Composition Tip: Without Deadlines you might develop “Paralysis by Analysis”

I remember watching an interview with Quincy Jones discussing the Thriller album by Michael Jackson. Apparently Thriller was written and recorded in a short period of time because the studio did not give them much time.  I remember in the interview Jones said that there was no time for “paralysis by analysis.” They had specific deadlines to meet and there was not a lot of extra time to over-analysis what they were doing. Of course, that album went down as one of the greatest pop records of all time, selling millions of records.

Deadlines can be a wonderful thing for composers. As a student composer, I was expected to write a certain amount of music by the end of the semester. If you are a professional composer you might have performance deadlines. You will need to complete the piece by a certain time to give the performers a chance to rehearse the work.

I’m giving a guitar concert in a week at Lake Michigan College. A couple of months ago I began the process of picking out pieces for this concert. I soon realized I had a hole in my program and I thought it would be nice to compose a new electro-acoustic piece specifically for this concert (Northern Lights, the video is above). I also realized at that time that I would have to start teaching in two weeks and once school began, I wouldn’t have much time to rehearse for this concert much less finish composing a piece.  So my goal was to compose a 7 or 8 minute piece in two weeks before school started. Earlier this summer I had had the idea of a guitar piece using Max/MSP and this concert gave me an excuse to write this electro-acoustic work.

When I think back on it the actual process of composing this piece is a blur to me. I don’t really remember what I was thinking about while composing Northern Lights. I do remember I started with a basic idea: I wanted it to be around 7 minutes and I wanted the electronic parts to sound like a chorus of guitars. That’s what I started with and then I composed the piece. I think it turned out OK considering the lack of time I had to work with. I would have preferred to have a month to compose this piece but I just didn’t have the time. I’m not saying Northern Lights is as good as the Thriller album, but like them, I didn’t have time to develop “paralysis by analysis.”

In general I like to write a section of music (20 measures or so) before going back and revising it.  This seems to work for me but it may not work for everyone. Every composer needs figure out a way to write quality pieces in a reasonable amount of time.

Here is an idea:

Try composing a 5 minute piece for your instrument in one week. The first 5 days write it out completely and ignore the inner critic. If it helps, try writing a bad piece. You might find that it isn’t so bad after all. Spend the last 2 days revising it.

Rob