Let's learn to compose together.
Welcome to my blog. These are all the articles I've written over the years about composing and music in general.
A Guide to Dominant Seventh Nomenclature When composing music, one of the primary elements we work with is chords, which are often built by stacking intervals of a third. By stacking multiple …
Continue Reading about Understanding Dominant Seventh Chord Inversions →
Do you sometimes get inspired to write, and then get stuck after the first few measures? Do you feel like your ideas are boring or weak. Most of the time, when I sit down to compose, I come up with …
Continue Reading about Beat Writer’s Block By Testing Your Musical Idea →
Where does the value lie in a piece of music? The answer isn’t so obvious. In the age of streaming, the primary focus is fundamentally on the recorded music. This seems to make sense as …
Continue Reading about Finding the Value of a Piece of Music →
Habits are critical to how your life will unfold. Good habits generally lead to many good things, while bad habits on the other hand will slowly bleed you of the accomplishments you think you’ve …
Continue Reading about The Two Critical Habits of Songwriting →
I have been a composer since I was a young kid (I am currently 36 writing this), and so when I got into songwriting over the last year, I felt somewhat out of place.But I’ve also come to learn that …
Continue Reading about How to Become a Songwriter if You’re a Composer →
When I sit down to think about why Art of Composing exists, the initial thought is To Make Better Composers. This on the surface feels like it’s generally in the right direction, but it’s also very …
Continue Reading about Why Art of Composing Exists: To Make Better Composers →
If you want to grow, you need to start measuring. This has been at the back of mind for a while now. For the last 6 months, I’ve been deep into the art of learning… analytics and data science of …
Continue Reading about The Science of Becoming a Better Composer →
Why Learn the Melody and Chord Progression? One of the best ways to master composition is to memorize the musical meaning of a passage, and be able to use it in a different way. Memorization, …
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to really push myself as a composer scoring a new Soap Opera called Hilton Head Island. What has been both refreshing and eye opening is the amount of …
Continue Reading about Feeling Stuck Composing? You’re Probably Not Defining Creative Problems. →
In this article, you'll learn my philosophy on spotting a film. I'll also cover some of the tools, techniques, and tricks that I use to get the most out of the spotting experience. If your new to film …
Sketching Music: Stage Two of the Composing Process Sketching music is something that every composer must do at some point in the process of composing. The problem is, there seems to be very little …
Continue Reading about Everyone’s Doing It, No One Talks About It: Sketching Music →
Pre-composition: Stage One of the Composing Process Composing is a messy process. I wish it weren’t, but it is. And so, we have to be flexible in how we approach it. With that being said, there …
Continue Reading about Failing Before You Start: The Pre-Composition Stage →
Jazz musicians can teach composers a thing or two. Especially highly accomplished jazz musicians, such as Bill Evans. In this article, we take a deep dive into the universal mind of Bill Evans. We’ll …
Part of the difficulty in teaching composition, is that once you become good at composition, you start to lose touch with the learning process. I have always strove to teach from the view point of …
Continue Reading about Learning to Code vs Learning Music Composition →
Sometimes, you just don’t have the motivation to compose. Why? Deep down, you know you want to compose, but you can’t pull yourself away from the latest binge on Netflix. In this article, I'll dig …
Continue Reading about Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation and Composing Music →
I often think about what it takes to truly master the subject of composition. It can be frustrating from the standpoint of student, finding yourself writing pieces that you have written before… just …
Continue Reading about The Art of Counterpoint Part 3: On the Musical Education of a Child Prodigy →
Film composers and directors always have a unique relationship in the movie making process. "The music" tends to be somewhat mysterious to most people, and yet, it is also something that everyone has …
Continue Reading about Unbuttoned Trust: The Collaboration of John Williams and Steven Spielberg →
So where to begin the study of counterpoint? This is a dilemma that I have faced in the past, and for the most part, has been the biggest stumbling block. In this post, we will examine how Bach …
Continue Reading about Counterpoint Part 2: The Art of Counterpoint →
