Writing Sheet Music For Symphonies, some questions Options

[Fsgdjv]

Hello, I've lately become interested in writing some symphonies, nothing fancy, I just want to try and see how it's done, even though it might just be a few bars or whatever. I thought of ways to write, when I write rock music or whatever I usually fool around with my guitar and then write it into guitar pro, and then add drums etc from there.

But for writing a symphony, I thought about guitar pro for a while, but the classical composers didn't have access to guitar pro so I suppose they just wrote the sheet music. Are you supposed to have an instrument and try out the melodies etc on and then write them down? For example, did Wagner (for instance) sit by his piano and write or did he just hear melodies in his head and write it out on paper without playing and figuring out wich notes it was etc? And how on earth are you supposed to listen to it all together, do I have to be able to look at everything and just imagine it all coming together in my head? Or is it just enough to know the theory so you can see that it doesn't sound overly dissonant unless where you want it to sound dissonant and then hope for the best?

Lots of stupid questions, but if anyone has any tips on this I'd love to hear it

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[Fsgdjv]

Thanks for all the great pointers guys, like everything that has to do with music, there is so much to learn. I saw you can download a trial version of sibelius, so I'm gonna do that and just see what I can accomplish, even me trying to write something like this feels like a frog trying to fly, but since frogs can jump I should be able to get something done.

That was a horrible analogy

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[Muris Varajic]

You should start to mess around with VSTs ( Miroslav Philharmonic is a cool one )
and do some Midi tracks for violins, wind instruments etc.
And if you're up for real scores then learn more about those
instruments, ranges, techniques etc, it is fun.

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[Kaneda]

You should start to mess around with VSTs ( Miroslav Philharmonic is a cool one )
and do some Midi tracks for violins, wind instruments etc.
And if you're up for real scores then learn more about those
instruments, ranges, techniques etc, it is fun.

I'll also second Muris here, although even Miroslav is relatively expensive. If you're serious about orchestral composing, though, it's really worth checking out - you'll get much closer to hearing what your work actually would sound like with a real orchestra.

I'm still in favor of Vienna Symphonic Library, and its dry samples which I can do with whatever I want to, but that's much more expensive -- and much more daunting to work with at first.

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This post has been edited by Kaneda: Jul 8 2009, 02:12 PM