How do 'sketches' work?

Started by 12tone., May 25, 2008, 05:31:45 PM

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12tone.

I've read and heard lots that a composer will spend a few weeks sketching a symphony or a chamber piece.  Now what does a sketch consist off?  Is he just writing down a single-line melody perhaps with harmony underneath among other chopped up un-related melodies to be put together later? 

Norbeone

Quote from: 12tone. on May 25, 2008, 05:31:45 PM
I've read and heard lots that a composer will spend a few weeks sketching a symphony or a chamber piece.  Now what does a sketch consist off?  Is he just writing down a single-line melody perhaps with harmony underneath among other chopped up un-related melodies to be put together later? 

You're estimated description is certainly one way that a composer will sketch. It could be anything from thematic material that may or not, in the end, be used, or rough notation of a section from the piece with vague outlines of harmonic progression etc. Anything really.

A lot of the time I notate very small ideas and then write, in words beside it, what I plan to do with it.

greg

Quote from: Norbeone on May 26, 2008, 03:31:02 PM
A lot of the time I notate very small ideas and then write, in words beside it, what I plan to do with it.
Oh, no!
Be very careful with that...... a predetermined outline is one thing that chokes originality, so I've learned. Intuition first, then figuring out ways to make it better by going back again and again (which also mostly involves intuition). Something I need to pay attention to more myself, anyways....

12tone.

Here's a question:


Sometimes if I'm at the piano and come up with a little tune I like, it doesn't take long for that tune to get annoying.  I'm not saying I'm composing like a great composer, but it's just how can one stick with an idea / melody / harmony long enough to finish the thought without the tune getting on your nerves? 

I think of someone like Chopin or just anyone at the piano for hours working over a piece (maybe two or more off and on).  I mean...really. 

With me it starts off great and I enjoy it but then it's like ... grr  :-\

Mark G. Simon

There are as many ways of sketching compositions as there are composers. The main point is that a full-fledged composition rarely comes into a composer's head in one fell swoop. A composer will write down as much of a compositional idea as he can as the idea comes to him. After that he has to make countless decisions about where this idea comes in the sequence of the composition, what follows it, what comes before it. As he adds new material, he keeps generating new sketches until eventually he comes up with a finished composition. Each manifestation of the composition at each stage of development is another sketch. Eventually he'll make a "fair copy" which more or less represents the finished work. After due consideration, maybe including an actual reading by musicians, the composer may make some revisions and from there produce a final copy.

mikkeljs

#5
Quote from: 12tone. on May 26, 2008, 03:56:23 PM
Here's a question:


Sometimes if I'm at the piano and come up with a little tune I like, it doesn't take long for that tune to get annoying.  I'm not saying I'm composing like a great composer, but it's just how can one stick with an idea / melody / harmony long enough to finish the thought without the tune getting on your nerves? 

I think of someone like Chopin or just anyone at the piano for hours working over a piece (maybe two or more off and on).  I mean...really. 

With me it starts off great and I enjoy it but then it's like ... grr  :-\

That´s easy!  ;D Compose something, that is good. In a definitive way..... if that is possible....

I have been working on the same 3 major pieces for 4-5 years now, and I´m 20. The ideas does never get annoying or borring, no matter how long time I spent with them. And that´s because of the phenomenon, that I call true value. It´s very important for me, that the music can first of all want something by it self. How can notes want anything? Notes have stories. The meters are the indication of defination - therefore if something from a developed different reason respond with a common value on the right meter, that is musical themes, it creates a 3rd connection. The difference between humans will and this phenomenon, is, that the value for the human, that has been commonly responded, is conscious, so we feel lucky. Music doesn´t feel anything, that´s what makes it quite abstract, but music can still reach the miraculous state of the good, which has been defined within it self.

ok...in short words, can we imagine something good without feelings? Or perhabs the feelings comes along with it, so that music becomes intelligent and sexual.

If the good ís only an ilusion, then radically thinkers would have to make suicide?

Monsieur Croche

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on May 26, 2008, 03:39:59 PM
Oh, no!
Be very careful with that...... a predetermined outline is one thing that chokes originality, so I've learned. Intuition first, then figuring out ways to make it better by going back again and again (which also mostly involves intuition). Something I need to pay attention to more myself, anyways....

That's how Paul McCartney worked too, and look where it has led him!

mikkeljs

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on May 28, 2008, 06:02:26 AM
That's how Paul McCartney worked too,

and Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Bach, Debussy, Mahler, Wagner, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Webern, Berg, Berlioz, Sibelius, Karl Henning, Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Hændel, Palestrina, Cage, Monteverdi and Crumb!

greg

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on May 28, 2008, 06:02:26 AM
That's how Paul McCartney worked too, and look where it has led him!
i don't get it. What about him?



mikkeljs

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on May 28, 2008, 07:36:42 AM
i don't get it. What about him?




He was the one without aspergers.  :P ;D

greg

Quote from: mikkeljs on May 28, 2008, 11:55:24 AM
He was the one without aspergers.  :P ;D
without?!
now i'm even more confused!  ???

mikkeljs

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on May 28, 2008, 12:27:03 PM
without?!
now i'm even more confused!  ???

Did he have aspergers?  :o I didn´t know...

greg

Quote from: mikkeljs on June 30, 2008, 09:05:10 AM
Did he have aspergers?  :o I didn´t know...
i looked at his wikipedia page and didn't see any mention of aspergers, so i guess not.


but you confused me here:
Quote from: mikkeljs on May 28, 2008, 11:55:24 AM
He was the one without aspergers.  :P ;D
i didn't know what you meant by this.



Bonehelm

They usually work out the melody with harmonic progressions within a short score first, then orchestrate it later with their selected instruments for the piece.

mikkeljs

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on June 30, 2008, 10:03:19 AM
but you confused me here:i didn't know what you meant by this.




I just tried to think of something, that almost all composers have, but not him.  ;D It was just a joke.  :)

greg

Quote from: mikkeljs on July 01, 2008, 12:04:55 AM
I just tried to think of something, that almost all composers have, but not him.  ;D It was just a joke.  :)
ahhhhhhhhh ok i get it now  8)

Monsieur Croche

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on May 28, 2008, 07:36:42 AM
i don't get it. What about him?

Well, McCartney's compositions are terrible, and he famously refused to learn proper music theory, thinking that it would get in the way of his inspiration. Of course, in his case, it is intuition almost always the way, rather than just "first", so I suppose the remark I made wasn't very good after all. Never mind. :(

greg

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on July 01, 2008, 10:55:40 PM
Well, McCartney's compositions are terrible, and he famously refused to learn proper music theory, thinking that it would get in the way of his inspiration. Of course, in his case, it is intuition almost always the way, rather than just "first", so I suppose the remark I made wasn't very good after all. Never mind. :(
What a complete idiot........


abidoful

It's an old thread, i know-but...

Sometimes if it's a lyrical piece, it "just comes" more or or less. Maybe when sitting at the piano. An atmosphere...few notes...falling in love with it; it just comes :) When it's a bigger piece I need more WILL; organisation, planning. I can have many sketches (I'm actually talking two different things, sketches and pieces)---and I just do lot's of stuff with those ideas. See what they are "made of". Turn them, analyze them, augment them, twist them--what intervall structure they have etc. etc. I think it was Sibelius who said that certain motives or themes "want" to be something, they either are part of a big symphony or aren't. I don't know about that :-\ When I composed bunch of variations, I just basically had the character of certain variations in my mind and more or less just "produced", invented music.

petrarch

Here's what sketches look like; they are fragments, ideas, bits and pieces that eventually are worked into a cohesive whole:

http://www.pedro-amaral.eu/works/subpages/works02n1M.htm

This page contains more info about the work:

http://www.pedro-amaral.eu/works/subpages/works02n1.htm
//p
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