The Potentially-Hubristic Folly of Planning

"Creativity is very messy," writes Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman in a Scientific American article entitled, The Messy Minds of Creative People (December 24, 2014).

Well, yeah…

The process that leads to the completion of a composition, or indeed anything you create, is, at least in my experience, rarely linear.

• There are ideas that don't go anywhere.
• There are ideas that go somewhere, but not where you want them to go.
• There are sometimes too many ideas.
• There are sometimes no ideas, or at least none that seem to be any good.
• Finding regular, uninterrupted blocks of time in which to compose can be challenging. Kind of like searching for the Holy Grail, or finding matches for all those single socks that modern dryers produce.
• When you finally find a block of time in which to compose, the creative well sometimes appears to have run dry. This can lead to…
• Frustration. And in such large quantities!
• Every now and then, however, something goes right, which is sweet indeed! However…
• We may come to believe that what we considered brilliant, or at least pretty darn good, is neither, and in fact may very possibly be complete garbage. To be clear, it is unlikely to be garbage, complete or otherwise, but the brain sometimes turns on a person. If that should happen to you, smack the brain smartly (but figuratively) with a rolled up newspaper and tell it that a non-brilliant idea is not necessarily garbage. Here's a little inequation to help remember this:
• Non-Brilliant Idea ≠ Garbage
• There can be positive feedback from others, encouraging you to keep doing what you're doing. So you do, but it may turn out to be bad advice if you don't like the direction your piece is taking.
• There can be conflicting suggestions from others, such as:
• The piano writing is unidiomatic, vs. Nah, the piano writing is fine… A good pianist should have no trouble with it.
• A single motive that permeates every bar of the entire piece? That is PURE GENIUS, my friend! vs. That pervasive motive is fine for a while, but you get pretty sick of it after about the twentieth time you hear it, and by about page five it makes me want to jump off a building! Seriously, dial it back a notch or six; less is more.
• That middle section makes no sense to me, vs. That middle section is my favourite part!
• There can be a little voice in the back of your head suggesting that you really have no idea what you're doing, so why keep doing it?
• There can be self-flagellation. Figuratively, ideally. Otherwise, it would just be weird.
• There can be happy, joyous times. Oh, what a splendid idea this is! This peppy little minuet will surely get the powdered-wig set dancing! La!
• There can be self-shaming: Oh, why did I ever think that a peppy minuet was a splendid idea? Hipster kids nowadays are mostly into the bourée, while emo kids are all about sarabandes, at least when they're not listening to the Pavane pour une infante défunte… I feel so ashamed!
• On good days, there can be the briefly-held and hubristically-based belief that the composition process is really quite straightforward, as long as you focus on executing the plan.
• There can be a growing sense that your plan isn't working, accompanied by a feeling of increasing dread.
• There can be creative paralysis upon realizing that not only does the plan not work, your entire piece is basically dead in the water, gone belly up, defunct, bankrupt, demised, passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, expired, gone to meet its maker, a stiff, bereft of life, resting in peace, pushing up daisies, its metabolic processes are now history, it's off the twig, kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir invisible; basically, what you've got is the compositional equivalent of an EX-PARROT!! [adapted from Monty Python, Dead Parrot Sketch]
• There can be complaints and seemingly-unrealistic demands from performers of your music.
• Upon completion of a composition, there can be a sense of accomplishment so profound that, incredibly, you decide to put yourself through this messy process again and begin a new project. 

All of which brings us to the idea of a plan. Here is a cautionary tale based on a true story of someone I taught some years ago, but with abundant and egregious liberties taken:

Chapter One

Once upon a time, there was a student named Sammy (not her/his real name; if you are a student named Sammy, this is not about you. Sorry).

Now Sammy had always composed fairly intuitively, and, while it had often been a frustrating process, it had worked out reasonably well, and s/he was making slow, steady progress.

One day, Sammy got a notion that it would be a good idea to work out a plan for her/his next piece.

Most composers start with a plan, some of which can be really detailed. Insanely detailed! Milton Babbitt, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez: I'm looking at you, dudes!

A detailed plan could provide many benefits — it could smooth the composition process, since you would always know where to go next within the piece; without a plan, we often struggle when we finish a section because we're not sure where it should go from there. Lots of times Sammy had started pieces intending to take them in a particular direction, only to have the piece go in a different direction! Compositions, like cats, often do not go where we want them to go. A plan would definitely help put Sammy in control of her/his composition, and not the other way around!

Not only that, but a plan would likely result in a work that was well designed, consistent, and organic. No more of this ten-different-ideas-within-the-same-piece nonsense!

A plan could be the key to taking her/his music to the next level.

Chapter Two

And so Sammy began work on the plan. S/he used set theory to work out a pitch system that produced beautiful, non-tonal sonorities. Actually, it took a few attempts before Sammy was satisfied with this, but the eventual result was most satisfying indeed! When Sammy played arpeggios from this pitch-organization system for her/his composition class, they were impressed! Sammy's composition teacher was impressed, and immediately thought of cool and wonderful things that could be done with Sammy's system.

Chapter Three

 Sammy worked out related pitch worlds for different sections of the piece. Sammy also worked on the structure of the piece, eventually (again, after several unsatisfactory attempts) arriving at a series of overlapping arch shapes that were a thing of beauty. Approximate durations were assigned to each section, and as well to each subsection. The vertical axis represented intensity, which rose and fell in a series of cascading waves, eventually reaching a climax at the golden mean (61.8% of the way through the structure).

Chapter Four

There may have been more additions/deletions/modifications to the plan after that. Sammy's composition teacher does not remember.

Chapter Five

But Sammy's composition teacher does remember feeling increasingly uneasy as the weeks rolled by and no significant work on the actual composition was presented to the class. Semesters are about twelve weeks long in Canada, the land where Sammy and Sammy's composition teacher both live, and with about half the semester gone, all Sammy had to show the class each week were further tweaks to the plan. To be fair, however, Sammy had sketched out bits of several sections as well. This in no way reflected any malingering, dallying, dawdling, or dilatoriness on Sammy's part; constructing a detailed plan takes a lot of work, and Sammy's teacher understood this, having read about it in a book once.

Chapter Six

Sammy was beginning to feel the crunch, what with the semester half gone and all, and decided to take the leap. The first section took longer than expected, because Sammy wasn't satisfied with the results s/he was getting. The first section! And already it was starting to feel like herding cats! Why must cats and compositions be so willful? Sammy wondered.

That's the age-old question, mused Sammy's composition teacher.

Chapter Seven

Well, friends, I gotta tell ya, Sammy was (and probably still is) a diligent and eager beaver. Literally. No, not literally… the other one… figuratively? Yeah, that's it. But you already know this, because a good portion of chapter five was devoted to Sammy's general lack of dillydallying.

And so Sammy, ever keen, put her/his back into it and herded those figurative cats! Which is to say, s/he completed the first section, and was satisfied with it. As were all those who heard it, and they praised Sammy.

From on high.

The semester was now about two-thirds complete.

"Hmm," thought the composition teacher, nervously. 

Chapter Eight

The process continued as previously, which is to say that it was considerably less smooth than anticipated! Aspects of the original plan — which was quite lovely! — were modified, or even scrapped. The existential angst that Sammy had hoped to avoid was not avoided, and, what's more, it now grew from "I'm not sure where to take my piece in the next section," to "There are aspects to my plan that don't work, and I am stressed – desperately – over this!"

And indeed, Sammy was in a very dark place. Her/his composition teacher, having been in very dark places on occasions too numerous to enumerate, felt very bad for Sammy. Offers of help were made.

Chapter Nine

And so, for Sammy, it came to pass that time marched inexorably on, as is its wont despite our best efforts to the contrary, and small compositional triumphs were mixed with periodic setbacks and occasional blows to the psychic solar plexus, which means that some setbacks were worse than others.

Sammy stuck with it, however, and eventually pulled the rabbit out of the hat, which is to say s/he finished the piece, more or less, by the end of semester.

"More or less" in this case means that Sammy was not fully satisfied with the finished product, as its completion involved numerous compromises along the way — sections that didn't quite turn out as hoped, but with no time to make them "tickety-boo" (this means "just so," in case you were unaware) because it was necessary to move on to the subsequent section in order to finish by the deadline.

The Moral of This Story

Were the challenges faced along the way the product of a faulty plan, or are such challenges simply inherent to the creative process?

Undoubtedly you, as a perceptive reader, already know the composition teacher's view on this, because the title of today's blog kind of gives it away. 

That, plus opening this blog with, "creativity is messy…" and then following that opening with a list of examples that illustrate ways in which creativity can be messy .

However, the composition teacher hastens to clarify his position by saying that while the creative process can indeed be messy much of the time, even for so-called geniuses, this doesn't obviate the potential benefits of a well-constructed plan. Should Sammy write more plan-based compositions, it seems likely that Sammy's ability to craft functional plans, with built-in contingencies for when things get messy, will improve, and will help her/him improve as a composer.

One key to making plans that work is to understand that most plans have to be changed once the actual work of composition is underway. They are more a guide than a strict road map, usually.

That said, however, it is probable that for any substantial creative project, things will get messy along the way, with or without a plan, and part of being a composer involves learning to accept this, deal with the inevitable difficulties as they arise, and push past them.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry 

(Robert Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire: "To a Mouse," 1785).

Portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Oh, the pain of it all!

Is composition sometimes painful for you?

A composer I know once told me that you have be a masochist to be a composer. That might be overstating things, but it got me thinking.

Many things in life are painful, yet we do them anyway. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is giving birth, which, as I understand it, can be profoundly painful.

And yet, despite this, many women knowingly and deliberately give birth, often more than once.

Are they masochists?

I don't think so. I suspect that the motivation is simple: Their desire to have children is so strong that they are willing to endure the pain that comes with giving birth, and the further frustrations, stress, and challenges that come with raising children.

I think it is similar with composition. Sure, you have good days in which you feel you are making progress on your piece, and you like what you have written, but you also have periods where you struggle, perhaps to the point of wanting to give up, and if you struggle a lot with a composition, you might well find yourself wondering why you ever thought it would be a good idea to write music in the first place. Wouldn't lying on a nice beach in the tropics be preferable? Or playing video games?

Every composer must discover and own their motivation for writing music, but I suspect for most of us the motivation is similar to the desire to have kids: At the end of an often painful process, you will have in your hands something that came from some mysterious place inside you, about which you can hopefully feel good for the rest of your life.

And, speaking only for myself, there are few experiences in life that can compare to the satisfaction of a completed composition that I like (as opposed to a completed composition that I don't care for very much!), which is why I keep at it.

But still, the pain of it all can be daunting at times. If you find yourself feeling discouraged, it might be comforting to know that most, and probably all, composers have experienced what you are feeling on a pretty regular basis. It seems to go with the territory.

I think overcoming discouragement can be particularly challenging during the first few years of composing, since after going through all the labour pains involved in creating a composition, the completed work often does not turn out to be as good as we had hoped.

You almost need to be delusional to persevere beyond these disappointments! Or, if "delusional" is an attribute not held dear to your heart, perhaps "really optimistic" is a better descriptor... The point is, when you begin developing your skills at anything, you tend not to be as good at it as you will become if you persevere doggedly for several years, and it helps if during this early period you can find positive aspects to ensure you are sufficiently motivated to continue.

So, rather than dismissing the results of your compositional efforts ("OMG, my piece sucks!" Or, "how embarrassing! Won't somebody PLEASE drop an anvil on my head?"), it is useful, even essential, to identify the positives ("I really like the tone colour (or harmony, or texture, etc.) of that section!" Or, "the first thirty bars turned out better than I expected!"), while at the same time recognizing that some aspects of your composition(s) need work.

A positive attitude and a good work ethic may be two of the most essential qualities in becoming a good composer, but, unfortunately, the former can be the greater challenge. But take comfort in the knowledge that it is something with which all composers struggle from time to time; sometimes, it's just part of the process.

I love it when a plan comes together...

The title of today's blog was the weekly catch-phrase of John "Hannibal" Smith, a character on "The A-Team," a popular television series that ran from 1983 to 1986 on NBC, and a 2010 film of the same name. You don't need to have been a fan of "The A-Team" (I was, mainly because I'm a foreign television buff), however, to agree that it can indeed be wonderful when a plan comes together.

This, friends, is what John "Hannibal" Smith looked like:

Notice the "thumbs up" sign, as well as the well-chomped cigar, and generally-roguish demeanor. This is part of what made the show popular. The other big reason was Mr. T, but this blog is not about him. Sorry.

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What got me thinking along these lines is that I work at the Memorial University School of Music, and, as with any music school, when you walk down the hallways you get to hear random musical fragments of whatever students and faculty are working on. Some might find it disconcerting to be exposed to brief excerpts of completely different repertoire in quick succession, but not me; I have always enjoyed this aspect of my work environment.

In fact, I don't even have to leave my office to experience this, albeit on a smaller scale. I am surrounded by performance faculty offices, with piano studios on either side of mine, and trumpet and low brass studios across the corridor. Don't get me wrong; the soundproofing in our building is surprisingly effective, and when I am in my office I cannot hear sounds from my colleagues' studios particularly well, but, especially when my door is open, I do get to hear some of what my fellow musicians are working on.

Mostly, I never hear complete pieces; I suspect most teachers do just as I did when I taught classical guitar: You stop the student at various times during their lesson, and say, "let's work on that." Sometimes you spend a whole lesson working on a few notes, trying to find a strategy that will result in a better performance of those notes; small snippets of music are often played many times, and the student is often told to continue this small-scale repetition during practice sessions in advance of their next lesson.

→ That's they way we learn music. We break it down into smaller sections, practice them repeatedly until mastered, then gradually start reassembling these fragments into longer sections, which we practice numerous times, and repeat the process in ever-increasing sections until we can play the entire piece cleanly, with musical understanding, and hopefully with something personal in our performance as well.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been hearing complete composition performances in the studios around me. This stands to reason, because we are at the end of our school year (today is the last day of classes), which means that students will soon be playing end-of-year recitals and performance exams. This is the time of year when their performance levels should be peaking; this is the time of year when, hopefully, every student can feel as though months of planning and hard work are coming together, and, like John "Hannibal" Smith, feel pretty darn good about it. I love it when their plans come together!

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Well, this being a blog about composition, you might already have some idea of where I'm going with the preceding tale... There are at least two parallels with the composition process:

1. The repetitive aspect. You can spend hours trying to get a few notes "just right," tweaking minute details such as dynamics, articulations, pitch, texture, rhythm, and register, perhaps feeling that you're not making much progress along the way. Someone not familiar with the amount of drudgery involved in the creative process might be profoundly unimpressed by all this. Yikes! That sounds very much like a dog's breakfast! they might think to themselves (although, like most of us, they probably have little idea of what a dog's breakfast actually sounds like).

In short, hearing a small section of music played over and over might well leave the casual observer nonplussed.

But, hopefully, any musician would get it. I suspect that any good musician (or, for that matter, anyone who has reached a high level in any endeavour) knows that the creative process involves an extraordinary amount of drudgery. If your goal is to become a good or even great composer, I believe it is essential to accept and understand this. Your initial ideas may be fine, or not, but they very often go through hundreds of transformations until they reach the final product, which is the completed composition. You need to have the patience and tenacity to see the process through to the end.

2. Just as having a plan was vital to the success of The A-Team (every week, the bad guys would get blown up in spectacular fashion, and those lovable rogues on The A-Team would triumph! How awesome is that?), having a plan for your composition can be a very useful thing.

Now just hold on a sec! you might say in your folksy way (if you speak in a folksy way, that is). Since when do YOU [meaning me] have a plan, let alone follow it?

Here's the thing: Plans comes in many varieties. Some are very specific, and some are less so. Mine, admittedly, tend to be less so, but some aspects that are useful to consider before starting a composition include:

• Instrumentation (kind of a no-brainer, but it helps to establish this before you start!)
• Duration (again, fairly obvious, but the length of your composition has tremendous bearing on the kind of piece you can write);
• Performance difficulty level;
• Context (will people dance to it? Will it be "background" music? Is it for a recital?);
• Mood(s) or atmosphere you wish to evoke; 
• Genres you want to draw from, if any (e.g., blues, tango, minimalism, etc.);
• Specific techniques, materials, or processes you want to use (polymeter, mixed meter, compound meter, polytonality, exotic modes/scales, free atonality, a sequence of non-tonal chords of your own invention, stochastic music, etc.); 
• Compositional attitude (is this "serious" music, or playful? Or both? Is it "functional" (e.g., music for marching band, or music for a specific occasion like a wedding or funeral), or "art" music? Or both?  Do you care what people think of your music, and if so, how will that affect the kind of music you write? Who will the audience be?).

Perhaps strangely, I don't spend much time thinking of form before I begin, even though I believe that the structure of a composition is integral to its success. I think this might be related to three things:

1. I like the sonata principle.  I virtually never set out to write a sonata-form piece, however.  Instead, I find myself borrowing some of the concepts of sonata form in the music I write, such as:
   • A mix between sections of greater and lesser stability, where stability can refer to thematic identity, pitch centricity, mood, or anything else you can think of.  This is at the core of classical sonata form, and the concept can be applied to modern music too;
   • Some degree of the unexpected — one of the things I like about sonata form is its flexibility, and particularly the number of times composers introduces unexpected elements, such as a new theme in the development, no bridge, an unusually long bridge, unexpected modulations, etc.;
   • A return to some aspect of the opening material towards the end; and
   • Codas that may be lengthy and contain further surprises.  
2. I like the Fibonacci sequence, and the Golden Ratio, and these are often somewhere in my thoughts as I compose (and they can be applied to form, as well as many other parameters, such as rhythm and intervals). 
3. I tend to start thinking about the kind of form that would best suit a particular piece only after the composition is underway.  I do not argue that this is a good (or bad) strategy; I do it because it happens to work for me.  Some might say this is a bit like beginning to construct a building with no architectural plans, and only drawing up plans once the first couple of stories have been finished.  To that, I say this:  A composition is not a building.  It is, I think, very important to develop a plan for the form of your composition, but sometimes you don't exactly know what the possibilities are until you have worked with your musical ideas for a while.  Remember: One of the many things a composition is not, is a building.  But you probably already knew that... 

Some composers like to represent musical form on graph paper. I have tried this, and it is certainly useful. Some prefer to describe the structure they wish to use with words. Many use letters or numbers to designate sections within a form (e.g., A B C B D A B). There are many approaches to planning that work, and the key is to try different ones until you discover ones that work for you.

I don't tend to have very specific pre-compositional plans about scalar and harmonic resources, but, within any section, I generally aim to be consistent. There is no rule saying you have to be consistent in this or any other aspect of a musical composition, of course; I just happen to like what I write more when it is consistent. If you didn't start out with a plan for scalar, harmonic, and motivic resources, it can be useful to look at however much of the composition you have already written, and then try to deduce what sort of harmonic language you have been using.  Subsequent sections can then be consistent with the pitch collections of earlier sections, if you wish, or you may choose to use contrasting language.

I suspect that most composers devote a significant amount of time to pre-compositional planning, and I can understand why: It can make the difficult process of composing somewhat easier, and can result in a better composition. There have been numerous times when I have been stuck at some point in a composition, and wished I had a plan, because I believe it would alleviate at least some of the stress (and even helplessness) that comes when you feel as though you have absolutely no idea where your composition should go from a point of impasse.

My main caution on this topic is this: While it can be is useful to have a plan before you start composing, the plan needs to be flexible. If something is going according to plan, but not working, then it stands to reason that the plan must be changed. You could even build this flexibility into your plan; if option x doesn't work, then try y; if y doesn't work, then try z, etc.  I think this is what the adage, plans were meant to be broken, is getting at.

I recommend giving it a try, and, like anything, you may need to try it several times before you feel you are starting to get the hang of it. Then, if you have planned well, you may experience something of the smug sense of accomplishment conveyed weekly by A-Team's John "Hannibal" Smith... or if that is perhaps aiming too high, then perhaps at least some sense of satisfaction that your plan came together!

[This blog was only very loosely planned.]

Keep? Discard?

Simon's guest blog (below; March 16, 2009) mentions having varying degrees of attachment to his own musical ideas, which I suspect anyone who creates things has experienced. You've come up with idea x, which you really like (and to which you become quite attached), but you're not so sure about idea y.

I think this is a normal occurrence in the creative process. More importantly, I think it is an essential aspect of the creative process. If a composer were to like everything s/he created, chances are that composer would be not a very discerning individual, and their music would likely reflect that.

One of the skills that I think composers need to develop is discernment; the ability to evaluate whether idea y is worth pursuing or not.

The difficulty for most student composers, as I have mentioned before, is that their level of musical sophistication exceeds their level of compositional technique.

Why? At Memorial University (where I teach), most students don't start formal training in composition until their fourth semester, by which point they have spent years developing performance skills and, once they are in university, learning music theory and being exposed to at least some "great" music (I realize that greatness is a potentially problematic term, but perhaps I will discuss the use of this term in a later post). By the time that most students are just starting their compositional training, they already have a pretty good idea of what they like and don't like in music, which, when applied to their own compositions, results in the phenomenon of knowing that a piece, section, or musical idea is not as good as they would like it to be, but not knowing exactly how to go about improving it.

The solution I typically recommend is to push forward with your musical ideas as best you can, even if you are not convinced of their quality, because it is often only by doing this this you discover the potential of ideas to grow into something bigger or different, or at least something to which you can feel more attached. I consider that part of my job as a composition professor is to suggest strategies for building on their compositional ideas in order to grow/transform them into something they like better.

It doesn't mean you necessarily keep and develop every musical idea you ever come up with; it just means that you often need to work with an idea for a while until you come to a better understanding of what it can develop into.

Should you ever discard your musical ideas?

I don't think so. For two reasons:

1. If you have worked very hard on a musical idea, there is a good chance that it has value.


2. You don't have to use it right away. You may find a use for it later, possibly in a different section of the same piece, or possibly in a different composition. You also may never find a use for it, but since we don't know whether we will eventually find a place for it or not, it makes sense to keep the idea, but just set it aside for now if you don't feel it works in the particular section of your composition for which it was originally intended.


3. There is no reason to throw anything away, even if you are convinced that it is garbage! Notation files on computers use very little disk-storage space; instead of dumping a file in the trash, just put it in a compositional scraps folder because you never know if the idea might evolve into a useful idea in a different piece.

But it all starts with working harder with the musical idea to which you were initially not very attached — not being too quick to give up on it — and frankly, my experience as both a teacher and composer leads me to feel that, if you do this, you will often find a place for that idea in the composition on which you are working.

Running into a Brick Wall

"Running into a brick wall" is, in this case, a metaphor for getting stuck, something that everyone who has tried to create something (music, books, art, science, relationships, etc.) has probably experienced. Things may be proceeding swimmingly (i.e., smoothly) up to a point when you suddenly hit a proverbial wall. You feel stuck; you've tried x, y, and z, but none of them worked, and you feel at a loss as to how to proceed.

I wrote about this in part 8 of my "Composition Issues" series that I posted last August, and, because I know that at least one of you is feeling stuck right now, I thought I would revisit and significantly expand the part of my earlier blog post that deals with this issue:

There is no "one size fits all" solution for when you are stuck, so you may need to try several approaches until you discover one (or more) that helps you get out of your predicament. Here are some options to consider:

1. The "boot camp" approach: Suck it up, cupcake! Call upon your inner Rocky Mountain Bighorn and RAM that brick wall repeatedly until you break through! The main requirements for this are stubbornness on an epic scale and an extremely hard head, ideally equipped with ram horns and a concussion-proof skull. The upside is that it sometimes works! The downside is that it can lead to even greater frustration, which may make you feel like dumping the entire piece into the trash, which I strongly discourage. However, this "extreme stubbornness" approach can work, and it has worked for me at times, such as this: I had written about 30-40 seconds of a solo piano piece that I really liked, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out a good way to continue the piece. I would revisit the piece periodically, until finally, ten years after I came up with the opening idea, I managed to "bull" my way past the section that had become an impediment, and I finished the piece about 2-3 months later. It became one of my all-time favourite pieces, and it has been played by a variety of pianists in different countries, including multiple venues in Japan, and at Carnegie Hall in New York.  It is "Dream Dance," if you want to check it out. 
2. When feeling stuck, we tend to focus our energies on getting unstuck from that point forwards. If we get stuck at bar 100, for example, we tend to spend days trying to progress past bar 100 in a way that makes musical sense. It may be, however, that the root of the problem occurred much earlier in the composition; we may need to go back several pages to identify the point where things began to go awry – such as bar 70 – and write a new continuation that improves the piece from that point forwards. We may need to scrap (or at least set aside) several pages of music, but it will be worth doing if it results in a better piece. And sometimes the music you removed turns out to fit nicely in a different section, or even in a different piece.
3. Analyze your music. We learn analytical tools to help us understand music better, but how often do you analyze your own music? You might be surprised at how often composers don't fully understand their own music until they analyze it. The composition process is inherently subjective, which makes it easy to lose perspective on your composition, but analysis forces us to think more objectively about it. Don't just browse the score to figure out where the major sections are; do a full structural analysis that includes pitch centres, cadence points and types, phrase structure, musical character, and formal structure.
4. Did you start with a plan? If not, now would be a good time to make one. A good starting point would be to analyze what you have written, then make your plan based on that. Plans can definitely be useful, but don't be afraid to change them as you go. In fact, it may be that we are stuck because the music we want to write at a particular point in the piece does not fit with the plan. In that case, change the plan.
5. Take a break – do something else for a while. Frequently all we need is a different perspective, which may be gained by simply not thinking about the piece for a couple of days.
6. Exercise. This is one of the things you can do while taking a break. Some scientists suggest that strenuous exercise releases endorphins in the brain that make us feel better. And if you feel better, you might be able to think more clearly about how to get out of the 'writer's block' that you are experiencing. The exercise does not have to be strenuous; many composers kept diaries in which they described taking long walks every day as a way to clear the mind. 
7. Lower the bar! Stop trying to write great (or even good) music! We can sometimes put too much pressure on ourselves when we do that. You may have to lower your level of expectations in order to finish the piece. You can always return to your composition later if you wish, and improve sections that are less than you feel they could or should be. But frankly, my advice is generally to finish the piece, and then move on to your next piece; your tenth composition will likely be better than your first one, or your first few, but you won't get to your tenth composition until you finish the first nine! Beethoven's first published works, the three Opus 1 piano trios, were not his first compositions; he had written over one hundred works before that. Nobody ever started out writing great music; it takes time to become a good composer.
   
   
   Beethoven's Opus 1; clearly not his first rodeo
   
   
8. MEET YOUR DEADLINE, NO MATTER WHAT! This is, or at least can be, related to the previous point. You are on the verge of panicking because a deadline is imminent, and you feel that if you blow it, YOU WILL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN! Perhaps missing one deadline will not necessarily torpedo one's career, but below are a couple of scenarios that are possible:
1. If you are a student, some professors may give you a mark of zero if you miss a deadline, while others may impose a less Draconian penalty, such as a grade reduction of 10- 20%; you will not be forcibly removed from your Institution of Higher Learning for missing one deadline, of course. But even so, being penalized for missing a deadline is something that most of us would prefer to avoid.
2. If writing for professionals, or even non-professionals who have asked you to write something for an upcoming concert, missing a composition deadline is very bad form. The musicians (a) may decide against playing your piece if and when you finally manage to finish it, and (b) may not ever ask you to write something for them again, because you have added the stress of having to quickly reprogram their concert at the last minute, and any printed materials such as programmes and posters will need to be changed. And, if you develop a reputation for missing deadlines, it's a pretty safe bet that others will not ask to compose music for them either.

Neither of these situations is one that any of us would want to experience, obviously, so what I have done on at least two occasions that I can think of is this: Work like an obsessed crazy person for days on end, writing as much music as possible, all the while asking myself a simple question: Is it okay, or isn't it? If my answer is "yes," or "maybe… I guess so?" then I keep it and move onto the next part of my piece. If my answer is "no," or "this isn't terrible, but it kind of sucks!" then I try to improve it before moving on, or I set it aside and move on with the plan to return to the problem section later.

But I avoid asking myself if it's great, or, if it's good, then how can I make it better – both of which I constantly ask myself during my normal composition process if a deadline is not imminent – because doing so slows everything down, and the consequences of missing a deadline greatly outweigh the consequences of completing a piece on time that might have been slightly better if I had spent more time on it. And for me, the most surprising thing about going through this process was that in both cases, I actually felt pretty good about the compositions when I had finished, and I continue to be happy with them.

9. Stop listening, and start imagining. Or, more precisely, stop relying on the playback capability of Finale or Sibelius to give you a sense of what's going on in your piece. Try not playing back your music for a day, then two days, then longer, if possible (it's tough to do; most of us are addicted to MIDI playback!), and see what difference it makes. It may cause you to think more about motivic relationships, or you may begin paying more attention to structure, or set theory, or gestures... You will almost certainly start to think of your piece in a different way if you try this. (This suggestion courtesy of Andrew Staniland.)
10. Perspective; use it or lose it. This is a quote from a Richard Bach book (Illusions), and my point in mentioning it here is that perhaps the most common reason that we get stuck is that the subjective nature of the composition process makes it remarkably easy to to lose perspective on our own creations. All of the above suggestions (except the first) are ways of overcoming this loss of perspective.
    
    Another way of gaining perspective on your music is to play it for others (your teacher, another teacher, your classmates, a non-musician) to see what they might suggest — but make it clear that you REALLY want their honest reactions/suggestions, as opposed to a pat on the back. While it can be encouraging to receive compliments on your music, sometimes what we need most is an honest critique. I have received some great suggestions about my music from my wife, who is not a musician. Not all feedback you receive will be equally useful, but even suggestions you reject (or comments with which you disagree) are sometimes helpful if they cause you to reconsider some aspect of your composition, and if doing so makes the piece better. Part of making good decisions is discerning when to take advice and when to reject it.
11. Listen to other compositions that are in some way similar to yours. If you are writing a string quartet, listen to a few different models and study the scores as you do so. If you are writing for a non-standard collection of instruments, just listen to different examples of chamber music while studying the scores if possible. The models don't have to be of music composed in the last 50 years, but it probably would help if some were. Or just listen to any music, even if it has nothing to do with what you are writing; you may get some ideas that way.
12. Look at an orchestration textbook. Orchestration texts have information about the capabilities of every orchestral instrument, often including contemporary extended techniques, some of which you may wish to try.  In addition, there is usually information about writing idiomatically for instruments, different articulation possibilities. etc., all of which can be inspire ideas for your own compositions.
13. Stop the piece you are writing and start again. This is a pretty extreme option if you have already invested a lot of time in the composition — after all, you are almost guaranteed to get stuck at some point, especially in a longer composition, and if your default response is to scrap it all and start again you are unlikely to complete very many compositions — but if you are in the early stages of a work, a fresh start may get you back on track.

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Never throw your rejected ideas away; I recommend keeping a compositional "blue box" (recycling bin) for ideas that didn't get very far.

At some later point, when you are in a different frame of mind, you may be able to browse through your recycling bin and find a compositional fragment that inspires you to complete it, or to use it in a completely different composition. I once tried this approach in a piece called Memory Quilt (1999), in which I began by laying out a some compositional fragments from earlier projects that I liked but had never used, and then I experimentally combined them in different ways until I found a result that I liked. I also composed a significant amount of new material based on the musical fragments to give cohesiveness and organicism to the overall musical structure.

One of the worst cases of "running into a brick wall" I ever experienced took place a long time ago, when I abandoned a composition that I had spent about 6 months writing; I had about fifteen minutes of ready-to-perform music written, but it was during a particularly low period in my life and I could not figure out how to finish it. I then started a new and completely different piece ("Steppin' Out") that I finished in about a month. I have never been able to bring myself to even look at the abandoned piece again; too many traumatic memories.

Getting stuck is common, so perhaps the most important thing to remember is that it is a normal part of the creative process. If you can learn to take it in stride you are less likely to stay stuck for very long.

Sometimes, the solution(s) you come up with to being stuck end up being the the most inspired part of your composition. Here is an axiom that may sound trite or corny, but it is true, or at least it is if you allow yourself to see things this way:

Challenges present opportunities for inspired solutions.

Creative Angst... Welcome to the club!

This is another entry based on a reply I just made to a student blog comment.

Students sometimes tell me that they are not content with their composition, be it finished or in progress. They know it could be better, or perhaps feel it ought to be better, but they are not exactly sure how to achieve this. And meanwhile, there's usually a deadline fast approaching... Yikes!

We tend to want our music to be not only good, but personal as well. People who hear unfamiliar works by well-known composers can often recognize who wrote them, which suggests that there is something of ourselves — almost like a strand of DNA — in the things we create; or at least this seems to be the case in the hands of great composers, bands, and artists in general.

Knowing that what we create is in some way a reflection of who we are, and possessing the ability to discern the difference between great and not great music, it is not unusual to wish that our compositions were better, which can lead to frustration when we don't know how to improve them to a standard of which we can feel proud.

If it is any consolation, this "creative angst" is a normal part of the creative process, even, at times, for experienced composers. I suspect that all people who create things experience this on a fairly regular basis. I worry more about people who never experience this, particularly when they are fairly new to composition, because I wonder if it means that they are not sufficiently self-critical, or their ability to distinguish between good and not good ideas is insufficiently developed.

The more you compose, the more developed and sophisticated your compositional skills become, so if this project is one of your first forays into writing music, rest assured that your ability to write the kind of music of which you are capable will grow significantly, as long as you don't give up.

Regarding your weekly composition projects, I would just encourage you persevere until you're pretty sure that each one is as good as you can make it for now, and then move on to the next piece.

When you start out as a composer your ability to discern between good and bad in music (any aspect, such as interpretation, performance, and compositional excellence) generally exceeds your compositional abilities. This is the compositional equivalent to the adage about one's reach exceeding one's grasp, which comes from Robert Browning's poem, "Andrea Del Sarto" (line 98). Browning actually writes, Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

I like Browning's use of the word "should." It suggests to me that we should not become complacent about our work; we should always strive for something better, even if it lies just out of our reach in terms of our current compositional development.

It is nearly impossible to reach a point where you are 100% satisfied with your creations. "I know what good music is," you might think to yourself, "and this [your composition] isn't it!" But how did you come to know what good vs. not good music is? As a general rule, this ability is one we develop over many years of performing, listening, and studying a wide variety of music.

The same is true of compositional skills. If you keep at it, you will reach the point where you become better able to express what you want through music, and thereby become more satisfied with what you create. And the improvement of compositional skills can actually come pretty quickly; when you reach the end of this course, you may surprise yourself by how the speed with which you developed from a compositional neophyte to someone whose compositions became significantly better.

And your skills will get better if you persevere.

There is a beneficial aspect of creative angst: The points in a composition that gave you the most grief in the composition process can become the sections of which you are proudest when your composition is finished, provided that you did not give up in your attempts to improve them. These "angst-ridden" points may turn out to be the most inspired, since greater inspiration is often necessary to work through creative roadblocks. Read more on this in "Running into a Brick Wall," if you like.

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UPDATE:

Mathieu, the first commentator below, writes: One's music software abilities are also in need of development. I found that the hardest part of achieving some satisfaction with my piece was learning to use the software. Much time has been spent on one bar trying to get the right rhythms …

That is an excellent point! I will just add that not only does it take time to become proficient in music notation software, it also takes time to learn how to notate rhythms, particularly tricky ones, whether we use software or write music by hand. Often we only realize that our notation is flawed when, after inputing it into notation software, we discover that the playback does not match the rhythms we had in mind.

More generally, it also takes time to learn how to notate our ideas in the most effective way (and most correct way) for prospective performers. This is one of the reasons we spend so much time discussing notation in classes and lessons, which includes notating rhythms, note spellings, beaming, correct meters (eg, 3/2 is not the same as 6/4), extended techniques, chance & out of time elements, along with instructions for these devices that are as clear as possible for performers, and much more.