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Composing Music
Thanks for the advice for practicing! It was great.
I just wanted to ask a question about composing music... I don't really know where to start.
I sort of have an idea... but then I end up not writing down what I had in mind... can you help me on that? How can I get my ideas from my mind onto paper so that I will be able to play it?
Thanks again!
-Andy
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Maybe give some free advice about: Music?
Hey Andy. I had that same problem, especially when I started to play jazz and I had to solo several times.
OK, what really helps is deciding how you are going to write music down. What worked for me was sitting down at a piano, remembering the tune, and trying to play it on the piano. I would keep playing it over and over in my head until it was engraved. Then I would find the right keys on the piano, and write down the notes on looseleaf. I actually didn't write down the music notes, just the letters, like G2 (2nd G above middle C), F#1(first F# above middle C), etc. So for me that was useful since back then I had no idea how to actually write music down for piano.
If you can try also playing part of the tune on the French Horn. This is what I was talking about in my rant about playing around at practice. Once you know the tune or ideas you have in mind, play around on your instrument to see what sounds good. If you like the sound of it, keep playing it over and over and over. Until you get tired of it. This will help you at least remember what most it is supposed to sound like. If you can't actually figure out what the notes are or how to write it right away, get to actually play it enough so you know it by heart.
As for writing music again, you could do it by hand or on the computer. If you have the money, you can get programs that actually help you with writing music. The best one I found after weeks of research was Finale 2007. It is VERY expensive though. So I asked my teacher and other band players around if they had that program or a similar one and found a friend who had Finale 2004, which is still very good. I'm not sure how much that one costs, but he let me install it and it works great. You start off with picking what instrument(s) you will write music for, and it gives you a blank score. When you click to add any kind of note (whole, eighth, triplets) on the staff, you will actually hear what the note sounds like played on that instrument! Amazing huh? It gets better... You can print out any music you write and it looks like real sheet music. Once I played around a lot with the program trying different things like crazy, I managed to get a few instruments going, then I hit play and heard some nice music with some drums, guitar, piano, sax, everything. So if you can find someone who has that program or a similar one, writing music on the computer might actually be easier and funner. I know there are also much less expensive programs that you can buy if you wanted to write out music on a score sheet to just print out, but they might not be as sophisticated as Finale. Hope that helped!
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