Well, it depends. Sometimes the idea just hit you, or you could just experiment with different sounds.

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WELL, Mozart supposedly heard the music in his head, and I personally believe that, because sometimes a tune just comes to me that way. I dont write music that much anymore, but I did when I was younger, like middle school-ish... My problem was always putting words with my music, but I wrote alot of music for my flute and piccolo that astonished even my director, not to brag... I have no idea where the ideas come from though... sometimes its just comes when im playing other songs or when im doing house work and bored, I'll just start humming... and sometimes I like to take other songs and other people's work and alter it little by little until its not even close to the same piece...

does any of this help or am I rambling? lol...

Music is like a sixth sense to me.It's like drawing in a different dimenision.
I have idea and instead drawing or writing it down on paper.I make it come to life through music.I would say sometimes music is like emotions in 3d so to speak.

I don't often comment here, but I saw this. I've actually done a fair bit of large-scale music composition; I'm classically trained; and (as I always say) I'm not a (visual) artist. So, having decided "I'm going to write a piece of music" I start by messing around with little musical ideas -- a bit of melody, usually -- that floated in on the ether. Then start whittling them into bigger and more coherent ideas which get written down. I think that's the way most composers work to an extent. An inspiration comes from "somewhere" and you mess around with it, then you put in a bunch of work to turn it into something.

If you're in an improvisational idiom (e.g., jazz, Indian classical, or some pop) you'll rely less on being able to re-work things later, and you create on-the-fly, often based on some canned techniques that you've practiced. Classical composition is usually written down and extensively re-worked (Beethoven) or strung together without any errors as a bolt from the blue (Mozart) -- usually somewhere in between for mere mortals. I'm more of a linear sketcher myself. I start with some little ideas and replicate them with variations and weave them together, stack 'em up; most often kind of going from beginning to end, but re-working bits in the middle, too.

It's just like doodling in the visual arts, where you can start with a bit of an idea, and then see something in it, and start to work it into a full-fledged picture.

Some sort-of answers to some of your questions... My opinions only, of course.

Q: Do most musicians think in music, like do musical notes string themselves randomly in their minds for specific intruments

A: Yes, sure. I hear bits of melodies and have musical ideas floating around a lot. And you can hear ideas like that in free types of jazz: start with a little thing and work it around as the fancy takes you.

Q: ...too many of them are ruined by laugh-worthy "death metal" voices, or high pitched scratchy choking

A: Yeah man. That's why I listen to mostly opera and not pop. Opera singers can actually sing.

Q: ...But the music behind them are brilliant, inventive, completely random sounding, and often beautiful.

A: Not completely random, or you'd really know it sucked. "Completely random" in music does in fact suck; you can't get a handle on it, as structure. Similarly in visual art. Jackson Pollock's big dancing canvases aren't at all "random". If they were, his work would have sucked. They do have significant perceptible method and structure, whether you like them or not is another story.) I'd like to blame some of the beauty of the music behind the screechy "death metal" voices on modern instruments like synthesizers, which can make semi-talented musicians and/or uninspired musical ideas sound way cooler than they would played by "amateurs" on difficult 19th century acoustic instruments.

Q: ... Hey, this sounds kinda cool, let's put it into a song! ... How do they determine which song to put it in ...

A: Well, yes. The same way you might have some texture or cute visual technique for character drawing or faces or whatever, and you decide to use one or the other technique depending on the overall effect of the picture you're working on. You don't usually stick every kind of texture and idea into one picture. Even Beethoven used the mix-and-match approach: lots of massive sketchbooks over many years; and he pushed the bits around until he had a combo that seemed "cool" for the purpose at hand, and kept working it up. Many musicians have a whole boatload of snippets that they have written down (or in their heads) and then piece 'em together into stuff. Stravinsky was a great "cut-and-paste" composer. (Take a look at the score of something like Rite of Spring, and you can almost see the scissors.).

Q: a lot of the more common popular music goes by formulas - intro, verse, chorus

A: Yes. So-called "song forms" like ABABA and friends. A lot of the classical stuff, too, has forms like that. "Sonata allegro form" is another biggie there, and it's basically kind of like jazz: play the ideas and maybe repeat 'em so people get it, then work 'em around a bunch for 3 minutes or an hour, then summarize the ideas, and then stop and take a bow.

Q: What about the real musicians who create symphonies using the instruments of their choice ... when they make lyrics

A: This isn't so secret, but... Actually, most of the big orchestral composers don't write their own lyrics. The classical approach by "real musicians" is to use lyrics written by "real poets". Both are most often "specialists". (Wagner is an exception in often doing his own librettos for very large-scale works.) It's "songwriters" who most often do both words and music, and usually for small ensembles and one or two voices. A lot of snooty musical people kind of look down on the "mere" songwriter, but there have been a lot of great songwriters, too, as everyone knows. E.g, Cole Porter, Joni Mitchell.

Q: how many musicians can create these beautiful things without knowing much about the theory? Do they? Can they?

A: Someone with enough talent and a good ear can create beautiful music, even if they don't have the "full classical training". (And modern technology is a real big help there.) Just like some artists can create beautiful art without the BFA or MFA. That's because music is about actual sound, not charts on paper. A separate question is whether they can create music that is indistinguishable in quality from "great" music of the past (if that matters to whomever is asking the question). I don't know. Lots of pop musicians, even professionals, actually can't read music, or read it only so-so enough to get by on their guitars. But they can certainly make music, and often do lovely things, usually with small ensembles or solo instruments -- that's where the "group" comes in, because the other members I think most often contribute a great deal to the final sound. But it's really rather out-of-the-question for someone who reads no music and doesn't know a great deal about the ranges, capabilities, and combinations of orchestral instruments to write a large scale work for full orchestra. At least without a lot of assistance from someone who does know.

Q: ...how do THEY come up with their sounds, if not by just fuckin' around with their instruments until, "Hey, that sounds kinda cool!"?

A: Well... Yeah. Sort of. Some inspiration. Some doodle. Then a lotta work.

Ooh, wow. Sorry this is so long, but in closing here are musical examples from both ends of the compositional technique spectrum.

1. This is a "musical doodle". Except for some part of the drum track, which was pre-sequenced, this is total improvisation from end to end, about 8 tracks deep, with no prior preparation and no cuts: "Portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst Being Arrested":
[link]

2. These were totally composed end-to-end "on paper" and played by computer:
"The Girl in the Cellophane Sarong": [link] and "Cathedral Music": [link]

I can't speak for musicians in general, but I can speak for myself. I play guitar, and most of what I write is metal. I also use to compose techno music on my computer, well, until that computer died and the program I used is no longer available. When I write a song (keep in mind, I don't really read sheet music. I did in elementary school, but that was loooong ago. I use guitar tab when I get a guitar music book.) there are two ways I go about it. I either mess around (on either my computer or guitar) until I hear something that i like, or at some point in the day, a tune comes to me, I try to remember it until I get to my guitar, I figure it out, then write it down (in tab form) so as to remember it for later when I want to add to it. That's my method.

In your journal entry you said something that I found amusing. You compared metal to classical music. You might not realize how accurate that comparison is. I love classical music just as much as I love metal. One of my favorite songs is "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Greig. Yeeeeeears ago I learned how to play it on guitar, and much to my suprise at the time, when I did, you'd have thought it was a Slayer song. In fact, I was playing it one day as a friend was coming over, and he asked if I was playing Slayer. It actually does sound a little like "South of Heaven". Lastly I'd like to say I love the song you were listening to while you were writing this. The Slayer son "Seasons In the Abyss" was the first Slayer song I ever learned to play.

you know i have to agree with you on this. as a musican, writing music without sounding like it was pulled out your ass is an extremely difficult proccess. it's even more difficult to try and not sound like a "clone" of some other band. plus, that whole "i can't hear any guitar" thing is pretty annoying. it's even more annoying when a "singer-songwriter" has a backup band twice the size of slipknot and pretends to play and acoustic guitar-seriously, it's not like anyone can hear it.

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Wow, that WAS a long response, hehe. But appreciated, and now i feel i have a better idea of how music-making occurs. I had one other question i forgot about, when a musician is hired to do music for someone else (be it a song for a soundtrack, for one example), do musicians tend to use their best stuff, or do they reserve their best stuff for their own work, and sorta half-ass the soundtrack music?
I guess the answer is quite logical being, "some yes, some no" - in that using your best stuff for the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars would be a good idea, but for smaller movies like "More" where Pink Floyd wrote, composed, and played the entire soundtrack, some of it sounded not so ... amazingly Pink Floydish, just sorta common with a generic Pink Floyd feel - as if they were reserving their best stuff for the original stuff they'd create for their own albums, and giving a bit of a half-assed job for original stuff they were paid to make for the movies (they did soundtracks for 2 movies, i can't remember the name of the second one). I know how i feel when i'm asked to draw someone else's idea - usually it feels like an invasion, and i'll either want to get it done as quickly as possible, but if i enjoy the source material, or the message, or the idea, i tend to spend some of my best effort on it.
So, i guess there's no real question since i just answered it myself, but music-making still seems foreign to my brain, so i like to hear from the other side, too.

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OK, I'm glad the previous response was useful.

Q: ... when a musician is hired to do music for someone else ... do musicians tend to use their best stuff, or do they reserve their best stuff for their own work

A: I have written incidental music and songs for several live theater productions, so I'm not completely speaking hypothetically, but again this is only my own opinion. If I'm hired to compose music for a show, I absolutely give it my best shot. However, such a job is always a melding with something that is a group effort. You have actors, directors, production styles, a story that usually isn't your own, etc. So, I give it my absolute best, in keeping with the parameters of the production, with the best technology I have available at the time. Sometimes it may not be the same as what I would do in different circumstances. So your Pink Floyd example could easily be a case of them being hired to do a soundtrack, and trying to make it the best they can do within specified parameters for that film -- like they have to work with particular scenes, particular lengths of musical snippets, particular stylistic parameters, time and schedule constraints etc. If it doesn't sound totally "like them" or like they would sound in isolation doing completely their own thing, I think that's understanble, even expected. My work for theater shows isn't attempting to be "all me all the time"; it is attempting to be the best thing I can come up with to fit that show at that time. Another thing: many composers who are actually doing full-time pro work and making money at it don't really have time to do much of totally their own stuff, I think. At least not the kind of large-scale works they're doing in their professional lives. Probably the same for working artists, right?

Q: ...when i'm asked to draw someone else's idea - usually it feels like an invasion...

A: Oh yes. Ah, I try to think of it as a challenge to my creative powers. ("Draw me a picture of Super-Wonder-Gal doing ABC" = "Write me a tune like XYZ in Dr Zhivago; here's the poem." Groan!) Giving it my best shot is good for my composition muscles, and good for my reputation (such as it is). As mentioned, the material I write in "for hire" work may not sound totally like me in a vacuum. And I think it's pretty much the same experience you have with drawings. You can take a job that may not be totally in line with your own vision, and expend more or less effort on it. But speaking for myself: if I don't like the script or think it's beyond what I can handle either technically or in my life at that time, I would turn it down rather than execute it poorly. That saves the reputation, and the anguish of grinding through something that's not pleasant.

If you look at the history of people "grinding out tunes" you'll find that they also run a spectrum. E.g. Gilbert and Sullivan - go see "Topsy Turvy" if you never have seen it; an excellent film about the trials/tribulations of their operatic collaboration. (And Shirley Henderson my heart-throb! But I digress.) Beethoven I don't think could really hold down a "commission" very well; he always had trouble and did his own thing most of the time. His pocketbook suffered much for it. But even Beethoven, always the paragon of the heavenly-inspired suffering composer, wrote an absolute ton of grunt-work for hire to keep bread on the table: for example, dozens of instrumental/vocal settings of English/Scottish folk songs for a Scottish publisher. They are clearly (a) in Beethoven's own style, more or less, and (b) really decent and charming arrangements, but (c) not his most unique works either. And there are other (usually Italian) opera composers who would basically latch onto a theater or two that liked them and then grind out one opera after another to order, like pies, for years on end.

In short: music-making is very much like other arts. You usually start out doing what you love, and if you turn pro, you do a lot of work that isn't perfectly innocent and "only for myself". And you end up compromising more or less depending on your own personality and goals. Some pieces are easier than others. Whatever you end up with is still part of your portfolio.

Hahaha, totally! It always makes me laugh. What the hell are you doing playing an acoustic when your band is louder?

--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house!" - George Carlin

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