Tag: composing

I would like to warn the reader that this blog contains opinions that may not be shared by all. The habit of joining together with other musicians during performances is as old as music itself but the systematic arrangement of instrumental groups, that we now call ‘orchestration’, is comparatively new. It is a feature of […]

In the book I make the following claim: In the main stream of conventional music, a composition that is expected to have popular appeal will fail if it does not possess, somewhere during its development, an expressive melody. Melody is the outer contour or shape that musical rhythms and harmonies present to the world. People […]

I could open this blog by making a slick comment such as ‘Well, there AREN’T any, actually’. This isn’t too far away from the truth but, as always, the matter is a little more complicated. I think I’ll probably be correct if I say that the majority of people approach music theory, especially the theory […]

When I began my musical journey I used to believe that tonality is an indispensable part of music that had virtually always been with us until ‘modern’ composers tried to take it away from us. And yet a moment’s thought would have reminded me that, until the campaign in favour of equal temperament gathered strength […]

Well, it isn’t compulsory, that’s a fact and when we journey out from the realm of European ‘classical’ (and other) styles we encounter more and more regions where musicians barely give the idea a second thought. The book deals in some depth with form and the way in which other elements, particularly rhythm, are affected […]

Composers will occasionally pause to think about about what they do and why they do it and then get on with their daily business. Some will rarely think about it at all. But it can be interesting to assess current attitudes against the background of what has gone before. For example, many years ago music […]

I’ve had a number of interesting conversations on here where ideas stray into the realms of philosophy. As a composer/arranger/trombonist ­– and I was also classically trained as an artist – I’ve never spent too much time dwelling on ideas that are better handled by musicologists who specialize in them. I usually have little time […]