RenePedersen
Composer & IT Professional AKA Magician
Hi composer,
I'm looking for some advice on composition in terms of coming up with sections and ideas for motifs and themes. I have now been composing music for about 4 months and feel quite confident in music theory with my 10+ years of playing multiple instruments and in bands but writing your own music is obviously different...
My issue is that I seem to be able to come up with melodies but fail to turn them into full songs based on a chord progression, but I always end up completely empty for what should happen next and my orchestration ends up sounding too simple as well (I think).
To give you a better idea of how I write, I'll give you some details below:
1. I play around on my midi keyboard trying to find something that I like, there is usually not any emotion or story behind what I come up with, unless I'm trying to write a fan score or something to a picture of a character etc. It just choose what sounds good to me and then use modulation to put emotion into the music.
2. When I have found a melody and harmony that I like, I then start trying to come up with how the song should start and the intro is usually not hard to get going for me, but I try not to fall into the trap of always starting with piano + drone because it's not interesting all the time...
3. So I have now a rough idea of how the intro should sound and I record the instruments I see would fit there.
4. I have now finish the intro and perhaps put my theme in it as well and this where I start shutting down in terms of what to do next, I don't hear the rest of my song in my head and I end up playing around and not committing to anything in the end.
5. I really enjoyed the theme I came up with and there might be great music in it but I lose my will to continue writing the song and either shut down Cubase or open another song that I have made that I was able to do more with and to remind me what I should be able to achieve but hasn't...
So this is my writing process, I really wish I could transform my ideas into full pieces, but I think my expectations and perfectionism gets in the way of doing that.
I tend to spend more time watching others compose in hope that I can pick up on a workflow that will improve my own and watching other composers write their pieces motivates me to sit down and try again and again and again, but I never seem to get the hang of it for some reason...
I know writing music doesn't just take a few months to learn but I think it's more likely to write not very good songs in the beginning rather than not being able to write anything, or maybe that's a wrong way of looking at it? Because I look at others and try to study songs to pick up on arrangement patterns and analyse, but once I sit down and do my own I have no clue where it is going...
As a last note I will share my first released Epic Orchestral song that I DID manage to finish, so you have an idea of my skill level and have something to refer to:
Listen to Kingdom Come (Epic Orchestral) by Rene Pedersen on #SoundCloud
Thank you for reading! I would like to know if you can relate and what you would suggest/advice to get out of this annoying loophole.
I'm looking for some advice on composition in terms of coming up with sections and ideas for motifs and themes. I have now been composing music for about 4 months and feel quite confident in music theory with my 10+ years of playing multiple instruments and in bands but writing your own music is obviously different...
My issue is that I seem to be able to come up with melodies but fail to turn them into full songs based on a chord progression, but I always end up completely empty for what should happen next and my orchestration ends up sounding too simple as well (I think).
To give you a better idea of how I write, I'll give you some details below:
1. I play around on my midi keyboard trying to find something that I like, there is usually not any emotion or story behind what I come up with, unless I'm trying to write a fan score or something to a picture of a character etc. It just choose what sounds good to me and then use modulation to put emotion into the music.
2. When I have found a melody and harmony that I like, I then start trying to come up with how the song should start and the intro is usually not hard to get going for me, but I try not to fall into the trap of always starting with piano + drone because it's not interesting all the time...
3. So I have now a rough idea of how the intro should sound and I record the instruments I see would fit there.
4. I have now finish the intro and perhaps put my theme in it as well and this where I start shutting down in terms of what to do next, I don't hear the rest of my song in my head and I end up playing around and not committing to anything in the end.
5. I really enjoyed the theme I came up with and there might be great music in it but I lose my will to continue writing the song and either shut down Cubase or open another song that I have made that I was able to do more with and to remind me what I should be able to achieve but hasn't...
So this is my writing process, I really wish I could transform my ideas into full pieces, but I think my expectations and perfectionism gets in the way of doing that.
I tend to spend more time watching others compose in hope that I can pick up on a workflow that will improve my own and watching other composers write their pieces motivates me to sit down and try again and again and again, but I never seem to get the hang of it for some reason...
I know writing music doesn't just take a few months to learn but I think it's more likely to write not very good songs in the beginning rather than not being able to write anything, or maybe that's a wrong way of looking at it? Because I look at others and try to study songs to pick up on arrangement patterns and analyse, but once I sit down and do my own I have no clue where it is going...
As a last note I will share my first released Epic Orchestral song that I DID manage to finish, so you have an idea of my skill level and have something to refer to:
Listen to Kingdom Come (Epic Orchestral) by Rene Pedersen on #SoundCloud
Thank you for reading! I would like to know if you can relate and what you would suggest/advice to get out of this annoying loophole.