| How I Came
to Composing
I've always listened to a lot of
music and played music for many years, but it had never crossed my mind to
try to compose any. I always assumed that if you were a composer you
heard tuned in your head; the only tunes I heard were ones I already knew.
It was only when I was playing around on a keyboard one day that things
changed.
I discovered purely by chance that I could make up wee
tunes on it, and began wondering if I could also do the same on recorder,
something I'd never tried.
A tune I was playing on recorder at that time was the pipe tune 'The Hag
o' the Churn', and wanted to join it with some other tunes to make it into a
set, but couldn't find anything I liked, although I knew what note I wanted
it to start with. So I decided to give a go of writing it myself.
An hour or so later 'The Stone Piggy', my first tune, was born.
This makes it sound easy, but that wasn't how it felt at
the time, and no-one was more surprised that me when I actually did it.
That first tune opened the floodgates, and I've been writing ever since.
The way I now approach writing a new tune is to take my
instrument and play around with notes and rhythms, improvising until
something clicks and demands to be taken further. Sometimes I can
noodle away for hours and come up with nothing. Other times I've
hardly begun playing when I feel that click and the beginnings of a tune
taking shape.
Some tunes reach their final shape in less than an hour;
others need to sit for a day or two before being finished. And, very
occasionally, a tune will appear, almost ready made, as if it was only
waiting for me to find it.
I never set out to write a particular type of tune, a 6/8
or something in a minor key for example. I only usually become aware of how
the tune 'formally' works in terms of rhythm etc, when it come to writing it
down. Even then, a tune can have internal rhythms that knock it off the main
beat, giving it a different feel entirely.
The biggest aide for me in getting a tune down is a tape
recorder. Sometimes an idea, no matter how good it is, can be so
fleeting that if I don't record it quickly, 10 minutes later it's forgotten.
Composing for me is like a short term memory thing. When the idea is
developing, it's all I can think about at that moment. Once a tune has
been pinned down, I have to go back and relearn it to get it into my long
term memory. Feels strange having to learn my own tune, but there you
go!
Composing is a great way to switch off as I'm unable to
think of anything else when you're doing it. You do need peace and
privacy to do it though, and I often disappear to my shed if I feel a need
for a noodle. I never know if each tune I write is going to be my
last, but to be able to have written what I have so far has brought me
immense pleasure.
I still don't know how composing actually works; that
remains a mystery. All I do know is the circumstances I need in order
to allow the ideas to flow. And as long as I have my shed, that
hopefully shouldn't be a problem!
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