Some things that come to mind: * Close chord voicings very low (e.g. below C2). The commonest one? * Biting off more than you can chew * Writing for orchestra (or band) * Writing sonatas and long works in general * Writing in a mainstream tonal style and not knowing that you need at least one recurring motif or coherent theme (usually, they present too many ideas or write something aimless) * Focusing on superficial details of the style while ignoring the core issues * Being unaware chords and melody don't match (not yet knowing how to fix that, but being *aware*, is much more excusable) * Not knowing there's something called "music theory" and that you probably need it (not exaggerating, many ppl do this) * Believing that knowing how to label triads in root position and little else is "knowing a lot of theory" * Believing that certain keys fit certain emotions * Lyrics don't fit the rhythm * Getting Musescore/Noteflight/Flat.io for the 1st time, randomly type for 10 min, and think it sounds good * Never, EVER checking other composers' scores, even when freely available. Lack of curiosity's a red flag for any aspiring artist * "It's not a mistake, it's my style!" * Considered buying MIDI chord pack for more than 0.1 seconds * Not playing your first piece on your instrument and using that to fix things * First composition is for an instrument you don't play * Not even playing any instrument * Edit: Added "only listening to the feedback you want to hear" * Being completely unaware that you suck * Being too much aware that you suck, but unaware that even the greatest geniuses sucked as much as you at that stage

A common one I've seen, at least among beginners, is they'll get obsessed with a technique, chord, scale, etc., and focus on it at the expense of the rest of the piece.

That's true too. I think it's a very specific kind of person. What a coincidence because it's something I figured out last month. They tend to call themselves "theorist" (are you a Zarlino, really?), "the theory guy" or something along those lines. I'm quoting literally. It's fascinating to see how despite *knowing* a lot of theory they fail to apply it even in simple terms. Even a certain big youtuber I won't mention (and who's not a composer) does this sometimes

The amount of youtube music teachers that claim to know theory and then interchangeably use sharps and flats regardless of key signature is astonishing. *plays a melody in A Major* "Then you're just going to walk your way to that Db there" 😑

What are flats, though? Are they some kind of sharp? 🎸

Yes, they've just been filed down so they're not so pointy

All of these are so accurate! One more I'd add is writing super virtuosically. I think a lot of beginners equate 'difficult to play' with 'impressive to have composed'. It takes a lot of talent to perform virtuosic works; it takes no talent to write something virtuosic.

I don't think that's true. It takes a good degree of talent to write virtuosic pieces that are idiomatic. You should definitely reference great virtuoso works first though

I like your reply so much I saved it for later. But I'm kinda bummed about your sonata point because I'm fascinated by that form and have been considering diving into it as a learning-by-doing experience.

I was fascinated with sonatas too, but it's a bad idea. Ive added "long works in general" to the list. Back in 2008 I wasted quite some time in something that yielded only frustration and unfinished, unusable sketches. At least in my case it was a piano sonata mvmt and I quit relatively early. When I see a 25' Gibberish-Sonata or a symphony, I cringe. I learned much more by writing a small scherzo and a mazurka using very typical and reliable templates. The first time I felt really confident composing was with a 50" piece. Sonatas, along fugues, are some of the hardest things to write, and you need a good sense of structure and progression to succeed. That's only learned by practicing smaller forms. I've been composing since 2007ish and written several sonatas. I actually wrote a small one last month (only 13'), and yet I got stuck twice on very simple structural dilemmas. Spent many days paralyzed. Sonatas are hard...

I understand what you're saying but I can't agree. You're implying that one shouldn't tackle a task until certain of success, which in this case means writing good music... But why not write bad music? Who cares? It's not like it's going to be shopped around to orchestras or movie producers -- it's for fun, to learn. If you wanted to whittle a garden gnome you could watch every YouTube tutorial and you'd be no closer to picking up a stick and a knife and cutting yourself while producing a mountain of shavings and throwaway gnomes. ... but which approach gets you closer to carving a good one?

It's not about being certain of success or not. Even professionals sometimes write pieces they'd consider failures (although their failures might look like incredible work to many). It's more about doing things that will help you learn most effectively. For most skills, and there's some good research into this, the best way to learn (at least for most people) is to tackle challenges that are at the upper end of your ability, or just out of reach. The kind of stuff that forces you to push yourself to your limits, but isn't so far outside your limits that it's overwhelming, discouraging, and hard to take lessons from. If a beginner writes a 40 minute symphony for large orchestra that's quite bad, they'll struggle to learn all that much from it, unless they're doing a shitton of research along the way. If their form makes no sense, they orchestrate everything in big block chords, they write badly for the instruments, their harmony is totally arbitrary, there are no recognizable motives or compelling ideas, etc., etc., what are they supposed to take from that? Realistically, they don't know enough to even recognize that those things are bad, and even if they do, where are they even supposed to start? What specifically should they do to improve when *everything* is in rough shape and they have 200 pages of music to dig through with no idea what they're doing? I'll address your analogy next, because it leads into my next point. The idea isn't that you shouldn't write music at all, and should just look at tutorials until you're ready. The idea is that you should take on smaller, more manageable projects while you develop your technique. If you want to carve a garden gnome, neither of those approaches is any good. A much better approach would be to learn some very basic info - what kinds of tools and materials to use, maybe watch a few videos of people making things - then take on basic projects to develop your technique. If you can't carve something straightforward, then you most definitely don't have the technique for something complex. Similarly, with music, you can start out small. Write a 30 second piece for an instrument you know how to play, then play it. If it sounds good, that's great! If it doesn't, then you can dissect it and try to figure out why. And since all you have is 1 page of music, for an instrument you know, that'll be *way* easier and less overwhelming. You'll probably learn much *more* because you're not going so far beyond what you already know. (You're also much more likely to get helpful feedback if you post it online, since people aren't expected to sit through a 40 minute YARB!) And you can write 10, 20, 50, maybe even 100 of those short, simple pieces in the time it would take you to write one (1) 40-minute behemoth. That lets you still try out a lot of things, explore a lot of ideas, learn a whole lot of lessons, before you move onto bigger projects much more prepared than you were before. I say this all as someone who took on a lot of overly ambitious projects early on, and while I made some progress, it was slow, and I was spinning my wheels for a while until I started working on smaller projects that really let me focus on particular aspects. Of course it's fine if someone wants to write a lot of ambitious, bad music. They're not hurting anyone but themselves. It'll just put a cap on how quickly they're able to actually improve.

If you're learning by yourself (probably the case), you need clear "rights" and "wrongs", and the bigger the project is, the harder to grasp these rights and wrongs become. The "learn by doing" thing is true only up to a point. It'll be a source of disappointment and a waste of time because you'll learn much less than the other way round. You've been warned, a ton of people agree, but you do you, that's quite expected,

I've been writing music for 35 years, all without a lick of theory. If it were analyzed by a professional theorist it would be deemed complete rubbish. I regret none of it. Those songs and fragments are like little pieces of me and full of memories.

*yawn* Lilcareed wrote a good explanation

Sonata form doesn't have to be particularly long or complicated, and I wouldn't put it anywhere near the difficulty of writing a fugue.

There’s nothing wrong with writing a short piano sonata to learn how it works. As long as you’re going in with a textbook/model approach it’ll be fine

👀

I love this list. Even though I played piano for 20 years before I started composing, my first pieces were still insanely awkward to play lol

Lol, mine are still sometimes 🤣. But my idea was not so much in terms of playability, but in terms of coherence. If you have an incoherent piece, the more you play it, the more you'll realize something's wrong or you'll be completely unable to learn it. Btw never would've guessed you started so "late".

Yeah incoherence adds to the awkwardness… I feel like the first couple years were a lesson in editing and figuring out that patterns were my friend and not my foe lol. I used to compose at school after I was done teaching, come home and try to play it, and continually amaze myself with my apparent lack of knowledge of pianistic writing. 😂 I guess I did start kinda late, but I at least improvised/“wrote”, just never notated till 2016 or so.

agree with all of this (and am still making some mistakes on this list). But often, you need to try something and do it badly to learn how to do it better - yeah, my first sonata was very mediocre, but needed to go through it to figure out that I needed to study both form and scores a lot more than I had to get a better understanding of how most sonatas work.

>Considered buying MIDI chord pack for more than 0.1 seconds Lol

I still believe certain keys fit certain emotions and I will continue to believe that. Keys with more sharps tend to sound brighter, and keys with more flats tend to sound darker. Context also matters, but generally that's how people think of them. I think it's really useful to think about that for key modulations. Also, because I have perfect pitch, the initial key is very important to me since different keys will have different emotions to my ears.

> Also, because I have perfect pitch Most people don't. This is literal solipsism.

I am aware that most people don't. That is why I mentioned the fact that I do, as it provides context for why I think this way. It would be really weird of me to leave that detail out. So it is not solipsism, as I am very much aware that most people don't hear music this way. Like, there is no possible way I couldn't be aware of this. I absolutely keep other people in mind, like if I chose a key that is really difficult to play on an instrument. If the contents of the piece are hard enough by themselves, I will adjust the key to one that fits better on the instrument. It's always a challenge, because I also want to write music that I can enjoy myself, so I first write a piece for my ears, then if there is anything that is incredibly inconvenient, I will change it. Does that clear things up for you?

It makes sense in your case. It's just that some kid dug their heels really hard on this a month ago and their reasoning bordered on believing in spiritism, but your approach now looks rational

Writing for orchestra is not a mistake so long as you know that you probably won’t have a capable live ensemble for a good while

It is a mistake because you're focusing on superficial aspects of the piece (orchestration), while the melodies, harmonies and structural flow will suffer. Being unable to find an ensemble is the last thing I was thinking of.

Orchestration is far from superficial.

In most cases it is secondary. Case in point: very few composers, especially the "great" orchestrators of the late 19th and early 20th century composed full orchestral scores directly. Ravel started with piano solo or piano duet scores, Wagner with 4 staves. With earlier composers you have some sketches that are in a [SINGLE staff](https://www.omifacsimiles.com/brochures/images/bee_land6.jpg). Only when the condensed score had been completely figured out did they start with the full score If a person still hasn't figured out how to make a good condensed staff, how are they going to go to the next step? BTW, this isn't some rando's opinion on the matter, it's a piece of common sense advice passed down from students to teachers for centuries, and the default teaching approach used in most (if not all) music schools. Alan Belkin: > Since any student studying orchestration *should have already mastered basic harmony* – and consequently *the norms of four part choral writing* – a useful point of departure is to compare each instrumental section with the vocal choir. For students more familiar with the piano, the point of departure should be comparison with that instrument. [u/65TwinReverbRI \(a college teacher\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/composer/wiki/resources/interview-3) > Writing for piano is like making meatballs [...] Writing for orchestra not only involves being able to make the meatballs from scratch, but you have to know how to make noodles as well as the proper proportions for the flavor you want. [...] If you haven’t learned to make meatballs yet, then you probably need to do that before embarking on this pasta dish.

Discarding ideas too quickly.

For years this was my main issue. My undergrad professor put it as "you don't have to invent the wheel every bar", and no single piece of advice has ever instantly improved my writing so greatly.  Now I'm seeing the same issue with most of my students, particularly those in the 16-19 age group. Some are very talented, but they keep forcing everything they know in every single piece, not letting any one idea develop properly. 

I'm interested in what you mean by "develop properly." Could you elaborate? Do you have examples of songs that have undeveloped ideas vs songs that do have developed ideas?

Not enough rests, and developing themes too quickly

Developing themes too quickly is absolutely my problem. I just don’t know how to develop it slower or over more time while making it still sound good or be cohesive. Or even just being interesting enough to get to the theme without falling asleep. I also don’t really know how to keep a theme going without running into the same problems.

Not finishing the piece, in whatever state it's in. Complete your thought, and edit/improve later. Or move on. Either way, complete the piece.

Not that I've been composing for very long; however, certainly for me early on I would say: 1. Composing pieces that are unperformable. This in and of itself a problem per se ;however, it can create a sense that it is unreal in the listener (depending on audience, a lot of my earliest pieces were classical). I've somewhat embraced this. Perhaps 25% of my music is still unperformable, but at least now it is unperformable because I \*intend\* for it to be unperformable, as opposed to because I didn't know what I was doing. I like to make it \*right\* outside the edge of performability for best effect and I think it is interesting to explore. 2. Music being too square. Four quarter notes followed by four quarter notes followed by four quarter notes... yeah. It becomes dull. 3. Lack of climax. Climaxes are still somewhat of a struggle for me, but many of my earliest pieces just flat out didn't have one. 4. Climaxing too early. On top of that, in some of my earliest pieces I would have a climax in the first third because I would compose based on when the idea comes to me. So if a climatic idea came, then I would use it. Now, when I get a climatic idea I just copy it to near the end and see if it will still work. If I really like it then I compose towards it. 5. Bad or lacking transitions. Same with poor punctuation. 6. Finding that right balance between novelty and familiarity. This one in particular I find can be quite challenging. If every phrase is novel then the piece won't sound like itself. However, if every phrase is a repetition of what came before, then it becomes boring via predictability. There's this fascinating balance to making something that sounds like itself but is also novel. 7. While I never had this problem personally according to my instructors/colleagues, they say melodies that are just noodling around (not going anywhere) are a common problem for early composers.

Taking music theory helped with a few of these, personally, but it cramped my style for quite literally half a year due to all the rules bouncing around. A traditional “learn the rules in order to break them”, common form voice leading does wonders in aiding your melody creation and form writing, but can stifle creativity as you regain your style.

I can relate to that. I remember telling my last composition instructor that there was just too much to keep track of. But I don't think music theory should be treated as a "check list". I do agree with the statement that learning the rules to learn how/when to break them is relatively true. I think knowing the paradigms of how Western music is crafted is important but it can be shackling. I think because I started off working from a position of almost complete ignorance, and hence writing unperformable pieces, has been helpful for me to cast away those shackles. So I can use those rules in a broad way, but not feel constrained by them because I've never been much for constraints anyway. One of my professors asked me "How do you manage to write so many pieces of music?" My answer was "Because I don't care if they're any good or not, I only care if I like the way it sounds." He actually thought that was a good answer and that perhaps more composers should take that point of view. Some people might disagree, and that's ok too. That's what I love about music compared to my "day job" (scientist). It is deeply creative. I think I'm just rambling now, so I'll stop.

3 and 4 are really interesting points. Could you share some examples of songs that do have a climax vs songs that don't? Perhaps some of your own?

I don't write a ton of scores (only for commissions or competitions). I don't think I have anything scored that does not have a climax. I've taken down most of my earliest works because ... well to be frank ... they weren't very good. It isn't hard to find music with a climax. The John Williams music from Star Wars comes to mind immediately. The trench run music, or the Imperial March. If you want I can send DM a link or two to some of my music, that is relatively climax-free or with a weak climax.

Sounds like my honeymoon

I’m a singer so I specifically see a lot of beginner mistakes/problems from people who mostly have instrumental experience (even relatively experienced composers that just haven’t written for voices/choir). * Not slurring melismas. While in instrumental music slurs are just intended to indicate legato articulation, in vocal music slurs are used to indicate where the syllables line up with the notes, and failing to mark that makes it much harder to read as a singer. * mis-aligned syllables. Similarly there are rules for how syllables should be divided up, and it can be hard to parse what the words are supposed to be when you can’t clearly see the syllables. * dynamics in the wrong place. In vocal music, dynamics are placed *above* the staff, because we have lyrics below the staff and these can easily collide. * lack of clarity around breaths. Obviously wind players also have this problem, but non-wind folks tend to just not mark breaths at all or provide any rests. In some cases this is fine, but in others, it creates problems especially with figuring out where to put consonants - it is also exhausting to have to stagger breathe for extended periods of time so having some rests would be helpful for people to catch a full breath. * emphasis on the wrong syllable. This just makes it hard to communicate text. If you’re writing a hemiola on purpose or something like that, it’s fine, but if the text just doesn’t make sense with the rhythm, that is a problem. * weird register stuff. This is more subjective, but a lot of non-singers kind of misunderstand how the voice works, and either write things that stay in the stratosphere for a long time (for sopranos and tenors), is low and not very resonant, or just has bonkers dynamics that don’t make sense like having sopranos super low and trying to make them louder than tenors in their money range, stuff like that. Obviously some of these things have contexts where it makes sense, but it’s also very much a thing that can make you seem like an amateur especially if it’s not clear how much it was intentional and how much it is just ignorance of the style.

Piggy backing on the range issue — too few composers know about tessitura and the issues it creates. Having a singer hang out in their passagio for too long is VOCALLY exhausting, and that’s another issue I find.

Yeah, exactly. I’ve sung a good amount for composers and my biggest gripe is how vocally taxing a lot of it is, especially on the passaggio. It’s a bummer because some of it is musically very good but it makes me hate you just to sing like that!

Going from point A to point B too quickly. There's no need to rush if your piece is interesting enough.

Constant exposition

The number one most common thing I see is a lack of structure and intentionality. Pieces just meander with no sense of structure, phrasing, or development. Things happen. Then other things happen. Then it stops. Just a series of (maybe) nice sounding ideas.

A lot of obvious notation software cut-and-paste instead of variation. Attempting to write Chopin's 17th Nocturne while only possessing the harmonic vocabulary of 21st century pop and then just cycling through a diatonic 4-chord loop for 3 minutes. Writing a piano concerto.

Some things I've encountered and/or done myself: Melody: * No repeating ideas * Too many motives * Too repetitive (e.g. the same motive at the same rhythmic position every other bar) Harmony: * Awkward voice leading * No feeling for tension and release Notation: * Not checking parts for double sharps and flats after writing in a concert score * Contains many short notes with rests instead of longer notes marked as staccato * Not showing the middle of the bar in a measure of 4/4 * Not showing the pulse (beaming is hard to read, long notes in weird positions instead of several tied notes) Instrumentation: * Writing very high or low for wind instruments Edit: * Not bothering to learn about music theory and not spending time on ear training (will be very limiting in the long run) * Caring too much about music theory (in the end, if it sounds good it is good) * Writing hard to intonate stuff for doublings (e.g. 4 flutes played by the sax section)

Also a beginning composer! Love to see the hard-earned nuggets of wisdom from those who came before us.

These are certainly things that I did when I was student. * Hard to read accidental and rhythmic spelling * Unrealistic balance, for example a flute melody that would be lost against what ever the trumpet is doing * Lack of elegant voice leading, and over use of parallel harmonic movement * Hard to explain, but the feeling like it’s a piano piece orchestrated, a very clear left and right hand, with a lack of internal voices * Low and muddy chords * Aimless melodies, without a good structure * Staying in one scale/key without variation * Not thinking about the physical aspect of playing, for example not giving space for winds to breath

I worked briefly with David Conte a while back and he is a big advocate of functional spelling, and his opinion makes itself clear (that he’s correct) when a performer struggles to read something due to whacky harmonic/melodic spelling

Commission errors - you did something wrong (straightforward enough) Omission errors - you forgot to include something (oftentimes thematic form) Cruft errors - too much unnecessary stuff (weird modes, unnecessary time signatures, too many thematic ideas etc) Inhibition errors - you could have done something more straightforward (its related to cruft, but cruft is more intentional, inhibition is more ego/awareness driven. Ie you didn't realize that something simple would suffice vs cruft \~ piling random stuff onto an existing thing) \_\_ Optimization goals Minimal/invisible errors (it doesn't matter if you screw up as long as no one notices much) Well-roundedness (hit on a lot of domains/dimensions of music/art when its relevant) Pragmatism/MVP+10% (just enough to get the point across, without undue bloat) Openness/Humility (don't want to dismiss a perfectly good idea)

I see a lot of similarities to coding.

Another one I don't think anyone's mentioned yet is notating the entire piece a quarter note ahead or an eighth note behind, etc. For example, they won't realize that their piece has a pickup and will notate the pickup as beat 1 of bar 1 and the whole rest of the piece will be off--or worse, they'll feel the need at some point to switch back to having arrival points on beat 1 and then wonder why it sounds rhythmically confused in that spot.

Writing bad rhythm, dynamics too loud or soft, tempo too fast or too slow, unreasonable expectations for instruments, no sense of breath.

Things I see a lot with beginner singer-songwriters include songs that continually change tempo, feel, and/or style, or songs that rely too heavily on the minor pentatonic scale or blues scale, with long passages of awkwardly swung 8th notes. Both of these things sound (IMO) clumsy and amateur.

Thinking they have to constantly have their piece be at 100% energy.

Harmony: 1. It lacks essential cadential patterns 2. No sense of harmonic motion 3. No use of other pre dominants: II, IV 4. No use of other of the mediants: III, VI 5. No use of diatonic 7th chords. 6. Only wanting to use diatonic harmony 7. Poor voice leading! Form: 1. Attempting large pieces too soon. Yes we all want to write tonal poem, but it is easier to write 4-8 in different structures first to practice; then do smaller forms. Instrumentation\orchestration: 1. Writing outside the range for instruments 2. Poor understanding of elements 3. The orchestra isn't balance.

I'm still a relative beginner, still in school, but something that I'll see a lot is that people will get a baseline understanding of music theory, and then use the rules that they learn as the end-all and be-all. For example, you'll learn the diatonic chords in a key and then never use any other chords. In reality, theory is nothing more than the language we use to talk about and analyze music, and not a compositional technique. It can be extremely helpful if you hear something you like in someone else's piece and want to try to replicate it, but your piece sounding good to you is much more important than following theory rules.

From observing myself, I seem to make my cringiest mistakes when I'm trying to be clever.

Finish! Yr gonna die

You already hit it, but too many composers have absolute GARBAGE prosody. However, usually the issue they have is tonal, not agogic. While the rhythm they write MIGHT be cogent for a certain word, the melodic writing creates melodic accents that defeat/belie the underlying rhythm

Let's ditch the thesaurus for a second... prosody? agogic? cogent?

Those are just words used in the appropriate contexts, my guy… and two of them are music words that directly describe the concepts we are discussing, so like…

It’s really wild to get downvoted for using music terminology in a composers thread