Month: January 2013

The book has many ideas devoted to getting you off the beaten track. This blog provides details of a musical portrait of the gardens at the Alhambra Palaces near Granada in southern Spain, which I visited a few years ago. The composition uses an unconventional source for its melodic and harmonic material, resulting in the […]

This week we look at instrumental style – the importance of having respect for the character of the instruments we write for, not merely their range and capabilities. Ideally, we would not regard this as a separate aspect of our work since composers generally conceive in instrumental terms at the outset, unless they are re-arranging […]

Why is it that some composers find it necessary to abandon us all and move exclusively into the so-called ‘avant-garde’ while others still get the same kick out of their old jazz records as they did the first time they played them? We can’t avoid evolution and I agree with the suggestion that music written […]

This Blog discusses the notation of wind instrument articulations. Anyone who has taken part in a band competition will have experienced the confusion of wanting to play in a certain way and yet, at the same time, feeling obliged to play precisely what the adjudicator will be expecting. It’s rather like taking a driving test […]