The Composing Process -- The First "Final" Draft

For the next several weeks, The Creative will be taking an in-depth look at the steps I go through in composing a piece of music, from first ideas clear through the end of the publishing process.  Realize this is only my process -- this may or may not work for you, so use it only as a guide.  This is the fourth post in the series.

So now, you've got a rough draft.  You took that seed of an idea, you played with it, teased it out, stretched it, followed where it led, and now you've got a rough draft.  Congratulations.

Sadly, the hard work is just now beginning.

With a rough draft, what you have is a set of good musical ideas strung together in some semblance of order.  The notes themselves may need some work, the sections may need to be stretched, and the order may not be anywhere close to correct.  This is the part where most composers meet their downfall, because they fail to recognize one very important truth:

Not every note you write is golden.

It took me a long time to realize this.  For the longest time, I would write a piece, revising but little, assuming that every note I had placed was Divinely Inspired, and therefore perfect just the way it was.  The only problem is ... that wasn't true.

We write rough drafts in English classes all the time, then proceed to slash large sections and rewrite them; why shouldn't the same be true in our composing?  The language we're writing in has changed, but the compositional process hasn't -- why are some high school English classes called "composition" classes, after all?

There are a few steps that come next -- the order you do them in will depend on you, and even on the piece itself. 

• Correct the notes and chords  -- This is the same as fixing spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and inserting missing words in an English paper.  It's the fine-tuning of the specific details.
• Correct phrases of music (usually 4-, 8-, or 16-bar phrases) -- This is adding in and subtracting out sentences to help the whole thing make more sense.  It can involve inserting a couple of measures or deleting a few, or even completely reworking a measure here or there.
• Correct the order of the phrases -- This is moving whole paragraphs around, changing the order in which you present the information.  Perhaps you stated the theme in its final, glorious iteration too early in the piece -- this would be where you move it to the end where it belongs.

As you correct, you'll move between these three stages at will, and rare is the piece where you'll visit them each only once.  If you've accepted that not everything is right with the piece, performing these steps is much, much easier.

Then, once you have everything just the way you want it, comes the process of adding in the "extra stuff."  Truth be told, this is the stage of the process I look forward to the least.  It's adding in the dynamics, articulations, tempo markings, slurs, pedal markings, bowings, breath marks -- all the tiny things that fill in the final nuance of a piece.  I despise this step for two reasons: there are so many small details to attend to; and if I put the wrong detail in the wrong place, I can completely wreck a piece.

That being said, it's a step that needs to be done, so the best thing is to dive in and do it.  Finale helps me out to some extent by playing back much of what I put in, but even then, I can't rely on the computer to do it all for me.  Finale -- at least for me -- is not very intuitive when it comes to interpreting ritardandos, accelerandos, and other tempo-related markings.  On those, I have to really hear the piece in my head, trusting my own imagination to get those markings correct. 


Congratulations!  You now have a final draft of a piece ... but as the title of this post states, this is only the first "Final" draft.  Most of my pieces have two or three or even more "Final" drafts before they're really done.  To me, a "Final" draft only means the piece in its entirety sits before me -- it may not be perfect, but it's whole.  Think of getting dressed in the morning -- you are still yourself as you step out of the shower, as you put on your clothes, as you do your hair and makeup and whatever other rituals you take part in every morning ... but until all those rituals are done, you're not fully ready, not your final "Final" self.

Next time, we'll talk about the last minor things we do with a piece to get it ready to see the light of day.  Until then, keep on creating, and have a great week!