I’ve been studying composition and arrangement for a long time and I’m well aware of a lot of established compositional techniques which make up this ‘craft’. Where I’ve spent a lot of time working through ideas using some of the techniques I’ve learned, I’ve produced what I consider to be my best work by completely indescribable and seemingly bizarre means, and not consciously employed any of the techniques for developing ideas that I’ve studied and learned for years. I’ve never been particularly good at finishing compositions or songs. I always want to return to my ideas and tinker with them, play with the ideas and really be sure that when I’ve ‘finished’ a composition that it is something that I won’t want to return to in order to improve it later. What I look upon as my ‘best’, seemed to compose itself, and strangely I feel most distant from it. I don’t feel like I ‘earned’ that work, more that I was lucky to have it fall in my lap! Upon recognising this some time ago, I tried to tap into whatever facilitated that. I didn’t try to recreate events, thoughts, or other circumstantial factors, but I did try to explore where this music could have come from, and how it related to my taste and what (and how) different influences must have drawn me towards different sounds that I liked.
Recently I’ve found myself composing by consciously employing extensive experimentation in order that I may potentially unearth some good and substantial ideas. This has never been something that I’ve done a lot with my own compositions, preferring instead to ‘build’ pieces from ideas that I had developed over time, but what I learned through doing this and through the conversations that I’ve had with people about it, is how widespread this method actually is, and even more alarmingly, sometimes even the exclusive means by which some people compose!
I use a computer all the time when I’m composing these days. At one time it was pen, paper and the kitchen table but now I work at a computer all the time. This has meant that I may assemble ideas and transpose parts for transposing instruments quickly and much more efficiently than before. Where I have nothing against the extensive exploration of the potential of any software for creative purposes, it has occurred to me that if the entire creative process is surrendered to serendipity as an inevitable result of extensive trial and error, then I’m of the strong opinion that the craft of composition has been watered down, and I believe that in this situation the control a composer may have over their work has been foolishly abandoned. The principles of taking an idea and developing it, drawing upon the resources at a composer’s disposal in terms of sounds and instrumental arrangements (that they had learned how to recognise and use) seem to have been allowed to be lost. These are parts of the craft of composition which have stood the test of time as valuable and dependable principles. If these principles are to be replaced by a much more computer-driven approach, exploring (albeit with significantly enhanced speed and efficiency) a principle of extensive trial and error, there is a danger that a lot of the music of the future will be made by a very fragile and superficial process. Where this process may well produce some interesting, engaging, and appealing musical ideas of substance, the widespread use of this ‘trial and error’ process of composition also introduces the danger of providing the world with quite a lot of fragile and superficial music.
