Precomposition: The Secret to Creating Great Music

Define the piece's purpose from the start by choosing between message or protest, programmatic storytelling, or absolute music, and align structure, landmarks, and audience expectations accordingly.

Identify the target audience for your music by aligning genre and education level with expectations, ensuring your piece resonates with the intended listeners.

Choose a genre and style before writing; consider audience, licensing potential, profitability, and whether the piece should be programmatic or absolute, like dance or pop.

Decide the instrumentation in the pre-composition phase, weigh acoustic versus electronic options, and confirm whether commissions allow changes, then stick with it to avoid costly adjustments.

Plan the duration before writing to stay in the ballpark for commissions and shape the piece's form, flow, and pacing from a slow build to the wrap up.

Choose your notation or production software early; know the main tools (Finale, Sibelius, Dorico, MuseScore) and plan for easy file exchange (MIDI, MusicXML) across projects, including Ableton to Logic transitions.

Clarify collaborators, assign roles, and agree on instrumentation, duration, and software. Set timelines that fit the project, from strict deadlines to flexible no-timeline approaches.

Secure all film or attached media, set up a session, and ensure files won’t change to avoid reworking your music, and know when media will arrive before starting that section.

Develop music inspiration through research by exploring lyrics with proper permission or public domain poems. Use poetry to spark ideas and consider lyrics as inspiration rather than mandatory content.

Use guide tracks to inspire your electronic music, shaping sound and volume while avoiding copying; if no session, build a playlist for inspiration.

Draw inspiration from books and media to musically sketch characters like Arturo, translate ideas into form and timeline, and decide when to reveal or keep the technique secret.

Sketching maps form and time during the precomposition phase, outlining big moments, tempo shifts, and motives. Use sketchbooks for squiggle or scribble sketches to plan the piece.

Explore graphic sketches turning scribbles into six-minute pieces, using tremolo, blue loops, and gesture patterns to shape texture, time, and form before notated music.

Explore program music as a narrative guide for instrumental pieces, contrasting it with absolute music and showing how a program shapes composition and audience interpretation.

Use narrative programs as sources of inspiration, turning stories into a timeline to guide composition, from personal experiences like adventures in Phoenix airport to mundane events.

Learn how to generate endless music ideas through programmatic composition and real-world experiences. Use life moments to write music and explore pieces like dark days.

Explore how a personal baltimore experience became a 14-minute programmatic piano trio through a 24-month timeline, illustrating precomposition steps, musical ideas, and therapeutic storytelling.

Explore how to plan a new piece by visualizing the ideal music, then use MuseScore to analyze form, harmonic principles, themes, motives, and the harmonic outline.

Identify the elements that separate form sections, such as meter changes, key changes, and tempo adjustments, in A, B, and C.

Explore harmonic principles beyond keys, centering on a sound and its tonal or non-tonal possibilities. Use two chords as a foundation, exploring inversions and variations to shape a complete piece.

Explore themes and motives as the essence of melodies. Apply the canon technique to extract harmonic content by layering instruments and exploring intervals.

Develop a practical harmonic scheme during the precomposition phase by using diatonic progressions with seconds and ninths to create soft dissonances, while keeping a tonal, traditional sound with subtle oddities.

Identify the big moment toward the end, plan a destination and write toward it, using sketches and prepared notes to ensure a strong musical climax.

Apply precomposition to make writing music enjoyable and reduce hard decisions. Sketch string music while planning the next big solo piano piece.

Explore more composition, music theory, and production classes, including Ableton Live, to apply precomposition principles across genres and continue your musical journey.

Thank you for watching and participating in this class; we hope you gained something great and had a good time. Check out other classes for more learning.