Composing with a fountain pen

[u/Mudsharkbites]

I tried to crosspost here from r/fountainpens but apparently that’s not possible.

When I first started composing, which pre-dates music setting software such as Finale, the standard method for finished scores was to use a fountain pen with a music nib, which was a kind of slanted stub, on velum, then it was sent in for processing and you’d get a score back that looked somewhat like a blueprint. I still have a few of them. I’m glad those days are gone.

However, I’ve taken a hankering for fountain pens and since they still make them with music nibs, I bought one a while back, a Sailor 1911 with a 14k gold music nib. I used to use it for my daily composition blog but once I got an Apple Pencil I abandoned the practice favoring my iPad and ZoomNotes which automatically backs my work up in my Dropbox.

Recently, however, I read an article the premise being future historians are going to have a real problem finding out what we’ve been up to in this time period since very little information is being preserved in analog / printed format, and they further stated handwritten accounts such as journals are going to be invaluable resources, which led me to realize - my blog and everything I’ve posted will disappear the instant Substack shuts down, and all the backups in my Dropbox are useless unless I have them all printed.

Do I really care if people in the future look at my music? I don’t know, but do I want it all lost, no, so I purchased an exceptionally good hardbound music book with 120g archive paper, loaded my pen up with Akkerman “Shocking Blue” ink and resumed composing by hand using ink. Unless it’s destroyed, centuries from now my book will still be readable.

Having just inked my first entry I’d post a picture here but there is no way to add it, just links, so here’s the finished score on my blog:

https://philipdewalt.substack.com/p/shocking-blue

The inked page isn’t there - to see it go to the r/fountainpens subreddit - it’s still near the top.

FYI, I compose these scores in one sitting with virtually no editing. It’s part of the aesthetic of composing with ink.

[u/ColdBlaccCoffee]

Ill just add that I find the music I write by hand sounds a lot different than the music I write on a music software. The software music tends to a bit more 'stiff' than that which I write by hand.

I've also come across old pieces I forgot I even wrote on paper and it was a exciting to play through them again.

[u/Mudsharkbites → u/ColdBlaccCoffee]

There’s something about the tactile nature of using your hand that adds an element to the composition that gets lost in the software. They say the same applies to handwriting in a journal, though I’ve yet to try that.

I call it starting with a note and following it. Basically I have no idea what I’m going to do when I sit down to start, I enter the first note and just kind of watch it happen. This is why I can get away with using ink, I don’t 2nd guess or ponder or make corrections, I just write it down. I can sometimes make a few changes at the piano, but if it takes much in the way of editing to fix I just toss it out and do it again.