[jhbadger]

"If I want to compose music, I need a format that makes it easy to visualize and manipulate notes in context of the other notes playing across all instruments."

Most composers compose using a piano. Orchestration is something that generally happens later, after the song has already been worked out on one instrument.

[niek_pas]

I’m pretty skeptical of this statement, do you have a source I could check out?

[thebricksta]

I think the truth of that statement very much depends on the genre, workflow, and age of the composer.

Yes, some older composers cut their teeth with pianos, staff-paper and pencils and established workflows based strictly on getting the whole song on paper before the orchestration/arrangement, and still work that way today.

However, I'd argue the vast majority of younger composers and people who write in more electronic-influenced genres definitely do not follow that workflow. It'd be very hard to write an entire pop/rap/dance track that relies heavily on the drum and bass interplay by first writing it all out on piano.

[bsder]

Practically every single DAW setup has a piano keyboard sitting in front of it. As a guitarist, I have had to learn to be at least competent on keys to communicate with people using DAWs. That's a pretty strong counterargument.

I think the only real argument would be whether most people compose with piano or guitar--and piano outnumbers guitar by a lot last I checked.

Everything else is in the noise.

[beardyw]

Me too. My brother in law would sit writing music on manuscript for hours. Very occasionally he would get up, go plink plonk .. mm .. plunk on a piano, and sit down to carry on writing.

[techbio]

I'm just going to concur with GP: as someone who has looked for advice for songwriting on guitar, the writers I look up to almost always wrote with a piano. If your quibble is with "most", and your musical tastes are somewhere within EDM (mine are not), might be a perception bias towards laptop electronica.

[cloverich]

i don’t know the breakdown but a lot of musicians in general do this, even some producers. For my genres more often with an acoustic guitar and vocalist (usually same person) ; interestingly at least one does this when the final song(s) don’t even include a guitar. I have very limited exposure to this but it makes sense.

https://woodandsteel.taylorguitars.com/issue/2021-issue-1/fe...

[abcc8]

To put it another way, do you think that the harmonies and flourishes are written before the chord progression and the melodies?

[jancsika]

> Most composers compose using a piano.

Most of the time mountaineers use a mountaineering jacket to run errands in town when it's raining.

I'm not sure that measuring "most" has much explanatory power in either case.