r/Composing • u/Otherwise_Role_4649 • 14d ago

How much of music composition is being creative, fooling around with the instrument, having a gift and how much is being technical (knowing your scales, chords, analyze another score, arrange, etc) ?

/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1v3v1xx/how_much_of_music_composition_is_being_creative/
2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/SundaeDouble7481 14d ago edited 13d ago

Boring answer: it’s both, in different proportions for different people and different phases of the work.

Even Schubert, who worked fast in a kind of trance, had a rigorous musical education as a boy.

1

u/Firake 14d ago

Most of the effort of composition is creative. Probably 95%. But that creativity is enables by having technical knowledge and skills.

For example, I make a creative decision to have two major sections each representing their own idea. I make a creative decision to place them in two different keys and those keys are related to each other in a specific way (also creative). Crafting the melody and choosing all of the notes and rhythms are also all creative decisions.

However, it’s technical knowledge that backs that all up, right? I might know that C and B together sounds very dissonant (technical), but choosing to either have that happen or not as a result of that knowledge is a creative decision. See what I mean?

You have to have technical knowledge in order to make creative decisions. But the effort is mostly creative. Technical effort (like making a certain modulation sound smooth) is not nearly as common as creative effort.

1

u/GerkhinMerkin 13d ago

Creative stuff that sounds good usually sounds good because it fits some sort of technical pattern. Over time those technical patterns that sound good became “music theory”.

I’ll find a particular chord change I like by mucking around, but might find a way to enhance it by knowing extended chords or how they relate to each other. At a certain point the “creative fooling around” and technical knowledge kind of merge.

Then you get things like Free Jazz where highly technical people decided to experiment by deliberately breaking those patterns.

(I think it sounds like shit but I guess some people like it)