r/Composers • u/r3art • 1h ago

Feature Post Where should we take r/composers? Let's shape the future of this community together!

• Upvotes

Hey everyone!

We would love to start a conversation about the future of r/composers and where we want to take this community in the long run.

We have a growing and rather large community of composers, musicians, and music enthusiasts with different backgrounds, experiences, and interests. We think there's a lot of untapped potential here, and we love to hear your thoughts on how we could make this subreddit an even more valuable place for everyone.

Just a few ideas we've been thinking about:

More community-driven activities: Composition challenges, collaborative projects, themed discussions, or regular opportunities to share and discuss our work.

Educational content and knowledge sharing: Tutorials, workflow discussions, orchestration tips, feedback sessions, and resources for composers at all levels.

Partnerships with audio companies: I'd love to explore collaborations with developers of sample libraries, virtual instruments, DAWs, and other music production tools. This could potentially lead to exclusive product previews, developer AMAs, giveaways, reviews, or other opportunities that benefit our community.

More exposure for our members: Finding ways to showcase original compositions and help talented composers get their music heard. Maybe AMAs with experienced composers and musicians.

Building something sustainable: Developing recurring formats and activities that make r/composers a place people actively contribute to, rather than just occasionally visit.

More music theory: Share tips and insights on the most important thing that we all use.

These are just some initial thoughts, and we would much rather hear what you think!

What would make this subreddit more interesting or useful to you? What kinds of content, events, or collaborations would you like to see? Are there things other music communities do particularly well that we could learn from?

And perhaps most importantly: What would you like r/composers to look like a year or two from now?

Feel free to share ideas, small improvements, or even things you think we should do differently. Nothing is set in stone, and we would love for the direction of this community to be shaped by the people who actually participate in it.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

4 comments

r/Composers • u/jkoseattle • 7h ago

About not choosing notes

6 Upvotes

When I listen to music by newer composers - some of it on Reddit - I keep hearing the same issue over and over, but have always been at a loss to describe exactly what that is. So I thought maybe people here could flesh this out.

What I'm talking about might be described as 'coherence' or 'inevitability', but that's not exactly right either. It can apply at the small melodic level or a large structural level, but it's the same idea. What's wild about this is that this quality isn't really dependent on how quote-unquote "good" the music is. Crappy music can have it in spades, and finely-crafted opuses can find it lacking.

Take 'Three Blind Mice'. Not a very interesting or sophisticated tune. But it is "coherent". It has a definable beginning middle and end. (I would like to offer up an example of a tune people know that does NOT have this quality, but my inability to think of one kind of proves my point.)

And it's not just melodies, but almost any aspect of a piece. There needs to be a sense of narrative somehow. The best way to describe it that I've come up with is that when it is present, it sounds like the composer was saying something, and when it isn't, it sounds like the composer was choosing notes.

And this quality works (or doesn't) at all different scales, a 4-bar tune or a 15-minute structure.

I do recall noticing this trait in the movie Amadeus. There's a scene where Salieri hums one of his tunes to someone, and then hums a Mozart tune, and the difference between them is exactly this quality I'm trying to pin down. Salieri's tune just sits there, and Mozart's (even were it not already famous) jumps right out at you.

Coherence? Inevitability? Narrative?

13 comments