compose a symphony

One thing that helps with writing a symphony is breaking it off into smaller pieces. Beethoven approached string quartets as his training ground for orchestral works. Of course, he got so good at composing string quartets they stand on their own! Start by composing a piece that’s 30 seconds long for just a couple instruments and see how it goes. Really a symphony can be seen as hundreds of 15, 30, 60 second sections put together in an order that makes them “add up” for a listener.

I have always wanted to write music – I did compose as a teenager, but I suppose life took over and I lost the knack, now I just can set a goal to write something small-scale, before tackling a full symphony orchestra and the infinite subtleties an orchestra can give.

OK, so I’ve scored some music before but nothing as grandiose as a symphony. I consider any individual that has scored a multiple movement symphony a genius, whether you think it sounds good or not. This is a monumental goal.

Got started at mixing over the weekend. I have to start from scratch, since the tempo shifting caused a lot of my mod wheel and pedal events to be in the wrong place.

I learned a lot mixing Odd Quartet for the RPM Challenge ‘08, so I should be able to do a decent job this time around.

Over the last week I managed to shift all my events to half speed, then double the tempo so everything comes out write when I do notation.

I also went in and fiddled with the tempo automation where needed, so everything’s pretty much the same, but the notation comes out right now.

This messed up a lot of the modwheel and pedal positioning, but I will need to redo that anyway as I go through the mixing process.

So, on with the mixing!

I went through yesterday and did some cleanup in the move of my first movement from Garageband to Logic. In the version of GB I was using at the time, I had no tempo automation, so I just played rubato to get a ritardando when I wanted one.

Now that I have tempo automation, I needed to go through and fix all those events to be correct at tempo, so I can go through next and use tempo automation for my ritard.

Now that I’m done with RPM ‘08, I’m going to get back to my symphony. The good news is I learned a lot about balancing, mixing, and tweaking Garritan Personal Orchestra when I wrote “Odd Quartet” during RPM, so I should better be able to tackle this one.

I’ve been working on it FOREVER. I’m done with the second and third movement, and I’m almost done with the fourth, but I have yet to write the first…:P

It’s so much fun, though, I love composing [when it goes well]. I just have trouble coming up with ideas :( It’s going to be a short symphony, though, about 20 minutes…but I’m really happy about what I have so far! :)

You know the Maestro like Beethoven compose all his symphony, with one taking 2-6 years.
I as a piano student want to compose a symphony.

In 2008 I plan to hit my symphony hard, starting with polishing off the first movement. It’s been note-complete for more than two years. With Logic (instead of GarageBand) I can play the MIDI controls on my Trigger Finger in real-time without changing the notes, so I should be able to make at least the first movement happen.

Next up will probably be the third movement, since I have all the major themes written for that one, and it will also be the shortest movement.