The Art of Composing Podcast

In episode 13 of the AOC Podcast I talk to William Caplin, author of Analyzing Classical Form. This book, and his previous book have been instrumental in my development as a composer.

In episode 12 of the AOC Podcast I talk to Samuel Adler about Orchestration and his book, The Study of Orchestration.

We interview Robert Gjerdingen, author of the book "Music in the Galant Style". We talk about Partimenti, the tool used to train the greatest composers from Mozart to Debussy and Stravinsky.

Harmony is one of the core elements of music composition, but it can be difficult to get your head wrapped around the subject. In this episode, you'll learn about the fundamentals of harmony, from we get chords to creating chord progressions.

Orchestration is a tempting thing for any composer. The excitement of conducting your own piece in front of 80-120 players, bringing the audience to tears... it's hard to beat. But are you ready for it? In this episode, learn about the principles of orchestration.

Musical form is a tool that has been used by every great composer from Bach, to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, and even living composers. But what is musical form, and how does it work? In this episode learn the fundamentals of classical musical form.

Episode 7 of the Art of Composing Podcast. In this episode, we look at creativity - what it is, how to find it, and how to explore your creative boundaries.

Having a mentor can really help catapult your apprenticeship and speed up your process of mastery. But how do you find a mentor? And how do you take advantage of that mentor-protege relationship? Find out in this episode of the Art of Composing Podcast.

Episode 5 of the Art of Composing Podcast. In this episode, I cover the next stage of your pathway to mastery, the apprenticeship. Find out about why an apprenticeship is so important, the different phases of an apprenticeship, and how to take the most advantage of your composer apprenticeship. What is in this episode: What is an apprenticeship, and how long will it take? The three phases of an apprenticeship. The 8 Strategies for getting the most out of your apprenticeship. Resources and Links Mentioned in this Episode: Mastery by Robert Greene Episode 5 Take Aways The goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character. There are three phases or three modes to the ideal apprenticeship. They are Deep observation or the passive mode, where you observe and absorb as much as possible about the world you are trying to master. Skills acquisition or the practice mode, where you break down all of the necessary skills in your field and practice them until they become tacit knowledge. And Experimentation or the active mode, in which you take that knowledge and you create your own work so that it can be judged by the public and yourself. You are trying to fill the gaps in your own knowledge so you can become better than you are now. The 8 Strategies For the Ideal Apprenticeship are: Value learning over money. Keep Expanding Your Horizons Revert to a Feeling on Inferiority Trust the process Move towards resistance and pain Apprentice yourself in failure Combine the "How" and the "What" Advance Through Trial and Error Transcript Welcome back to the Art of Composing Podcast. I am excited to have you listening today. Today's episode is going to be about Mastery. What it is, how we can attain it, and why we would want to attain it. But I am not going to just talk about Mastery as an obscure theory. Instead, I thought this would be a good opportunity to a little bit talk about my history, how I started composing, how I got to where I am, and how I see my journey unfolding. I don't consider myself a master of music composition, but I am working towards it. And I hope part of the reason my website, artofcomposing.com resonates with people is because I am approaching the subject of teaching music composition from the standpoint of having to teach myself. So without further ado, let's get on with the featured content. Featured Content Mastery is a subject not often touched on or talked about in modern society. If you think about it, most things in life are really designed to prevent you from mastering a subject. The biggest culprit for this, I believe, is not TV, although TV doesn't help. No I believe its school. School is designed, from the beginning, to be a place of conformity and regurgitation. You are forced through your most creative, and curious part of your life to listen to teachers talk about subjects you just don't care about. And then after the day is done, you have to go home and study those same subjects, and do your homework. This all leads to a lack of motivation on the part of children to care much about school. For me personally, this lead to a habit of procrastinating. You see, procrastination really has nothing to do with you being lazy. I was and I still am, a hard worker. The thing is, I just never wanted to work on what I had to work on. Homework, diaramas, reports, papers, whatever. Let me say first though, that this has nothing to do with the teachers themselves. I had some great teachers growing up, and I have friends now that are teachers, and many of them care deeply about the kids they teach. But they are in a system that is designed to create factory workers, not mastery. So why am I talking about this. Well, I want to make it clear that mastery is attainable for anyone. That is right. Anyone can be a master of their chosen field. Obviously, this podcast is about composing music, so that is what we are going to talk about today, but in reality, if someone has mastered it, so can you. So let's imagine that you are a student in high school. You have been going through the school system, diligently learning the 1000 different subjects that they want you to learn. You can't say that you really understand them all, although you are able to get good grades in your classes, and that's all that matters right? But you've got a passion, and that passion is music. You've probably been playing in the school band for a number of years, and recently you got into writing some music. This is kind of how it happened for me. I started playing trumpet in 4th grade, just playing in the band at school. When I was in 6th grade however, my family moved to South Africa and I ended joining the Kwa-Zulu Natal Youth Wind Band. The Wind Band was really good, and far beyond my playing level at the time, so I had to start private lessons with an Austrian Trumpet teacher named Fritz Enichelmayer. Now, Fritz was a very interesting guy - an older gentlemen, that rode a harley, played trumpet and classical guitar, and in his spare time climbed mountains. But Fritz really taught me how to read music. This is when I started getting a grip on the grammar of music which would play a key role in learning to compose. Now shortly after moving there, we moved into an apartment that had some old stuff in the garage. I happened to be looking through it one day, and found a 3/4 size classical guitar. I got excited, because my dad, James Brantingham, was a trained Classical Guitarist, so I knew he would teach me to play as well. He reluctantly agreed, and so, I started learning. Things went slow at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. I started playing a lot. We were lucky enough to have a collection of books that had arrangements of famous classical music for the classical guitar, so I took my time, going through each book. Sometimes I would just sight read the music. Other times, I would really take my time to perfect the piece. At the same time, I was still taking trumpet lessons. The lessons were great, but I found that I wasn't progressing very fast. You see, I never wanted to practice. It's not that I didn't like playing, I did. I just didn't want to practice from the giant tome by Arban. If you are a brass player you know what I am talking about. Instead, my free time, went to reading through the guitar books. Now around the same time, there was a talent show at my high school. I went to Durban High School by the way, if there is anyone in South Africa listening. For the talent show, I got a small group together, including my brother, and other members from the wind band. We decided to play In the Mood, by Glenn Miller. This is a great tune, and a fun piece to play, but at some point during the process of getting the song together, someone came up with the great idea of having a trumpet solo. Sure, I said, that sounds great. No how do I do one of those? That started my search for how to compose a trumpet solo. I went to my trumpet teacher, who promptly referred my to a sax teacher who also taught in the area. So I went and asked him how to create a solo. Actually, I first asked him to write one for me, but he thought it would be better if I wrote it myself. I am thankful he did, and I can probably look back on that, as a gift. If he hadn't, I may never have started composing. His advice was pretty simple. Just look at the chord tones for each bar, and then play up and down them. It sounded simple enough. So I went to work. I can't remember if I actually had a lead sheet, or if I just wrote notes on the Bb major chord, but either way, I ended up with a relatively decent solo. Everyone I talked to said it sounded like it fit, so I was happy. If you are interested in hearing this performance by the way, it will be posted in the shownotes, at artofcomposing.com/episode4. So this was the first time I wrote my own music. And it was fun, but I didn't really understand what was going on. Once again though, I got another push from fate, when the piano player in the group gave me a floppy disk with a DOS program called IT Tracker. He showed me how to use it, and well, it was love at first site. No... not with my friend, with IT tracker. In what probably seemed like quite strange behavior to my parents, I would sit for hours on end, writing out the guitar sheet music that I couldn't play very well into IT Tracker. I sequenced Beethoven and Mozart, Schubert and Tarrega, Wagner and Brahms. I was even able to sample my guitar and trumpet, and use those sounds in the sequences, although they sounded terrible because of the bad microphone I had. At some point in this process, I started to write my own music. I can't quite remember the day, but I do remember the piece. A short jazz trumpet piece called Bugs. So why is this important. You see, I didn't know at the time, but I was learning to compose through osmosis. You only have to see the notes C, E, and G move to G, B, and D so many times before you start to figure out that is something that all composers do. So I did it too. One of the benefits of IT Tracker, was that you wrote out the note names. So instead of writing in notation, I would actually write the letter C or C#. This helped me understand chords and how they related to one another quite well. Day after day, I would sit at our computer, which was not connected to internet and just write out pieces. I wanted to hear what they sounded like. I wanted to know what made them work. I very clearly remember the first musical discovery I made, when I finally figured out what that dark sounding, ominous chord was, the diminished chord. It felt great everytime I heard the chord in a piece of music after that, I could say... (In pompous accent) "Oh yes,

Episode 4 of the Art of Composing Podcast. This episode is all about starting on the pathway to mastery. What is mastery? Well, it is the state that you achieve, where you have almost magical powers of control over your chosen field. How do you achieve master? You'll just have to listen and find out. I also talk about how I started composing, how I got off the path towards my life's task, and what it took to get back on the pathway. What is in this episode: What is mastery, and how do you achieve it. Jon - An Autobiography (kind of) How to identify your life's task using the 5 strategies from Mastery by Robert Greene. Resources and Links Mentioned in this Episode: Mastery by Robert Greene War of Art by Steven Pressfield Episode 4 Take Aways Mastery is really about a state you can achieve, in which you have a power over reality that most people do not have. This power comes from fully absorbing all aspects of you life's task. Your life's task is the thing that you feel deep down, that you are called to do. To identify your life's task, you have five strategies: Returning to your origins is basically connecting with your true passions. Occupying the Perfect Niche is all about working your way towards a life that will support and nurture your life's task. Avoiding the false path is all about not being steered in the wrong direction. Letting Go of the Past is about looking at the direction you're life has been taking, and having the courage to say whether you've been on a false path, even if you've worked hard in a particular field. Finding Your Way Back is about being willing to make a cut with the progress you've made in order to get back on your true path towards mastery. Transcript - AOC 004

Episode 3 of the Art of Composing Podcast. In this episode, I talk about what it takes to start composing immediately. What is in this episode: The mindset you need to learn to compose music. How to approach the act of learning to compose. Why you need 20 hours to become good at composing, and 10,000 hours to become a master. How to setup your studio for zero-friction composing. A little more on why you need to learn your musical grammar and logic. How you can take the free beginner's composing course at www.artofcomposing.com/free. Resources and Links Mentioned in this Episode: Art of Composing Podcast on Stitcher Alex Heffes musictheory.net M-Audio Keystation Musical Form Hub A Geometry of Music Sibelius Musescore Digital Performer Reaper Episode 3 Take Aways Becoming a composer first starts with calling yourself a composer. Fake it till you make it, thats what I always say. You need to approach composing with a beginner's mind, this will give you the freedom to accept what you are learning and to grow as a composer. Be prepared to put in at least 20 hours of deliberate practice to get comfortable with composing, and another 9,980 hours to become a master. Don't worry, even if you only do your 20 hours, you'll be a pretty decent composer. Setup your studio so that it is comfortable for you, with all of the basics for composing at an arms reach. At a minimum, have your staff paper, a pencil, an eraser, and some kind of instrument to help orient you on pitch. Learn the grammar of music, and learn it well. It will make your life so much easier. If you are worried about how to start with the first note... then just start with C, that always seems to work out... but seriously, try to think of the shape of your melody, and mixing up scale lines and chord lines. You can also take one of your favorite pieces, and then write a variation on it. Remember, you are practicing, so you can do whatever you want, as long as it helps you progress in your goal of becoming a composer. Finally, learn some basic musical form, basic diatonic harmony, and go through my free beginner's course. It is available at artofcomposing.com/free. The Diatonic Harmony Charts Major Harmony Minor Harmony Transcript - AOC 003

Ever wonder what the process of composing music is really all about? Are you confused about how to even start composing, let alone, how to develop a piece of music and when to stop? Find out about the process I go through when composing, and for a special treat, listen to me actually compose an entire piece of music live.

In this first episode of the Art of Composing Podcast, I talk a little bit about who I am, why I started artofcomposing.com, and the Art of Composing Podcast. Next, I go into what music composition is and the stages of learning to compose music... also known as the trivium.