OT: Question about composition...

[Paulh]

I have a rather strange question regarding composition.

Ok, here´s the problem: I stay up late at night composing this piece which sounds really great and all, but when I wake up 8 hours later and press \"play\", the notes seem to be all stuck together and I can´t \"follow\" the music; I keep expecting a note which doesn´t come and the tempo sounds really weird, and it happens almost every time. This usually happens only with my own music.

After I listen to the piece a second time after the first \"what the hell I´ve been composing last night?!?!\" -time, the piece usually sounds much more understandable but that´s because I´ve already heard it once.

Is this a common problem? I´m really confused here and this has bothered me for as long as I´ve been composing music. Does the music sound strange in someone else´s ears as well?

[Ed]

Well I try not to drink alcohol or take mind altering substances while composing. images/icons/grin.gif images/icons/wink.gif

Seriously though, I don\'t know why you are experiencing this. I do know that I find a lot more problems with my piece of music when I have \"slept on it\". This is probably because the mind has simply had time to relax. I used to get this when I stayed up late at might writing essays for school. I found lots of errors in the morning.

Perhaps you should try not to stay up so late (that\'s rich coming from me, lol) and try to get more sleep. That and attempt to record your music during the day. images/icons/cool.gif

That reminds me... I should go to sleep...

Ed

[Paulh]

Originally posted by Ed:
Well I try not to drink alcohol or take mind altering substances while composing. images/icons/grin.gif images/icons/wink.gif

Seriously though, I don\'t know why you are experiencing this. I do know that I find a lot more problems with my piece of music when I have \"slept on it\". This is probably because the mind has simply had time to relax. I used to get this when I stayed up late at might writing essays for school. I found lots of errors in the morning.

Perhaps you should try not to stay up so late (that\'s rich coming from me, lol) and try to get more sleep. That and attempt to record your music during the day. images/icons/cool.gif

That reminds me... I should go to sleep...

Ed<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">images/icons/smile.gif Well It´s not just when I´m waking up in the morning/I am tired. I could be doing a piece at daytime and after finishing it I listen to something else and forget the piece... then bam, again it sounds weird. I keep asking this from a friend all the time but he doesn´t quite get what I´m getting at.
And I do get enough sleep, so it can´t be it images/icons/smile.gif

This is driving me crazy, maybe I´m just paranoid and there´s nothing wrong afterall... or then there is.

oh well.. images/icons/rolleyes.gif

[Ed]

So let me try to understand the problem a little better, you record it in Cubase or logic or whatever, it sounds fine. Then you listen to something else, and when you play your composition back again it sounds wrong?

Ed

[Paulh]

Ed,

It´s really really hard to explain... I think it´s because I already know how that piece goes (naturally) and upon the second listening time, I´m subconciously trying to guess the melodies before they appear, which leads to confusion...

A good example is my recent mockup of the cutthroat island theme, which sounded really weird when I listened to it \"in the morning\". Did it sound ok in you ears for example?

I really appreciate your attempt to help me out images/icons/smile.gif

[birdwizard]

Paulh,

You should put a link when referring,
since I don\'t know what your referring to as of the \"Cut Throat\" track, but I think what your experiencing is ear fatique. I experience that, as do many others. Not only with auditory input,but also most authors have their works edited for the same reason.

Live long and prosper.....Spock

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Hi Paul,

I think what you\'re experiencing is very normal. You have not been composing for that long.

You will become better and better at it as you come into your own voice. Right now, you are probably experimenting a lot, and what makes sense to you \"the night before\" may sound completely different the next day.

You\'re not crazy at all. This is a part of the process. Trust me, it never goes away completely. I\'ve been doing this for a living longer than you\'ve been alive, and I still wake up sometimes and listen to a track and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Bruce

[Neal Keane]

Interesting, Paul...

It seems clear that the part of brain you\'re using when normally listening to music is different than the one your using to analytically compose music with. You need to merge the two and compose as if your improvising. images/icons/tongue.gif Then you can kill two birds with one stone and do your critiquing/editing in real time.

I thing it was Miles who said about improvising...(with a raspy voice) \"think of a note, and don\'t play it!\". images/icons/cool.gif

Neal

[Paulh]

Thanks for the replies!

Birdwizard, I gave the link on another thread, but here it is again:
click here (\"http://www.northernsounds.net/useruploads/img3d9384d6a4061.mp3\") Tell me what you think.
Gotta love spock! images/icons/smile.gif

Bruce, Thanks for the insight. I´m starting to believe this happens only when the compositions are very complex. If I make a track with a drum loop and a very simple tempo, I´m usually not confused when listening to it. It could very well be the fact that I´m not that experienced with dealing with my own music the way I should be.

Neal, as far as I know I only have one brain, but I know what you´re getting at images/icons/smile.gif .
I´m pretty sure it goes away in time. Perhaps I should give more time for tempo-transitions to happen so they won´t confuse anyone and keep the compositions a little more simple.

Thanks again everyone!

[MikeGraybill]

I experience similiar things too. I agree that ear fatigue is a primary culprit, but I\'ve also noticed something else. When I write in a sequencer/sampler situation I find that it all \"makes sense\" while I\'m doing it. My ears are finding the original lines that define the piece moment to moment, and they don\'t lose track of those lines as I add other supporting lines to the mix. On paper it makes sense (usually images/icons/wink.gif ) but as I was playing it, the music would be getting muddier and more convoluted with every new line, as new ideas with regards to counterpoint, etc came to mind. It is usually a mix problem for me that needs to be re-listened to the next day (or at least several hours after stepping away from the machines on a break.) When I write something, I usually have a musician friend of mine give it a listen at some point mid-way through the work to simply tell me when he could no longer follow the melody/direction. I\'ve found that what I thought was blatantly loud and obvious at first was quite often obscurred and hidden beneath less important lines. But again, I wouldn\'t know until I waited a while, or brought a new set of ears to the project.

Understand, this isn\'t so much a writing problem I think, so much as it is a synth/sampler/sequencer writing problem. If the work was to be printed out and performed by players, they would automatically recognize the important stuff and bring it out. In my mind that\'s already happening. I\'m simply hearing what I expect to hear, rather than what is actually there.

This is an interesting psycho-acoustic topic. I\'ve often wondered if others experienced the same thing. I\'m not crazy after all. Thanks for bringing this up. images/icons/smile.gif

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I don\'t think this is a case of ear fatigue as much as simply losing yourself in the moment...then coming back to the piece to find you REALLY lost yourself, haha.

But...in reference to ear fatigue and mixing, one surefire rule to remember is this: MIX SOFTLY.

Volume is the great deceiver. Everything sounds good if you make it loud enough, and especially with thick orchestrations, a loud monitoring level can really fool you.

One of the best ways to keep your ears and mixes healthy is to turn down the monitors to the point where you can literally barely hear the music, and just listen like that for a few minutes. I try to do it at least once per hour.

First, listening that way will tell you if a part is way too loud, because that part will completely take over at such soft volumes. On the other side of the equation, if you can hear each individual part, your mix is probably very well balanced in the big picture, and you can go about tweaking it, bringing the important themes forward where they need more exposure.

Second, after you\'ve spent five or ten minutes listening in this super-soft state, your ears have a chance to readjust themselves--you will often find that when you DO turn the monitors back up, you will not be listening nearly as loudly as you were before you took your \"break.\"

If you consistently find the latter to be true, then it\'s a pretty good bet you are monitoring too loudly in general. You\'ll get better mixes AND save your ears by making note of that and adjusting your mixing volumes down a bit.

Trust me on this. At age 43, rapidly approaching 44, every moment of my day is accompanied by subtly ringing ears--permanent damage from my young glory years of loud freakout bands, touring, and mixing WAY too loud. You don\'t want that, I guarantee you. I sure wish I had it to do over again...it\'s something I\'ll have to struggle with for the rest of my life.

[fmfgs]

maybe a have a trick to overcome your problem: separate your work in three distinct phases:
1. Composing (sketch style, minimalistic arrangement)
2. Orchestration (fill in the gaps and find the right samples etc.)
3. Conducting (tempo map and mix)
now you can start working on different pieces or segments of your composition in parallel, but do only one of the three steps for a segment on the same day. If on day 4 you still think it sounds weird, tell me on what step you introduce that problem...
good luck
fmfgs

[Damon]

Originally posted by Bruce A. Richardson:
I still wake up sometimes and listen to a track and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Bruce<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">LOL, ditto Bruce. images/icons/grin.gif Funny how you think it\'s really good the night before to.

[Synth2k]

Everyone is making some great points here.

Another one I thought I\'d like to add is that to become better as a composer you have to allow yourself to write \"crap\" sometimes. It\'s one of the only ways in which you can become better in my opinion - write as much as you can, but don\'t get too down on yourself if you listen to it one day and go \"Yikes, that was realy, really bad\". Instead, you can listen to it and go \"Yikes, that was really, really bad...now what exactly am I listening to that makes it really, really bad?\"

And from there, you can work on developing better music.

Ryan.

[tonylombardi]

I\'ve experienced the same thing. I\'m trying to finish up a 40 minute piano concerto, and I remember one day working like 5 hours on a section, and the next completely scratching it because I realized how bad it was. I\'m not afraid of doing that since I\'m pretty confident that evenually I\'ll find something that works. Ultimately it\'s a matter of feeling. If you aren\'t feeling what you want to feel when you hear the music, change it.
Also, I wonder sometimes whether it\'s better for a composer to have a thick skin or to be easily moved emotionally. If you have a thick skin, you probably have a better BS detector and are less likely to write wattered-down generic music. If you\'re easily moved then even the most boring music could move you. Anyone else ever wonder about this? (if you don\'t mind the tangent)

[Paulh]

I´m really glad to hear I´m not the only one who´s having this problem! There has been some really helpful points made indeed.

MichaelAngelo, that´s excatly what I´m talking about! Not being able to follow the melody. images/icons/smile.gif

Bruce, listening at a very minimal volume (and then increasing it) has worked really nicely! I´ll try to indeed avoid mixing too loud, which often happens by accident... better try that with gaming as well images/icons/smile.gif

Fmgs, that was an interesting tip, although I personally tend to do all of that at the same time. To be honest, working on one piece for 4 days is a little too much for me. Usually I start to get bored to the piece after two days and begin to change the melody, which is something I´d like to avoid. Another thing (similiar to Bruce´s tip) I´m using to bypass the problem while composing, is to take a short brake (4-5 min) from it every once in a while; listening to something else or just letting my mind to calm down really helps me to \"reset\" my thoughts and often gives me a fresh perpective on the piece I´m working on.

\"Writing crap\" is my specialty images/icons/grin.gif . I often spend 20 minutes to write a piece which has nothing to do with trying to intentionally evolve myself musically, but just to evaluate what I can come up with.

Tony, I have thought of that actually... I think it really makes a difference how does a composer personally react to music in an emotional level. Film composers should evaluate this in themselves, I think.

Thanks again!

[Alberto R.S.]

I\'m not as old and experienced as other people in these forums are, but I started writing music when I was much younger than now and was light-years far from being what I am right now as musician and man.

I started reading this topic just for curiosity but I quickly got interested in reading the problem and the replies..

Cool thing I was thinking about this problem yesterday: right now I\'ve finished writing music for my third album: a big progressive instrumental metal suite, more than 40 minutes long. I\'ve finished writing it in about 1 week or so. When my collegues were listening to it and noticing the progress they always got suprised for the speed I had in writing and continuing it. This led me to explain why this thing was happening: I was not deleting what I had wrote before. I just listened to it and found it good.

This way of composing, this kind of confidence with what you write is not caused by sleep or something similar. I know the problem perfectly Paul and I would like to write the right words in order to let you understand what have been very problematic in the past for me too. I would like you to jump over this problem by reading my words but maybe this will be not possible: first of all because I shall not be able to write the right ones and second of all because the way of stepping over this problem is facing it, not jumping over it. Impressive: I was using the same expression you used \"I write music at night, I go to sleep, I listen to it again when I get up, I trash it because I find it awful\".

A friend of mine had this problem too, which I assume then it\'s quite obvious when you deal with music composition. Bruce, in my opinion, has given you the best point of view for this problem and I fully agree with him. You are lucky to have found all these nice persons that replied to your topic and helped you by sharing an intimate musician problem like the one you \'re experiencing. I had noone to discuss it with and I\'ve just kept living with it until the time has come for me to solve it. This does not mean that every second of music I write down to paper will never see the rubber, I still delete/improve/modify my music often, but I don\'t have this problem deep hurting my heart. My music is free from this \"monster\" now images/icons/wink.gif

Just give the best you can and keep studying and playing hard. You just need time, music will never run away from you and you will soon translate the inspiration that is all around us into notes.

Best luck!
Alberto