## tarantulis (Mar 8, 2016)

SillyMidOn said:


> If they'd given you a deadline that was just 8 hours away would you have been able to write the track?



Hard to say. The only films I've scored have been shorts for the 48-hour events, and I've always managed to churn out something good. So I'm telling myself that things will kick into gear soon.



Sebastianmu said:


> Do you guys also have that: You work on something for plenty of hours, and you're really enjoying yourself and you _love_ what you made in the evening; and then you get back to it the next morning and it hits you like "GEE, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!"



No.

I recognize the shittiness immediately.


----------



## lucor (Mar 8, 2016)

Sebastianmu said:


> Do you guys also have that: You work on something for plenty of hours, and you're really enjoying yourself and you _love_ what you made in the evening; and then you get back to it the next morning and it hits you like "GEE, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!"


Interestingly enough, it's the total opposite for me. When I'm done with a piece in almost all cases I hate it with a passion. Then I store it away for weeks and months and when I listen to it again after all that time in some cases I say to myself "It's actually not THAT bad". 

Regarding learning to write faster, it's really just a matter of practice I think. Set yourself a deadline everyday and make a plan what you want to achieve in that time. I think @mverta did similar excercises and he got extremely fast at writing through it.


----------



## SillyMidOn (Mar 8, 2016)

tarantulis said:


> Hard to say. The only films I've scored have been shorts for the 48-hour events, and I've always managed to churn out something good. So I'm telling myself that things will kick into gear soon.



I guess what I'm trying to say is that with most people, when you have a ticking clock, it's amazing what one can come up with, so if you can pretend that you have a tight deadline and have to finish, have a look what might happen...


----------



## prodigalson (Mar 8, 2016)

In addition to most of the advice given here I would say "move on, move on, move on". It's easy to get stuck "perfecting" the same 8 bars but it's usually more important to just get something down and move on and then come back. Often what comes later can inform what comes before. Just write.

Also, if you can, get away from the computer as much as possible. I tend to write and roughly orchestrate at the piano and I've found that makes me quicker and "better" as I'm not caught up in technical concerns and guessing what sounds might work.

Go take a walk if you can, THINK about the music instead of staring at a screen. Try to work your schedule so you get as much sleep as you can. There is a wonderful transition period between being awake and sleeping when the creative juices just flow faster and I've found ideas just "come" easier when Im relaxed and not "thinking". FWIW, I've also heard Leonard Bernstein say the same thing. He included lots of napping in his workflow.


----------



## givemenoughrope (Mar 8, 2016)

I redid my template so I can play in string parts as if they are ensemble patches. It took a while to think about how to set it up but now I basically play to get ideas. Not always the best way but it's much quicker and much more musical. No backtracking except for switching to a different long, short or legato, etc via expression maps.


----------



## tarantulis (Mar 9, 2016)

Thanks for the responses.

One problem is that while I try to do most of my writing at the piano, I struggle with treating each part like its designated instrument, and instead try to fill gaps and go for rhythms/progressions best suited for the sound I'm hearing. As an exercise, I transcribed the major parts of a John Williams "chase" scene from Star Wars to keyboard, for perspective on this. And you know what it sounded like? It sounded like shit. Crazy jazz shit, and not the good kind. I guess you've really got to have a sharp sense of orchestration to be able to compose that way. But again, sequencer writing is even slower. I find myself going back and forth.


----------



## Jaap (Mar 9, 2016)

Did you ever try working with just pen and paper? Sit behind a good table, work things out in your head and put them on paper the old fashioned way. Often it requires a bit different thinking, but once you got a good grip on it, it can speed up your workflow behind the sequencer big time in my opinion.
I used to compose like this before I went into composing for games and film, but still when I am stuck or when I find myself taking the "easy" road (with this I mean I don't compose to the full potential, but only what I am capable off at the moment behind the sequencer and thus not pushing my limits) I switch to pen/paper again and though it seems like an extra step, it actually speeds things up. After that I only have to focus on the production side.


----------



## afterlight82 (Mar 9, 2016)

9 times out of 10 this happens on a film or tv cue (or game) because the raw material isn't right (or isn't there at all). If the basic idea isn't there, it's really hard to get going. I find what I do in this scenario is play music editor. I stop trying to write it for a moment and start trying to think about what it is the music is supposed to be doing. One way to do that is to find music that would work as a temp. 

Not because I want to copy somebody else - quite the opposite - I want to see why I'm not "hearing" something which will evoke the reaction I want. It's rarely technical ability or compositional ability that this happens to anybody, it's approaching the problem from the wrong angle and you can often break the mental deadlock by seeing how some other piece of music achieves the same result. OR - sometimes even better, I sit and try and find the most inappropriate piece of music for the scene possible. You'd be surprised how well this works. For an action scene, put the Benny Hill theme tune on it. (silly example but you get what I mean...). Sometimes watching how "not" to do it illuminates how to do it. It sounds really silly but it really works sometimes.

In heavily thematic genres it is usually because the tune isn't right, and knowing when to fix and when to throw and start again is really tough, and we all screw that one up on a regular basis. The number of film cues where I went round it five times and should just have started something new...


----------



## AlexRuger (Mar 9, 2016)

I agree with afterlight, but to take it a step further...Working as a music editor has helped me get a sense of what the picture needs more than writing ever has. I still identify myself primarily as a composer, but the experience has been incredibly educational because the job is literally an exercise in making music work with the picture. If I'm not quite sure what to do on one of my own scores, I often throw a few pieces of music against the picture and see what sticks, and go from there.

I still don't write as fast as I'd like to--I usually get off on a MIDI editing or mixing tangent, trying to make it sound better; or I write too "sectionally," and the cue doesn't quite flow as much as I'd like it to (I'm actually taking a break due to the latter as I write this).

Apart from the not-so-helpful advice of "just write more" or "try and get a job as a music editor," the thing that has helped me the most is to not give a shit about orchestration, or voicings, or anything else during the first draft. Just write with the piano, to picture in real time, stopping to correct only the worst mistakes or to write in something that would require three hands. Once you have a frame work, fill it in with more instruments, etc. But making sure it works on piano only is a great way to identify what isn't working--is it the melody, the tempo, etc? Also, when playing in real-time, you can only really focus on one feeling, so you don't overthink it and a lot of the bad ideas don't even make it to your fingers.

Last thing I will say is this: in your quest to become a faster writer, don't sacrifice musical quality for speed. I did that when I was in college. I definitely got faster, but it was a hard habit to break! The first draft ideally shouldn't take too terribly long, but from there, spend as much time as you need to make it as good as you can.


----------



## tarantulis (Mar 11, 2016)

Whoa. Putting up different temps to get a feel for what does and doesn't work...vastly helpful. I thought it would taint my objectivity for the scene but it ended up telling me exactly what was missing.

Worked for seven hours last night and ended up with a minute and 20 seconds of solid music. This never happens. Some serious thanks are in order.


----------



## afterlight82 (Mar 11, 2016)

Awesome. It's up there with all the great tricks...the other good one is if you ever get that feeling of unease that something just isn't quite right, even though it's stylistically right and doing everything it should, to take what you have and delay it to picture by 2 seconds, so it reacts more to the beat of the picture. Especially true under dialogue or for pivotal scenes...we often get so set in our ways as to where music should start, hit and stop, we miss that great things await just around the corner and that we're doing the right thing but just not quite in the right place.

It's also so very different to getting a temp track from production...because it's not like we're wedded to it. It's a quick process..."hey, what does this piece do for this moment?". It's a lifesaver, particularly on a scary deadline.


----------

