Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Blog Index — Organized by Topic (®Sept/2016)

Welcome to another year of composition studies! I wish you much growth and success on your journey to becoming the best composer you can be.

My primary motivation in creating this blog was to provide a forum in which a variety of composition-related topics could be explored and discussed in greater depth than is feasible in the classes I teach at Memorial University. While this was created for my students, comments may be left by anyone. Periodically, spam-bots leave comments, usually characterized by their enthusiastic brevity, followed by a link of some sort, kind of like this: "Great post! It really made me think. Check out DezynerSunGlassez.con for fantastic deals!"

Other times the spam-bot leaves some incredibly long-winded word collection, possibly copied from some obscure technical manual. I have no idea what the point of any of these spam posts is, but, if you see a comment that even vaguely resembles spam, do not click on any links, and let me know about it asap.

I get an automatic notification anytime someone leaves a comment, no matter how old the post, so, feel free to comment on very old posts if the topic interests you.

Below is an index of most blogs posted thus far. Entries relating to class business – reminders of deadlines, concert congratulations, order of class presentation, etc. – are omitted.

Links are loosely organized by topic to facilitate browsing.

→ Exploring the Creative Process; Struggles and Solutions ←
Strike While the Iron is Hot! (includes section on "writer's block")
→ Planning ←
→ Playing With Expectations; Musical Dichotomies ←
→ Composition Techniques ←
→ Form in Post-Tonal Music ←
→ Atonality; What's in a Name? ←
→ Winning and Losing; Judging and Being Judged ←
→ Audience Response to Contemporary Classical Music and Marketing ←
→ Composition Issues (10-part series that started this blog) ←
1.1. The quality of ideas may not matter very much in assessing compositions that emerge from them; and
1.2. The degree to which these ideas are original may not matter very much.
2.1. Study the music of others.
2.2. Compose as much as you can.
2.3. Invite criticism from others.
3.1. Live with it for a while.
3.2. What is it about?
3.3. Does it change character?
3.4. What is its function within the context of the piece?
3.5. Structural Analysis.
3.6. Harmonic (or Pitch, Scale, etc.) Analysis.
7.1. Less is more / More is more
7.2. Always leave them wanting more / Give them what they want
7.3. Don't treat the listener like an idiot / There's a sucker born every minute
7.4. There can be too much of a good thing / If you have a good idea, then stick with it!
7.5. The George Costanza approach.
8.1. Three models for the role of a composer
8.2. Mastery or Mystery?
8.3. The value of a plan
8.4. Getting stuck, and possible workarounds
8.5. Don't obsess
8.6. Challenges = Opportunities
→ Composition Projects ←
Posted by Clark Ross at 4:50 PM
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