How Do Composers Write From Start To Finish?

The other day, I had stopped to watch a video on Instagram from Eric Whitacre. If you don't know who he is, please go take a listen to some of the things he's composed for bands and choir. Bottom line, he's a really great composer.

Anyways, he had made a video on his own writing process and I thought it was a really neat thing to think about.

In his video he talks about this point in particular.

"In movies, in books, television, you always see this moment when the composer has finished their piece and they set down their quill. It's always at the end of the piece as well. It's the last bar...That's it. Every note as it's supposed to be. That may happen for some composers but it has never once happened for me." ~ Eric Whitacre

And then he starts explaining his own writing process throughout the rest of the video. To see the video in full, you can click this link.

And this all really got me thinking about my own writing process.

Music Writing Process

I don't think I really do write the way it's portrayed as in movies and books, and such.

For me, my writing process as a media composer usually starts off with a very basic, foundational--usually set of chords as my initial first piano sketch. Yes, I have a beginning point and an end point eventually, but even then it's far from done.

From there I might choose to transfer my rough piano sketch into some strings to hear notes being sustained better, or I might just try adding a rough idea of a melody on top of my piano sketch.

Once I have this basic skeletal idea, then I'll slowly start filling in the gaps and start adding in some more of the larger details in before I work my way up to all the small, tiny, intricate details in order to make my own piece finished--at least good enough for a mock up.

However, all the while that I'm writing, I'm very often jumping around different areas. Sometimes I'll be writing in the middle of the video before I even touch the beginning. Sometimes I write the ending first.

As I'm writing though, I'm still building these areas slowly in layers. Sometimes I'll even write one layer for the middle part, then go to the end and write one layer, and go back and forth, building between the two until I like it. A lot of the time I'll start from the beginning and layer my way through the piece, but that doesn't mean it's finished yet. I might continue layering other parts. So as you can see there's a lot of different ways to do this. And again, this is just for the mock up process!

From there, once it goes out to actual performers, the possibilities of tweaking your music even more goes up a lot more. What works for real musicians, what doesn't? And sometimes it may feel like a never ending process.

Actually there have been times when I've published my own works before and I can't help but feel like going back to add in more things, or keep making changes.

But at that point your publisher may not allow you to do all of that. :)

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Anyways, back to how I learned how to do all of this.

I think one of my favorite pieces of advice came from my professor, Vicente Avella. I remember him saying something along the lines of:

"the Sistine chapel wasn't painted in a day...Michelangelo likely started his sketch idea on a piece of paper and once he had his sketch, he transferred it to the ceiling and he slowly worked in layers." ~ Vicente Avella

Sistine Chapel Image

And I can't help but think that that's similar to how I've been creating my writing process, slowly but surely. And of course, my writing process has slowly evolved over time, and I'm sure it might be a little different later on in my career, but this is what's been working for me. Writing in layers.

I think that younger composers might have a more difficult time with that concept. I know it took me many years in order to realize that I should be writing in layers very similarly to how an artist layers their painting.

I think we sometimes get so caught up in listening to other people's music and think that we have to write all these tough sounding details in our work right away. In the process we become so overwhelmed by trying to sound like so-and-so or trying to sound a particular way that we lose sight of our own unique creative process along the way. And in the end we might just end up stressing ourselves out and composing starts to seem less fun--which is far from a good thing.

I think that when we work in layers it helps simplify things in our minds so that we can eventually build up to more complicated music.

Now of course, I'm sure there are many different ways that other people are able to compose, but writing in layers has definitely helped me out a lot of the time.

In essence though, I definitely do agree with Eric Whitacre that as a composer, I don't just jot down everything from bar 1 to the end and it's completely 100% perfect like we see how it's done in the movies.

Unfortunately for the vast majority of us, that just isn't really how it works. So don't stress if your music doesn't sound "professional" right out of the gate.

As Eric says:

"It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get the best version of it. Get it on the page. Show up to the rehearsals, hear how it sounds, and then start making changes."

So with that, I'm curious!

What does your writing process look like?