As you may have heard, the PRISM Quartet’s latest album, Surfaces and Essences, came out this past week. I’m thrilled that my piece “Motion Lines” was on it—along with a bunch of other great music by Christopher Biggs, Victoria Cheah, Viet Cuong, and Emily Koh. First things first, if you haven’t listened to the album […]
Continue readingCategory: Composing
“What Gets Measured Gets Managed”
“What gets measured gets managed” is the quote attributed to Peter Drucker. For all that can be criticized about this idea, it’s useful to consider in composing. So let’s consider them! Here are some ways you can measure (or not) your work: 1: By how you feel about it This is the worst way to […]
Continue reading
Speak Your Musical Truth
A musical idea is not just something you visualize in your brain or even something you hear in your mind’s ear. It is both those things and more. It is most of all something you feel in your GUT. It is as instinctive and as personal and as urgent as the words you speak. Sometimes […]
Continue reading
Help me name my new piece!
I originally wrote “The Integrity of Clouds” for clarinet quintet, but now that I’ve created a new version for mixed sextet, it feels like it needs a new title. Listen below and vote on what you think that title should be! Loading…
Continue reading
The Musical History of “O Savior, Thou Who Wearest”
This week a friend asked me to write an arrangement of “O Savior, Thou Who Wearest a Crown” for vocal duet with piano accompaniment. Dealing with Bach can be a little daunting, so I decided to look at the where the music came from for the LDS version of that hymn.
Continue reading
Why Four-bar Phrases?
“The four-bar phrase has had a bad press in our time,” writes Charles Rosen.[1. In The Romantic Generation 258. Rosen gives a fascinating exploration of them in his book, but I want to articulate a different approach.] But for all the denigration, four-bar phrases are ubiquitous.
Continue reading
Composing Report: March 2016
I knew that March was going to be crunch time. The past few days I’ve been composing between 5 and 8 hours a day.
Continue readingComposing Report: February 2016
This January I had set a goal to compose 8 bars per work day. In February I missed that mark — but I got closer.
Continue reading
Why Don’t Modern Composers Like Repetition?
The fact is, the vast majority of composers in the history of the world have not repeated everything in their music literally. That only happens in strict strophic forms (on the formal level), early Minimalism (on the local level), and a few other oddball pieces.
Continue reading
A Simple Trick To Think About Repetition in Music — or Anything
Composers work with patterns, which is another way of saying we work with repetition. Thus, if I have three elements, A, B, and C, it would be useful to know how I can reorder them.
Continue reading