When did you start composing?

[Will Kirk]

Originally Posted by Lunatique

Err... that's my wife's hand you kissed, not mine (my avatar is her photo).

My hand is over here if you still want to kiss it. :tongue:

oo crap I thought that was you in your avatar!

haha!

[Boneman]

so you look like a cat and I, a sunset!!

[Will Kirk]

Originally Posted by Boneman

so you look like a cat and I, a sunset!!

And now you look like a Trombone!

[Boneman]

Had a shave this morning!

[sawscape]

I brought up a guitar to college (UCLA) as a study break and started noodling on it (quite a while ago). I found that I liked making up new music more interesting than learning old music. I took some basic non-major theory courses and then started noodling with the music dept pianos. I'm completely computer-based now, but it is, unfortunately, still a hobby. I might start taking some local or online composition courses just to be better educated. I'm hoping to win the lotto so I can do it full time.

[Ron Ofir]

I started composing about a month ago, the same time I have started listening to classical music, which is also the same time I learned my first classical composition, which was Rondo Alla Turca (heh, took me quite a while to read all the notes and transpose them to tabs and do necessary changes! I'm a much better reader now though). I started playing the guitar 2.5 years ago and about a year later was the first time I started to write songs (only melodies), so maybe that's when I started composing.

[Majesty]

I started composing my own little songs on piano when I was taking piano as a child. But, the composition bug really took hold of me around age 11/12. That's when I really tried to experiement with the idea of composing.

[crimson]

Well, after I got my guitar about ten years ago I sometimes improvised and doodled something with it, and occasionally thought that it would be cool to make a song one day, but the first time I put real effort into composition was only about a year ago. Got some VSTs, a sequencer and a MIDI keyboard, and started playing with them. Back then all I got made was these kind of scraps or pieces which I thought sounded cool in some way, always on one instrument sound. I never succeeded in making a full piece out of those scraps then, mostly because I couldn't figure out how to make them sound like they belong together. Or, well, I do have a one-minute-long piano piece lying around somewhere which almost sounded like a whole piece. I played that one straight into a sequencer, and that might be described as my first piece ever.

I might still be stuck in the same situation, not being able to do full pieces, if I hadn't found Sibelius O-Generator about six months ago. That really was a turning point to my composition hobby! I try not to praise this software too much, but basically it's a learning software for 10-16 year olds, and requires no knowledge about music theory beforehand. And it focuses on teaching the theory from a composition point of view in a very straightforward way. I got several "wow, is it this simple?" experiences while using it.

After that, I made a few chaotic pieces out of joy of discovery. Then my interest in composition dropped for a while, as I moved on to other things. But I still kept composition in mind and tried to learn more from books and practicing my compositional skills every now and then. I haven't been awfully productive, though, as I only have 6 pieces under my belt (not counting the prehistoric first piano piece).

There. That was the lecture about my history of composition. By the way, it's interesting to read about other people's journeys here.