Composing is Decision Making
When you boil it down to the bare elements, the act of composing is basically about making decisions. Do you repeat that last section or do something different? Do you put this line on clarinet or trumpet? Should this chord resolve as expected or not? And so on.Every aspect of writing music is a decision. Thus it follows that the better you are at making decisions, the better you will be at writing music.There are two sides to decision making:
- Wether or not you make the right decisions
- How quickly or slowly you make those decisions
Being that music is art, point #1 is a little difficult to talk about. There are probably a thousand "right" decisions for any given circumstance, so coming up with a surefire method for always choosing the best one seems just about impossible. The best approach in this case is to make sure that you try out a few alternatives, and ultimately go with your instincts.The second point though, how quickly you make decisions, is something that can be improved upon. From observing other composers work, I've found that by far the number one reason some people are slow at writing cues is because they are slow at making decisions. Too much time is wasted looping the same 4 bars over and over, tweaking every little nuance and then tweaking it back again. They don't make any progress, and thus they are tweaking and not writing.
"If you can improve how quickly you're able to make decisions, you will improve as a composer."
Like making the "right" decision, making a fast decision has a lot to do with trusting your instincts. But it is also about trusting the creative process. Just because you wrote something and then moved on from it doesn't mean that you can't go back and change it. But you will only make progress if you are constantly pushing forward.The best way to composer is to make very fast decisions and get as much written as possible, and then go back for editing as a separate phase. If you can improve how quickly you're able to make decisions, you will improve as a composer.