Composing is hard?

Question

When you are doing gcse music and you are composing a peice for flute, how would you do it?

I know that you can pick chords and base it around those but im going to find it hard to compose!

help me please

Answer 1

Composition is hard... For everyone it is different. I follow a creative process when I compose. One thing for sure, don't base it around chords unless you want it to sound like a generic pop tune. What I do is:

1. Think of a melody or work one out on piano. (This takes a while usually, and is one of the harder parts. I like to "sing" the melody in my head.)

2. Work through the melody so that you have a song structure. Like obviously one four measure melody is only going to make for four measures of music.

3. Keep trying to get it perfect. It won't happen, but really try. This is called saturation. you have to emmerse yourself completely in the attempt to make it perfect and your brain will subconciously only save the best parts.

4. Get frustrated and destroy your music. Haha, like seriously thats what I have to do. You need to get rid of the music in order to clear the influence of the not perfect music. And the temptation to use it will be gone.

5. Rest... Think of other things. Just for a few days usually for me.

6. Inspiration.. You'll be sitting there. or in my case laying there. like I'm usually drifting off to sleep and I hear it in my head. The song I was working on, but the good version. The "inspired" version. Really what it is is your brain giving back to you what you gave to it, but only the good parts.

7. Write it down.

this process is what I do. Its not the same for everyone, and its not the same every time. But it has been found that most people use a process quite similar to this. Email me maybe I can help you out.

Answer 2

Sometimes I think of a picture or a story and then try to think of how it would look/sound as music. Like the ways that water flows or rain falls, or have a sort of short movie idea and write the music as if for the movie. Or sometimes I will write lyrics, write music to them, then take them back out. Find what works for you.

Answer 3

my favorite professor in college used to say "write what you hear in your mind/soul and forget about any rules".

this makes for a very interesting creative process!!!