Composed Composer

I'm a composer. At least, that's what I call myself and what I tell my girlfriend to tell people when they ask what her boyfriend does.

In reality, I'm an arranger that aspires to more after years of arranging music he couldn't find when he was playing it in an ensemble. String quartets, ska bands, symphony orchestras, and almost a drum corps. I've arranged for these types of ensembles and any other you can think of. Arranging is easy (for me); writing melodies is hard.

Years of arranging has given me a fantastic advantage though. Orchestration comes naturally to me. I can listen to a song on the radio and hear exactly how it would sound in any instrumentation. No thought...it's already done, just needs to be on paper, or on computer, as it were. I've tried slowing that process down and creating a formula for "my style" of arranging/orchestration, taking the time to think through it, blah, blah, blah.

Doesn't work.

So, why fight it. I hear it, I write it, I ignore that damn synth I have plugged into my computer.

Composing original pieces though, is hard. The best way I've found to write a melody is to get out an instrument and noodle until I find something I like. The, write it down and set it to a chord structure. Then, elaborate, exbound, extrapolate, etc, whatever, you get it.

Using this most basic idea (melody, chords, and screw the ending), I have written a couple of lead sheets for jazz combos that I'm rather proud of, and can take me as little as (apparently) a half and hour, as this is all of the notice I had before a rehearsal that I needed something written. This also lead to the unfortunate habit of naming pieces before writing them, so names are nothing more than the way to identify it in rehearsal/performance. It's also lead to names like Magnus, Luxe, and Super Magnus.

Of course, the things I'm working on now are a bit more involved than 16 bars, repeat. I'm writing a treatment of a film score to submit to a director (read: friend in grad school), a piece to be used in a new theatre production (read: friend writing thesis), and a couple of pieces for symphony orchestra (read: my odl college orchestra will read them for me). All in all though, it's a lot for me to get through, and I need to just sit down and do it.

Ugh.

There's a lot ahead of me, so back to work.