The Art of Composing

Welcome. Thanks for coming to artofcomposing.com. This site aims to be the preeminent site for learning about the art of composing music. This is a large topic. People have been doing it for thousands of years, so I plan to tackle one step at a time.

My Journey

Who am I? Well to start off, I am a husband and father. I have a 1 and half year old son. He is the joy of my life and even though he likes to turn off my digital piano all the time when I play it, I still love him.

I am currently in the Army, but I am getting out in a few months and I am coming to a decision point in my life. I have found I don’t enjoy my job very much. I am a creative person, and believe it or not, the army is not the best source for a creative outlet. Back in college I was a music theory major, until I switched the end of my sophomore year, as music didn’t seem to fit well with an army career.

But I loved music theory. I loved composing. I loved playing and performing, but I pretty much stopped. I don’t know why, other than I used my new major, and future in the army as an excuse. I did continue to play at home, but that was about it.

Well a few months ago, I decided to write another piece of music. It is a jazz tune called Prayer for Peace. I posted it online and a funny thing happened. Someone said they liked it. I started thinking about it more and more, and wrote another one. This was feeling pretty good. So I got the crazy idea, “maybe I can do this for a living.” And here I am today.

I am on a journey to learn all that I can learn about composing. I personally love classical music and jazz, but I will try to hit on all styles, genres, and time periods. Everyone has something to add.

Topics

The topics I’ll cover most are, music theory, creativity in composing, the process of composing, important composing resources, the legal aspects of composing and protecting your work, how to dissect a score and how to find work. I’m sure the categories will increase as time goes on.

Let me know what you think. What is your story and what are you trying to learn to improve your composing.

Until next time,

Jon

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Free Composing Course Let me take you step by step, from writing your first notes to composing your first complete classical piece. Along the way, learn about melody, harmony, and musical form.