# Any suggestions to speed up the composition and/or production process?



## DeOlivier (Jun 1, 2007)

Hi everybody,

It's high time for me to drastically speed up my composition process. I'm composing for a company in the gaming industry at the moment, and my goal is to do some computer games and/or films in the future as well. At the moment I'm getting a bit more comfortable and fluent with harmony and orchestration (thanks to EIS for the most part), but I have HUGE problems meeting deadlines... I really spend sleepless nights at the moment because of that... Then I often hear about composers who write 2 or 3 minutes of fully orchestrated music a day and more. How do they achieve that?

I think that one reason for my lack of speed is my "experimental" approach to composing - I don't analyze and construct that much, I mostly experiment until I find something suitable. I also have problems writing longer pieces because of that. In addition, I always try to do everything at the same time - often I record a line, tweak it, mix it and then move on to the next line. Of course, after playing in the next line the previous line doesn't sound right anymore and so I tweak it again, and so on.... It's easy to lose your focus on the whole composition with this approach. Then there is my perfectionism: I revise and revise and revise, and the piece never sounds good enough, it's hard for me to find an end and leave the composition as it is.

Do some of you have similar problems? How did you overcome them? Does anybody have some suggestions for an efficient composition and production process?

Thanks in advance,
Oliver


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## Christian Marcussen (Jun 1, 2007)

I have similar problems and have not overcome them yet. 

Speed is one of the things I would like to improve. 

Lets hear what Rob Elliot says... sometimes he quotes some insane composing times!


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## Daryl (Jun 1, 2007)

Oliver, there is a big difference between writing 2 minutes of music a day, and programming it. Many of the composers who have to do anything up to 5 mins a day present demos that most on this board would be ashamed of. The other thing to remember is that for many composers orchestration consists of strings, brass and percussion. The string parts are "not separated out" (how amateur is that!!!!) and often the brass consists of block chords that have no relationship to a proper orchestral spacing. Having said that, when one is writing in tonal clichés it is much easier to compose fast, than if one is trying to be original (another can of worms).

I also think that it is very easy to get bogged down with the programming trying to get a "realistic" sound. This wastes valuable composing time. I always find that when I'm on a roll, too much tweaking actually slows down my thought process. Something that you could try, is to use simple, generic sounds when composing, and then start to hone the articulations when you have finished the first draft.

D


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## MacQ (Jun 1, 2007)

I apologize if any of the following is stuff you already know and use, but ...

In my experience, as far as content is concerned, I spend most of my time writing and "divining" themes that I can then orchestrate and paint into long pieces of music. These are like 30 second pieces of melody ... maybe an unusual progression, that sort of thing. It's probably at that point 20% talent and about 80% craft. Modulate, imitate, etc. Variations on a theme are really helpful, and the basis of the leitmotif technique. You can do things with it that help the process ... for example writing 2 themes at the same tempo and with the same progression. Played seperately they'll sound distinct enough, but you can then spend all kinds of time dancing between them if you're trying to convey a conflict or a union or whatever it is. In a lot of films you'll often find the "love" theme mixed with the "conflict" theme (or a permutation thereof) by the end of the movie, often with great emotional effect. And this is great, since it's not actually "new" music ... it's just new orchestrations.

Although, I'm not sure how applicable this might be for game music, this kind of thing is rampant and the "norm" for film music. It's a concept borrowed from opera, although I think it's the best way forward in a lot of situations, since the listener will subconsciously relate certain themes to certain characters, and it helps them make "sense" of the music (even if they don't know it). You have whole scores sometimes that have only one theme ... something like "Castaway" or even "World Trade Center" springs to mind (the former being gorgeous, the latter being coma-inducingly repetitive, in my opinion).

With this technique, you can turn 1 minute into 10, and only the elitist snobs will care! 

~Stu


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## rJames (Jun 1, 2007)

Oliver,
I'm struggling with the same thing. Sometimes when I have a deadline, things move faster. I too have been more of a hit or miss writer.

while I have learned tons through EIS, the one thing that still eludes me is writing that simple cue and then making it come alive with rhythm and orchestration. Every lesson in EIS is done this way. You know...you write 4 bars or 8 bars. As you get further in the books you write entire compositions. You only need 16 bars and you can make it endless.

But still I am not great at that. There is a bit of a disconnect from the architectural aspect of EIS (which is great BTW) and the subjective qualities of STYLE which is NOT a part of EIS in the least.

So, I try to think more like MacQ. I write on the real piano downstairs. Come up with a relationship that I like. Something that strikes me for the project. This is super simple, cause I can't play the piano well. Melody and some interesting vertical relationships that are ripe with possibilities.

Contrary to MAcQ, this is where I think it is more like 50-50 creativity vs architecture. This is where your ear finds its home in a melody while your technician finds an interesting structure to house it.

At the computer, it is easier to orchestrate because I have this melody and relationship to use. Better yet, but I cannot yet do this; write out the entire sketch.

I think it will change as you orchestrate but the basic patterns are there.


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## Frederick Russ (Jun 1, 2007)

Hi Oliver,

It sounds like much of the challenge is actually trying to figure out what to write. I think a lot of composing with midi is actually in the writing itself, especially simplifying.with a clear melody. Its important to allow yourself to brainstorm without judgment. Play melodies. Clear themes are important. You can always embellish, arpeggiate, exaggerate, counterpoint etc later then clean up the midi mockup itself. 

Once you have the idea together in your mind, some people decide to write out of the parts and read those parts while playing them in. This can sidestep a huge part of your midi mockup cycle since the emotional content can be captured. You can always move the notes around to give it the exact sound you want.

Trying this on piano and staying away from orchestral in the beginning can really help too. This seems to be the acid test - can the piece stand by itself when just played on a single instrument? Hope this helps.


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## Rob Elliott (Jun 1, 2007)

Great ideas guys. Just a couple of things I do.


1. Have a decent template. This can be somewhat expensive as I personally want EVERY member of the orchestra (and all their articulations :D ) ready when I need them. I don't want to call them from a 'break' (loading up new samples, etc.) This can be pricey - and usually means having at least 4-6 PC's loaded to the 3 gb switch max. The key for me - keep it flowing, the worse thing is to sit there watching your machine load up samples.

2. Personally - I orchestrate from a 'sketch' on the piano. Sometimes I'll start with an orch section if the cue is inherently 'strings, brass, etc.' but usually I'll sketch out the basic harmony and theme on a piano. It also helps me 'outline' the entire cue - helps me prevent the 'make it up as you go'. The cue seems to have better form - IMHO


3. When you are 'between jobs' ALWAYS write new themes / motifs. I have books and books of short 4, 8 or 16 bar sketch themes. Going back - most are crap :oops: - but you would be surprised how many you can use later on. Call them by their 'emotional description' ("mysterious", reverent, Love theme, etc.) - so you can flip through the pages when you need that next theme.


4. Back on template. Always tweak it to improve productivity (makes notes on current project - then go back and update accordingly after project is completed.)


Hope these few items help. Looking forward to improving my work flow as well from forthcoming comments/suggestions.


--One final note - if you have to fully orchestrate 4-5 minutes in a day - please lower your expectations - I know I do (anything that sounds at least as good as chopsticks is totally acceptable :mrgreen: )



Rob


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## Hannes_F (Jun 1, 2007)

Hi Oliver,

there has been given much more competent advice here than mine and I am struggling myself with speeding up. Nevertheless here are some more ideas:

- Although I come from notation and also do keyboard improvisation by ear sometimes I think mousing in the piano roll is a great way of composing even demanding music in short time.

- I try to enter the controls of a voice all together in one pass with realtime audio feedback of what I am doing. The problem with doing them in several passes or by mousing is that some of them are dependent of each other which leads to endless corrections back and forth. So for me it is best to do everything that has to do with volume and timbre in one pass (and the original reverb). For that I use an x-y tablet and a foot controller simultaneously. For easier lines I often play the note with the left hand on the keyboard.

- Intelligent organisation of ensemble and solo recording situations. For example a strings crescendo is a group effect and if I record each voice individually I will pretty much end up with an ensemble crescendo that is too big or too small. Live players can hear each other and will adjust immediately to each other. But it is very hard to create an ensemble effect with individual recording - this will lead to endless corrections back and forth.

So my suggestion is to enter all the notes by mouse or keyboard, then arm all the tracks and record the volume cc in one pass. Then you know where to go. After that the volume cc information is deleted in one of the voices and re-recorded more individually in context of the other voices, then the same for the second voice etc.

- I try mixing in midi as much as I can. Every voice has a fader somewhere that is assigned to a cc and can be automated by a foot pedal. So fade-ins, fade-outs and small dynamical corrections can be done in a second pass on the fly without mousing or even bouncing.

Hannes


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## rgames (Jun 1, 2007)

Good suggestions above - my comments are more or less a summary of some of those points already stated.

For me, the composition and orchestration processes are mostly separate. Before I ever start to assign actual voices, I have a four-part "rough sketch" of the main parts of the work. I usually do it with piano or strings (violin/viola/cello/bass) or some combination of piano and strings. I then take that and orchestrate it. Of course, while I'm composing, I have some idea of which instruments are going to carry which lines. Trying that approach might save you some time.

IMO, all good music can be decomposed into this four-part structure. That's a criticism I have of a lot of recent film music - how much of it can be arranged for string quartet? Of course, there are a lot of instances where you don't need good music. Action scenes, for example: a bombastic percussion track with some brass hits and clusters does just fine in a lot of instances. So that's part of the trick, I guess: know how much "artistry" a particular cue really requires. You can rely on "craft" in a lot of instances.

The "2 minutes a day" benchmark is a bit of an enigma for me. If it's a requirement, I can do it, but I won't be pleased with the results. Of course, I'm new to the film/tv world - my background is primarily concert works (and I have a day job ) - so that might have to change...

And, of course, the most important quote for all artists struggling to meet deadlines: "a piece of art is never completed; it is abandoned." Keep that in mind and you might improve your productivity...!

rgames


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## Leandro Gardini (Jun 8, 2007)

I think all the composers have the same problem but the thing is, how to overcome in the shortest way???
I´m studing this book now and I´m sure will help you a lot http://www.rongorow.com/ ...one of its objective is to speed up you composition process, but as everything, it takes a lot of study until you can write everything without an instrument and very fast...you are going to really improve when you reach the transcription part!!!


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## DeOlivier (Jun 8, 2007)

@Leogardini: Looks interesting, I'll definitely check this out!


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## Mike Greene (Jun 8, 2007)

Rob Elliott @ Fri Jun 01 said:


> 3. When you are 'between jobs' ALWAYS write new themes / motifs.


I live by this rule. Not only does it save me time when I'm swamped, but that pool of available cues is where I can try out a lot of my more off the wall ideas that, if they work, can come across to the client as genius inspiration.

When you're under time pressure, you have to play everything pretty safe. But if that experimental idea is already on the shelf, ready to go, it's worth the minute or two to plug it in and see how it works with the scene you have to score today.

And ultimately, being able to put cues into a score that are more out of the ordinary is what takes you from "competent composer" to "Hey! You gotta hire this guy!" composer.


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## groove (Jun 14, 2007)

Hi Oliver,

thanks for posting this thread !! we are all learning a lot from each other 

here are some tricks i use to speed up the process (the fastest i've been is 6 mn full composed/orchestrated/mixed cue for a movie in one day...15h !!).

1-the longest can be to find the right idea and that mean work work work so you are fluent with good and new ideas ! (melodic or harmonic)

2-if i really want to go super fast for orchestration i take an example in an existing score or from the repertoire and i collect all the sound and articulation i need to achive that type or texture and color ! (i don't work with templates and i probably should but it's power comsuming)

3-usually i write down on paper the main ideas, like the one or two themes or hamonisation i'll use for that cue so i really can see where i'm going and clear my mind with that picture.

4-as allready mentioned in other thread on this great forum : rest, eat well, do sports
all that and some other ealthy solution will really help to be able to react fast and eficient.

hope that helps.


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## david robinson (Jun 14, 2007)

great suggestions all.
my M.O. for serious music is to wait until the idea is totally fixed in my head. 
then i simply realise this in the medium of choice.
i don't use an instrument to confirm, until it is sequenced, or performed.
for film/tv/etc, i use every short-cut i can to meet the deadline. i'll borrow, adapt, plagarise, regurgitate any and everybody's material that suites, just like most film composers do. in fact, that's what most producers want, anyway.
to me. speeding up one's compositional output is a recipe for doom, artisically.
i certainly don't do it when i write anything original. gestation takes time.

best, david r.


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## clarkcontrol (Jun 20, 2007)

Great thread!

My $.02: Elaborating on some above points.

1. When piano sketching, I try to imagine each register being played by a particular orchestral family, thus saving time trying to mold parts from the reduction. In addition, if I am writing for all strings, for example, I keep the piano part at 4 density at all times to avoid divisi and improve voice leading.

2. Speaking of register, I am always aware of the space between parts, trying to make as much room as possible between, let's say a rhythmic ostinato in the violas just below middle C, a woodwind/violin doubling two octaves up, and a sparse bass pizz below. This keeps the mockup sounding more real and its simpler and EASIER TO MIX. This also makes it easy to create variety in the orchestration: I take the above example, transpose the whole thing up a minor third, double stac bones with the pizz, add a pfp cello common tone as a pedal between the pizz and ostinato part, add a harmony clarinet below main melody with a different WW doubling. Third statement I replace viola ostinato with soft F horn sustain section voiced in slow moving thirds, ostinato moves to upper register in violins decorated with stac flutes while cellos get melody just below middle C with soft low bass section pedal tone.

Even that is a bit crowded so I'll probably thin it out by not having everything playing at once, maybe get rid of F horns (too close to the melody) or low bass so I can lower the melody, or create a Q & A between registers. DIVIDE AND CONQUER.

3. I compose in this order: Melody, density (from harmony), then orchestration. This retains clarity and eliminates extraneous parts that will only serve to muddy up the mix. Once I have a tight piano reduction, all I have to do is explode to parts and voila! It's basically done.

4. COPY orchestrations. If there is a temp, this is a great place to start. Or reference similar work (action movie, comedy, history docs, etc.) so you don't end up reinventing the wheel. This also helps me mix faster, too. Just make it balance like so-and-so.

I always make myself write with piano even if I know exactly the orchestration. this helps me compose bigger sections at once. In fact, I never compose or play in the finished piano reduction until I know exact orchestration. Deadlines are no time for free-form orchestra explorations.

Clark


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## Necromancer (Jul 3, 2007)

I have a lot of different ideas written down. I get melodies stuck in my head all the time, and I have to write them down so they'll stop playing in my brain. There are pages upon pages of staff paper/megabytes of voice recordings of melodies that I've just written down that aren't a part of a composition. When I feel like writing something I'll usually start by gathering ideas that would sound good together, or sometimes I'll make an entire section of a piece based on one idea.

If you have a big library of these, when you're asked to compose something you can just figure out which melodies would be suitable, and now all you have to do is orchestrate!


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## Roland Mac (Jul 3, 2007)

This might sound sooo obvious...

But I think that sometimes it can help to radically change your method of working. In engineering, I occassional with decide to mix EVERYTHING on my desk. Practically, this is nightmare. But it does provide a fresh angle.

Things like that help me greatly in composition too. Im always looking for new ways to work. For instance, lately Iv been coming up with some chords on the piano, programming them with some string patch in the computer, then improvising melodic lines and counterpoints using the guitar (recording the guitar onto an audio track). This is so quick and easy. And after a few minutes, Iv recorded loads of lines to disect at will and incorporate into an arrangement.

Yes, without doubt I do like to seperate the creative side of things with the technical, engineering aspects. I like to have plenty of interesting material to draw from when putting arrangements together in the computer. Working like this has speeded up the progress immensely.

Another thing you can do is to start a personal library of ideas and themes. Just quick sketches. I do this alot.

Technically, I think that it helps alot to make a very rough mock up first, before going head on into the main job. During this first draft, you can work out and problems and make it way mor streamline during the final. For this one, just use stacked ensemble patches, which saves loads of time.

RM


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## Rob Elliott (Jul 3, 2007)

Mike Greene @ Fri Jun 08 said:


> Rob Elliott @ Fri Jun 01 said:
> 
> 
> > 3. When you are 'between jobs' ALWAYS write new themes / motifs.
> ...




Oh crapola - the secret is out :lol:


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## Dave Connor (Jul 3, 2007)

Here's a couple ideas:

1. Think in terms of _textures_ rather than individual parts. So perhaps: pizz bass, arpeggiated strings (which could be written in the harp first then copied over to strings) and melody above.

2. Start by writing a chord progession in the arpeggiated harp for eight or sixteen bars. You may copy and paste this for twice the length or at least find out if repeating the chord sequence works. If it doesn't then create another chord progression for 8 or 16 more bars.

3. Let's say you now have 32 bars of harp only (two different 16 bar phrases.) At least you have a chord progression that's working that can be made as small or large as you like with ochestration. You could now experiment with a melody above in whatever instrument, add brass punctuation because you now know the harmony along the way, add a counter melody or percussion etc.

4. Since you've captured some ground you can now eyeball the area beyond these 32 bars and choose an element from them that works there. Perhaps the melodic material seems like it would work here (or at least be the guiding material you build around) or the string texture alone or harp alone or brass punctuation. You can now add to these elemnts in any way (the melody for example can be passed around or doubled/tripled etc., but you have a melody and harmony to work with now.)

The point is to give yourself ideas to work with and a background to compose to. The harp alone gave you a tempo (carefully chosen of course) and harmony that could be adjusted or discarded or whatever. But you have something to write against and facilitate melodic and harmonic ideas.

Another approach is to write only the material you are sure of for very long stretches. So if you have a groove you want for half a minute in percussion or drums write it. If you want lush strings to dominate for the next minute write just the meolody and perhaps bass so the harmony is clear. If the next section voices come in, write those *only*: go back and orchestrate later because you can now show this sketch to a director and give him a good idea of the shape and sound of things.


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