Four Traditions of Teaching Composition, and What Each Gets Right
Composition can be taught - centuries of composers trained other composers prove it - but it has never been taught one way. Every tradition of compos…
2015
Ternary Form: Music That Leaves Home and Returns
Ternary form is music's most satisfying shape: statement, departure, return. Labeled ABA, it presents an opening section, contrasts it with somet…
Every Section Slides Differently: The Glissando Across the Orchestra
Glissandos appear commonly in string music. The glissando technique provides a way to quickly move between two pitches and brush over all of the pitc…
Songs Are Written on Purpose: The Habits That Produce Them
Writing your own music requires advanced skill and technique. Songwriting is a difficult profession that requires commitment and creativity. Often so…
Serialism Ordered All Twelve Tones: How the System Works
Integral Serialism combines many elements into one formulaic composition. Serialism is one of the most profound advancements in the music of the 20th…
A Song Is Several Crafts at Once: Words, Form, Voice, and Harmony
Writing music requires a certain basic knowledge of the fundamentals. Songwriting is a difficult process that demands talent, strong work ethic and a…
Transcription Is Ear Training in Disguise
The ability to transcribe music makes it possible to accurately notate sound. Transcribing music can be a difficult part of any musician's work. …
Tone Color Is a Decision: Shaping the Sound of a Line
Tone color - timbre - is the property that lets you tell a clarinet from a violin playing the same pitch at the same volume. For composers, it is not…
Setting a Poem Starts with Its Meter
Every poem already contains rhythm - the ebb and flow of stressed and unstressed syllables that makes language musical before any notes arrive. Addin…
Every Harmony Has a Job: The Kinds Composers Choose Between
Harmony is what happens when pitches sound together, but that single word covers an enormous territory. Composers across ten centuries have organized…
Pedal Tones Take the Trumpet Below Its Floor
Below the trumpet's official range lies a hidden register most audiences have never heard: the pedal tones. These are the fundamental pitches of …
The Orchestra Behind Beethoven's Second Symphony, and How He Used It
Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36, composed mainly in 1801 and 1802 and premiered in Vienna in 1803, is scored for the classic orches…
Composition Techniques in Peter Grimes
"Peter Grimes" tells a tale of tragedy detailing the life of a fisherman whom upon losing his apprentice at sea receives advice to wait to …
Musical Techniques Are a Vocabulary: The Terms Composers Actually Use
Every field has its working vocabulary, and music has one of the richest. When a score says legato, sforzando, or rubato, it is compressing a whole p…