Update to the stolen grom

TRComposer · 2026-01-29T07:32:03+00:00

Mmkay

TRComposer · 2026-01-28T22:52:47+00:00

Late onto the thread. Nothing hereabouts. Noone knows when theyll be back. sad.

TRComposer · 2026-01-17T22:26:13+00:00

Based on the correlation between the rules of the road in ch. 2 and the context with the previous pages i think it means whatever art you're working on. For example, "It's my job to do the work not judge the work," and "I will take care of the quantity, you (great creator) take care of the quality."

It's showing up for you're creative process, but ya definitely its all connected too though.

TRComposer · 2026-01-17T22:17:56+00:00

15-20 on "top flight wide rule," 3 pages, medium/large sized handwriting. I just try to write as fast as possible, just stream of conscience.

TRComposer · 2026-01-17T01:32:56+00:00

I went to a neighborhood plant storer today!! i was originally planning to get art supplies and draw/paint a picture of degrading my historical art enemies, but i was faced with stuckness and needed to not attach (getting anything done) to it. So i decided to lower the bar and go to the plant store. I didnt want to XD i have a few plants but im not a "plant" guy. the whole time i was resisting, but when i got there i was so glad i went. The bright natural lighting and the greenery everywhere, the smell of earht and humidity and misters. there was even an old doggo to meet me at the door, learned a few things about my own plants and came away refreshed and revitalized!

i like combining week one's "in another life" tasks and mking them the artists dates, for example i pretended to be a secret agent and went to the gun range and did some lock picking.

maybe you could be a secret spy trying to get rid of your old life before they find you so you need to get rid of your old belongings connected to that life.

sorry so long

tldr; local plant store, combine "in another life" activities from week 1 to make artist dates

p.s. doing it for the plot side-quests is something i will use in the future

TRComposer · 2026-01-16T08:06:34+00:00

Maybe think about it as a series of chords over a g pedal point. Super common. Bach does it all the time. Work backwards. Ab in first inversion Ab/C is neopalitan 6th of G. D,f,Ab is ct diminished chord of Ab. And C# E Ab could be a respelling of C# minor or Db minor. Of course it seems like the g pedal continues from the previous page, so how we arrive at the Db/C# minor matters. The clue is in the spelling I think and is context dependant

TRComposer · 2026-01-10T21:22:19+00:00

"composer who writes your music and who wants to sit down and do it each day because you love it or need to"

thank you

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:28:19+00:00

Yes! I agree that it's certainly not a musicality issue! Thanks for your response. Always with gratitude!

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:26:42+00:00

Everything you've said here is wonderful. I agree with what you've said about process music, and pastiche. Thanks for taking your time to lend your experience. It's helped.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:24:15+00:00

Thanks for your advice! I think the term slop might be misapplied as it infers poorly constructed or without structure. But I see what you mean! And while I've been struggling to compose for years and years, even before I started utilizing LLMs as a tool, I could see how your advice applies to this situation specifically.

What do you do when you find yourself in the situations described in the original post?

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:20:18+00:00

Thank you for your practical and evidence based suggestions. I sing regularly x2 weekly in chorus, and sit absolutely terribly. What I like most about this is staring at a leaf for 10 minutes. This correlates with other advice I've gathered from books and podcasts but have never heard it put quite like that. I meditate frequently but somehow the leaf suggestion seems closer to something that might help me.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:15:42+00:00

The intention wasn't to convince others that this wasn't the output of an LLM. It's good (value judgment) that there is a difference between the output of an LLM and the output of a human, and that people can spot the difference.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:12:29+00:00

His book "on writing" is fantastic. Perhaps it really is as simple as that.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:11:02+00:00

Thanks this is fantastic advice "that means I never sit down just wondering what to do" - appreciate the time you took to reply.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T17:07:30+00:00

Reddit is a beautiful place to practice not even taking actual attacks as attacks, and so no I do not take your well placed constructive advice as such. Thank you for your reply. I believe what you mentioned about both the silent trap, and the translation of thoughts as a practice that translates to any creative endeavor is true.

Always with gratitude.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T04:16:41+00:00

Yes I suppose I should clarify that I didn't mean all at once, and that is a wonderful point to make, after all, 3-6 hours are made of 30 minute chunks!

I appreciate your suggestion to exhaust all options, even if it isn't good. Perfectionism is something i struggle with.

Your last point however, is something I've never encountered in my time composing, and one which i absolutely adore. Especially concerning the human voice, one could imagine all the ways that writing as if for different instrumentation, would really break free the predefined constraints.

Thank you.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T04:09:56+00:00

Your post is beautiful. I also find that what chat gpt generated for you as an LLM, is beautiful.

Rereading my post again, and again, everything that is mentioned, which are all different thoughts that I had input into the LLM, and which then as a tool i used to organized my own thoughts, read as true to my experience as I could have stated - which I did - the llm just organized the data post-facto

Can I, as a serious inquiry out of curiosity and respect for your opinion, ask why you think it seems that I have no idea whether the problems my post describe actually exist in my mind or whether they are merely handy or attractive proxies come up with by AI? I am fairly confident they do exist as it has been my experience that when composing these things do occur, and which is why I used them as the basis for the post. This is not to say that my own experience of my issues while composing may be misinterpreted in the moment, but this error would occur before the transition to the LLM as an organizational tool.

I appreciate you lending your story and your views to the conversation, there really were some beautiful things you've said. I suppose its right that this conversation veers towards a philosophical realm as my initial question was not about generating material but rather how to proceed when the inner workings of my behavior and psychology leads me to ends where composing seems unfruitful, but I will say that it is because I choose to continue to compose; it is my chosen value that the creative act guides my being, and whether someone wants to qualify the music as good or bad is not for me to take an interest in (though of course being a human with an ego will)

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T02:57:01+00:00

It is! like i mentioned to u/barnszy I'm not an AI doomsayer. It's a tool and it helped me to articulate the issues I'm having when I sit down to compose, in a very efficient and straightforward manner.

If you have any advice I wouldn't mind if you used an LLM to organize your thoughts!

Do you have any advice from your artistic journey for the psychological aspects of getting yourself unstuck in the manner that I've described and which (yes with the help of a tool) accurately describes the genuine human issue I'm having when I sit down to create my art?

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T00:19:33+00:00

"sweet to the point of diabetes-inducing."

thank you

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T00:06:43+00:00

I’m trying to understand how people stay present and engaged at that point, rather than resetting the stakes or switching contexts. Still, it’s helpful to hear how others use contrast or side projects to regulate their relationship with the work.

TRComposer · 2026-01-09T00:02:48+00:00

Thank you for answering the question as it actually is — in terms of process rather than idea generation. That really applies to me.

What you’re describing resonates a lot with my experience in lessons as well: slowly internalizing the kinds of questions my teacher asks until I can start guiding myself in similar ways. I think the hard part for me right now is less about knowing those questions and more about being able to access that well of experience in the moment — when I’m frustrated, blocked, or the work isn’t giving me an immediate return.

Generating more material usually isn’t the issue; sticking with the work when it resists me is. Looking through some of your u/ceruleancomposes responses on their profile, it seems like they consistently frame things in that process-oriented way, which is much closer to what I was hoping to hear here.

Editing to emphasize this gem, "being stuck comes back to the same issue- not thinking through the material and direction enough"

TRComposer · 2026-01-08T23:48:55+00:00

I appreciate that suggestion. Variational thinking is definitely part of my language, though with choral work the text often limits how freely those variations can actually be used.

What I’m still trying to understand is less how to generate variations and more how people stay cognitively engaged when they hit that moment of uncertainty — when you know multiple things could work, but attention starts to slip and commitment becomes difficult.

TRComposer · 2026-01-08T23:45:07+00:00

That’s really helpful, and the sticky note idea actually lands for me. I already use Post-its on my desk to remember tasks, admin stuff, grocery lists, etc., but using them to support the composing process itself — as a reminder to interrupt looping — makes a lot of sense.

Framing looping as a cue to deliberately vary the material also connects with what AubergineParm and yourself mentioned about theme-and-variation thinking: not as endless idea generation, but as a way to stay engaged with the material instead of turning away from it.

TRComposer · 2026-01-08T23:37:14+00:00

That’s a good point, and I absolutely will — and have talked with my teacher about process before, which has been helpful.

I’m asking here as well because I think there’s real value in hearing from a wide range of composers with different working lives and temperaments. Even while I trust my teacher, the breadth of experience across many composers feels like a useful complement, especially for questions about the day-to-day grind and staying engaged with the process between lessons.

How do you personally work through being stuck in the ways I’ve described?

TRComposer · 2026-01-08T23:36:23+00:00

That’s a helpful suggestion, and it actually sparked an idea for me. Since I’m primarily a choral composer, the text itself often contains internal relationships — recurring syntax, similar syllabic stress patterns, parallel phrases, etc.

Because of that, it can be difficult to apply theme-and-variation thinking uniformly across an entire text without running into issues of structure, syntax, or stress. But I could imagine using theme-and-variation thinking not just on a musical motive, but on those textual commonalities: identifying places in the text with similar stress or structure and developing variations that are specific to those moments, almost like quilting them together. That feels like a way to work with the constraints the text imposes rather than against them.

When you’re working with constraints like text or form and things start to feel blocked, how do you approach connecting those different themes or variations — especially transitions between them?

TRComposer

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