I can understand what you mean, but it’s very very hard to start at the end. 
There is no recipe for this, it all really comes from creating an intuitive approach and instincts. The only thing I can say you could practice early on is motifs = short phrases with a specific feel.
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Composing music is like every other art, to make an interpretation about what you see (what you hear or what you feel) and translate it to the language of music.
I have 5 rules:
- Observ, feel and experiment as much as you can.
- Know the instrument/s you play as it were a part of your body.
- Study music theory but don’t go as far as you start to hate it.
- Practice composing, practice composing, practice composing.
- Practice composing even more.
Then I would add, do whatever makes you happy. If what you have done, don’t makes you happy then start all over the next day.
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You’ll most definitely need years to do im this. It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
Musicians only turn into composers (and I mean real composers not hobbyists) through extreme diligence, motivation, obsession and failiures.
You won’t just have one or two failiures, they will be in the thousands. Yes I’ve studied music extensively at university and thereafter but it’s a completely different ball game when you are trying to implement the things that you have learnt.
I often say it’s better just to write hundreds of pieces of music than learn the theory first… learn it as you go and implement what you learn as MUCH. As you can. I often write 2/3 pieces a day and I make sure I’ve finished them… yes FINISH them efficiently. Learn when your reaching the point where your returns aren’t as big as your input. Then move on and do another piece, and another, and another… until you master that aspect. Then move on.
I will be completely honest and a bit blunt now, not this is something you need to hear.
You are putting effort into it yes, well done. But if you aren’t seeing results (which you obviously aren’t right now), then something is off. You need to re-evaluate what you are doing and how much you are doing and see if it’s doable to up your game in one or more areas.
Well done for researching what others are doing, but it sounds to me like you really need to dig in deep and start to compose as much as you possibly can, and get efficient at it too.
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I hope my reply will be understandable xD
First of all: yes, I know it’s not easy and yes I know it’ll take years to get “good”.
Second: I very well know there’ll be hundretds if not thousands of failures and as far as I know it’s like this in every single aspect of life. As someone said (I don’t remember who… I know it was someone Important): Failure is not really failure but is a success as you learned one way of not doing things
Also… there is no improvement without failure so…
I can’t compose 2 or 3 pieces a day… but I definitly did compose at least one a day with the free version of fl studio up until now… I’m studying how to use reaper atm so I can start again in a full DAW
My days at the moment are something like this:
-
wake up in the morning and directly go to studying music theory for composition at least 1-2 hours taking advantage of a fresh mind.
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try and compose something at least for another 2 hours.
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stop for launch.
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work on art or coding for my game development at least 4 hours as a change of pace.
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go back and finish my morning composition after having taken a break from it so I can look at it with a different perspective.
This is kinda my day every day (well not now because I had to replace composition with reaper learning for a little while but It’ll be again as soon as I get a grasp on the DAW).
I don’t think I’m not making progress… in fact well… a couple months ago I couldn’t even create a decent chord progression… now I can do it, I can create basic melodies that sounds good, I can create harmonics for it, and do other basic stuff.
Should I be satisfied with this? Absolutly not, expecially since the way I see it beeing “satisfied” with something, expecially this little, is a one way ticket for failure as you never ever ever stop learning in life.
But I know my goals and I know that as a game developer beeing able to convain ideas into music is crucial, I can’t and I don’t want to just rely on “sketching for a little while and hope something good comes out of it” like I know many other people do.
So I ask more experienced people for hints, well aware that there is no “magic potion” but hoping that as I get insight on the way you guys do thing, perhaps on your thinking progress, workflow etc… I can grasp a better understanding of things as a starting point to, in time, develop better skills with a better understanding trough efford and practice.
Asking, listening to opinions and suggestions and even just the simple act of thinking about suggestions I’ve been given is an important part of learning, at least for me
And well… I am very glad for every answer, even the “toughest” ones… but I really don’t see them as “tough” cause I never ever even dreamed of this beeing easy in the first place
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Good this now sounds like your on the right track. It’s good for additional background info on your work flow too.
My advice now would be split that 2 hours up into two seperate compositions. Work on creating phrases and see what comes out. If you start to sound like your creating the same stuff then change up your chords. See how that goes. You’ll learn as you do. But try to make 2 a day in that time. Just see how far you fleet with them. Put the production to the side at first and just focus on the writing 
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Keep working at it Luca! I was in the same spot as you maybe just a year ago; I studied the theory and compositional techniques, studied the scores, et cetera but I couldn’t get the “theme” sounds I wanted. What I did then, is just concentrate on listening to different melodic intervals and chords and write down the type of images or feelings each gave me, then played around with different chord progressions, write them down when I found one I liked and the felling it gave me (heroic/triumphant, sad, dreamy, angry, villainous/evil).
This same process holds true for learning the different modes as well and modal writing is quite important in modern film/video game scoring. They can give you very specific, almost universally recognized sounds (Dorian: adventure or fantasy/Middle Ages, Phrygian: dark/Middle Eastern/Spanish Flamenco, Mixolydian: noble/triumphant)
As much as this helped me, I cannot overstate that in the end, it is all subjective to each musician/composer and that’s what makes it art. As my composition tutor always told me: “You can’t bake the cake first, then figure out what ingredients to use. You need to understand the ingredients and how they taste first before deciding which to put in the cake batter.”
Like @Geoffers and @Mikael say, you kind of have to be obsessive about music; eat, drink, dream music all the time.
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Amazing advice matt!!! Really big well done for improving in such a short period of time too! I had no idea you put that much time into this.
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Haha! Well thanks, I’m still a work-in-progress myself, but I’m waaaaay obsessive to the point where when I’m composing, I sometimes forget to eat 
Since I first heard Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto when I was, maybe, 11 years old I wanted to be a composer…then I went and got a degree in political philosophy 
I’m always thinking I can do better when I write something; even if people say they like it, I think it stinks and I try harder to get it to be what I want.
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Haha, join the club. That’s what all us composers end up like 
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