On Musical Genius

Many of the composers whose music we study and hear are referred to as musical geniuses. I did a Google search for “music genius” and got 142 million results (EDIT: Just searched again in Jan 2019, and got 545 million results), which suggests that a lot of people use this expression. But what does it mean? And if we do not regard ourselves as musical geniuses, can we aspire to become great (or even good) composers?

In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir’s wrote: “One is not born a genius; one becomes a genius.” 

[On a side note, the continuation of de Beauvoir's sentence is, “and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.” Sexism, as it applies to music composition has long been, and continues to be an issue. Here are links to two blog posts I wrote on this topic: No Great Women Composers? (1); and No Great Women Composers? (2)]

The idea that one can become a genius is empowering because it suggests that some people can reach this lofty status if they wish to do so and if they work very hard and very intelligently, but before going further, it would be useful to explore the meaning of this term

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What does it mean, exactly?

The term “genius” is is widely used, but lacks a precise, widely-accepted definition. 

Wikipedia tells us that “the question of whether the notion itself has any real meaning has long been a subject of debate” (Genius. (n.d.). Retrieved 13 Jan. 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius). When someone refers to a composer (or anyone) as a genius, we "kind of" know what they mean, but we do not know exactly what they mean. Perhaps they regard the composer as being very smart, but since we are talking about a composer and not, say, a theoretical physicist (like Einstein), how are we to know how smart they were?

One understanding of genius relates to intelligence, and specifically to someone of exceptional intelligence. But "intelligence" is a similarly-imprecise concept; IQ tests are designed to measure it, but, as this article tells us,  the validity of IQ tests has been challenged by many. And besides, if we call Bach a genius, it seems unlikely that we do so because we believe Bach would have scored extremely highly on an IQ test (although one can speculate about this possibility); we are presumably referring to his musical genius. But what does "musical genius" mean?

Possibly it means that we are impressed by the great quantity of well-crafted music Bach wrote, and that we find his music profoundly moving, on a level that few have been able to match in musical history. If you have studied counterpoint and tried writing a fugue, you know how difficult it can be to write a good one; if you analyze Bach fugues after having tried writing them, you will almost certainly be blown away by how inventive, and beautiful they are. You might therefore conclude that Bach was extraordinarily clever, and, on that basis alone, label him as a musical genius.

I don’t have a problem with someone holding Bach (or Palestrina, Beethoven, Bartok, The Beatles, Miles Davis, Burt Bacharach, Kanye West, etc.) in such high regard — the more I learn about music, the more impressed I am by the achievements of great musicians in all genres — but I’m just not sure that we all mean the same thing when we call composers geniuses; as stated earlier, the term lacks a precise, generally-agreed-upon definition.

So why do people persist on using this term? My guess, at least as it is used in music, is that it is a way of accounting for qualities that the writer/teacher/blowhard-in-a-bar/etc. is otherwise unable to account for. Perhaps, when we call a composer a genius, we are saying, “I can’t imagine ever having the skill to produce music that is so profoundly moving (or so darned clever, or so vexingly incomprehensible, etc.), and therefore Palestrina (or Charlie Parker, Keith Jarrett, Mozart, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, R. Kelly, etc.) was a genius, and you and I are not. Or at least I are not!”

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Becoming a genius, in 4 E-Z Steps! 

1. Work hard (practice). Now work harder!
2. Work smart. Don't work hard on stupid things.
3. Be smart. 
4. Find a supportive environment.

Okay, the "4 E-Z Steps" towards genius-hood is tongue-in-cheek, but, whether we regard individuals a musical geniuses or not, mastery of music has always been the result of hard work for extended periods (usually decades), with good teachers, familial/community support, AND above-average intelligence as well. This is an idea suggested by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, in a Psychology Today article entitled: Attaining musical genius: Is practice enough? (17 June 2008). He writes:

“While Mozart may have required lots and lots of practice to produce his great works, his high intellect may have also contributed to his musical genius,”

Possibly your reaction to this  quote is to say (or think), "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!"

Kaufman cites a 2007 article by J. Ruthsatz, D. Detterman, W.S. Griscom, and B.A. Cirullo, Becoming an expert in the musical domain: It takes more than just practice, whose conclusion may be neatly summarized as follows:

Musical achievement = general intelligence + domain-specific skills + practice

In other words, practice is an essential ingredient, but so are intelligence and "domain-specific" skills. Which you probably knew…

Here's another quote by someone who supports and neatly summarizes this view: 

“I was intrigued by this term "genius", because as far as I can see it is completely useless,” said Phil Grabsky, director of a feature-length documentary, In Search of Mozart. “What the characters we sometimes call geniuses have in common is drive and determination, often good parenting, and the fact that they are products of the social conditions of their time,' he said. 'All of this was true for Mozart. His talent wasn't simply a gift from God, it was the result of tremendously hard work.” (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jan/01/arts.music)

…To which I would add, yes, it wasn't "simply a gift from God," but Mozart's talent wasn't just the result of "tremendously hard work" either; not everyone who trains diligently for, say, 10,000 hours, ends up producing work of comparable quality to Mozart's.

→ If this topic interests you, you might enjoy this blog post: "Talent? Skill? What's the Difference?"

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Do you have to be a genius to understand how great music works?

Here's some good news: You do not need to be a genius to understand how great compositions work; you just have to make a concerted effort to do so, which develops analytical skills. Indeed, this is one of the core objectives of most music theory courses. Not understanding how a composition works may be the result of not having worked sufficiently to do so, or not having developed the skills to do so, rather than being caused by the composition operating on a plane so high that it defies understanding by ordinary mortals. That said, I'm pretty sure that some composers in the 1950's set out to deliberately write music so complex that it challenged the comprehension of ordinary mortals, but that's a topic for a different day.

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Do you have to be a genius to compose great music? 

Aside from the fact that the term "musical genius" does not have a generally-agreed-upon meaning (or even, if you agree with the Grabsky quote above, it has no meaning), I see it as a problematic term in that it can discourage those who do not see themselves as geniuses from attempting to develop their compositional skills. "Great music was composed by musical geniuses," you might think; "so what chance do I have of ever writing great music, if I am not a genius?"

If such a thought has ever crossed your mind, it might help to be aware of this:

Great composers wrote a lot of not-great music on their way to writing great music. The learning curve for mastery of composition is steep, and every great composer that ever lived took years to develop their "greatness," and it will be no different for you.

"Ah, but what of Mozart," you may ask; "didn't he write great music when he was four, or five, or six?" Answers: No, and no, and no. I discussed this at greater length in "Talent, Skill; What's the Difference?" (apologies for two plugs in one blog post!), but to summarize, although Mozart was indeed a clever and talented youngster, I'm not sure anyone regards music he wrote in the first 17 years of his life as great. Greatness came later. Former New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg went so far as to call Mozart a late bloomer (i'm paraphrasing; he actually wrote that Mozart "developed late"), arguing that few of Mozart's early works, elegant as they are, have the personality, concentration, and richness that entered his music after 1781" [the year he turned 25]. (Lives of the Great Composers, Part 2, p. 103).

It is nevertheless true that some composers —notably Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Saint-Saëns— manifested great compositional talent early. However, even these composers took years to master compositional craft, albeit fewer years than most other composers (including Mozart) took.

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To summarize, "musical genius" is a much-used term, but one whose meaning is not clear, making it problematic to know what exactly people mean when they use this term. It can also be a daunting concept if your goal is to become a better composer, and you are reasonably confident that you are not a musical genius. My suggestion is to not allow yourself to be discouraged by terms like this, and focus instead on becoming the best composer you can become, which, as always,  is done through a combination of hard work, long hours of regular practice, using and developing your intelligence, studying the music of composers you admire in an effort to understand what makes it great, and finding a nurturing environment in which to do this, be it school, a group of friends with similar interests, or retreating to nature in order to compose and study music.

In any great composer's development, not very good music preceded okay music, which preceded pretty-good music, which preceded good music, which preceded great music. I cannot promise that you will write great music, but I can promise that your compositional skills will improve if you stick with it, and it is entirely possible that you have it in you to write great music one day!

Idiomatic Writing for Piano (re-post)

    I wrote the basis of this post four years ago, and subsequently expanded and improved it several times, adding many music examples (originally there were none).

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  How do you write idiomatically for piano? Non-pianists often find it a challenge to write well for the piano, and even experienced pianists can struggle with this. Here are some considerations that may help:

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You don't need to be a Good Pianist in order to write well for the piano

    Virtually all the "great" (and even "pretty great") composers from Bach forward were also known as excellent keyboard performers; when they wrote for keyboard instruments, they really knew what they were doing!  

   However, it is not necessary to be able to perform well on an instrument in order to write well for it.  While almost all great composers were excellent keyboardists, they also wrote well for all the instruments in an orchestra, many of which they likely could not play well (or even at all).

The ability to play an instrument can be a great asset in learning to write idiomatically for that instrument, but it is not essential. Ravel and Ligetti are cited below as composers who were not virtuoso pianists, but who wrote extremely well for piano.

   That said, I recommend that anyone wishing to become a better composer develop as much piano proficiency as feasible. It can give you a better intuitive understanding of how to write idiomatic piano music, and it is one of the two most useful instruments on which to compose any type of music, including orchestral; the other is the computer, but computer notation programmes do not, by themselves, give you a sense of how to write idiomatically for instruments, ensembles, and voices. Quite the opposite, in fact; you can write unplayable drivel in your computer notation software and the computer will play it perfectly, provided none of the notes are out of range. 

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Mind the Gap!

   When writing chords (solid or broken), take into account that (i) the gap between thumb and index finger on each hand is wider than the gap between the remaining fingers, and (ii) the left and right hands mirror each other (so the gap in the LH is on the right, and vice-versa in the RH).

Aerial view of typical piano right-hand position: Note the gap between thumb and index finger.
 Note also the Day-Glo red fingernails, facilitating the location of wayward fingers under poor lighting conditions:

Shrewd readers will have noticed this thumb-to-index-finger gap already, perhaps at a very early stage of development (!), and may be asking, "So what?"

Well, okay then! Here you go:

→ A chord with adjacent notes to be played by thumb and index fingers (such as the first chord below) is difficult to play if there is also a wide gap between the index and little fingers.  Not necessarily impossible, just more difficult.  It may be that the sonority you want can only be achieved by writing an awkwardly-spaced chord like this; that may be fine, but be aware that writing lots of awkwardly-spaced chords is likely to be seen by pianists to be unidiomatic, and may cause them to be less inclined to perform it.

The first chord in the examples below is impossible for many pianists; try playing it (but don't try too hard, lest you hurt yourself!) to see why it is problematic.

In the second example, the gap between the thumb (1) and index (2) fingers makes playing this chord relatively easy if the performer's hand can span a 9th, but performers with smaller hands would find the stretch difficult.

The third example below demonstrates a trick that can sometimes be used to circumvent this challenge: The pianist can play two adjacent notes with the thumb, as long as they are both white notes, or both black notes. This works for solid chords, but not for arpeggiations, and can be indicated by a vertical square bracket adjacent to the notes to be played by the thumb, along with the fingering.

Try playing these yourself at a piano — they are all for the right hand — to get a feel for the relative ease or difficulty of each hand position. Also, remember that while these examples are all solid (i.e., non-broken) chords, the same principle applies to arpeggiated chords as well:

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Full Spectrum Available! (except where prohibited by law)

   There are 88 keys on the piano, but only 40 of them are found between the F at the bottom of the bass clef and the G♯ at the top of the treble clef; if you limit your note selection to only notes found on the treble and bass clefs, you use only 45% of the available notes on the piano. 

Suggestion 1: Try playing sonorities (chords, melodies, arpeggios, etc.) you write in all registers (on an acoustic piano, if possible) before deciding what register works best. Use 8^va and 15^ma indications above or below the grand staff as needed. [8^va above a staff = 8^ve higher; 8^va below a staff = 8^ve lower.] Do not automatically default to using only those notes that can be notated in the treble and bass clefs.   

Suggestion 2: Besides the standard, "LH in bass clef and RH in treble clef," consider each of these options:

1. Both hands in the treble clef, possibly using 8^va and 15^ma indications for the right hand (RH; see first example below), or, if you are going to be staying in an extremely high register for more than a few bars, using an "ottava" treble clef (treble clef with an "8" above it, which indicates that pitches should be played an octave higher), or even a "quintima" treble clef (15 above the treble clef, which sounds two octaves higher);
2. Both hands in the bass clef, possibly with similar 8^va/15^ma indications/clef adjustments below the left hand (LH) to sound an octave or even fifteenth lower;
3. Hands spaced very widely apart, at the extremes of the keyboard;
4. Hands very close together, perhaps one physically on top of one the other;
5. Crossed hands; LH playing higher notes, RH playing lower notes.
6. Hand-over-hand; long arpeggio or scalar pattern starting at one end of the keyboard and continuing to the other end, with each hand taking turns playing the notes.

   Here are examples of the above that I made up; play them, and see if they give you any ideas for your own compositions:

   All six examples are in the audio clip below, separated by a second or two of silence; the first has an extra bar not visible above:

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Texture and Patterns

   Decide on a music texture, and try to keep it consistent for the duration of a section or even an entire piece if writing a short composition (such as a 1-3 page character piece). Longer compositions are likely to have multiple texture changes, but shorter pieces tend to be relatively consistent in terms of texture (e.g., Bartok: Mikrokosmos).

   The choice of texture is of course up to you (every choice you make in composition is up to you!) but one way to make an informed choice would be to look at textures in a variety of piano scores, and borrow/commandeer ones you like.

   Try to avoid getting so caught up in studying scores that you get overwhelmed, however; if you want to buy a pen, and go into a store with a thousand to choose from, your decision would be considerably more difficult than if you went into a store with only three pens. Confucius probably said something like this.  If not him, then perhaps another wise person, such as Yogi Berra, or Groucho Marx.

     Patterns are commonly found in much piano music, particularly in the left hand. Examples include various forms of the Alberti bass (repetitive-pattern broken chord figures), left hand chordal patterns in waltzes (boom - chuck - chuck ...), various arpeggio figures such as the ones used in the C-major or C-minor preludes in book 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, or the considerably more demanding arpeggiation figures in the C major Etude from Chopin's collection (here's a link to a performance on YouTube).  See these patterns and others in the music examples below.

This is not to suggest that patterns must be used in your music, but be aware that idiomatic patterns are easy for muscle memory to retain, grasp, and execute. This is true for any instrument, and for the voice as well.

   Frequent pattern changes can be more challenging to perform than occasional ones, simply because there is more for the brain to process in a given time period. However, music in which a given pattern continues for too long can sound predictable and monotonous. It is presumably for this reason that the left hand, Alberti bass pattern in Mozart's famous Sonata "facile" in C major, K. 545 (see opening bars below), is used in the four bars and then it breaks off, not used for another twenty bars, at which point it returns only briefly.

   On the other hand, several of the preludes from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier continue repeating a single pattern of the opening bar for almost the entire piece (e.g., C major, C minor, D Major from book 1), and then there's pattern-based minimalism, in which repetitive patterns are at the core, although subtle shifts tend to occur that can sustain interest. Clearly, a listener's sense as to how long is too long for pattern repetition depends on context, and what is going on musically.  In the case of the cited Bach preludes, the harmonic progressions sustain our interest throughout the course of these works.

   In my experience, early-stage student composers can struggle with this issue, either changing patterns too frequently and for reasons that seem inconsistent with musical logic (such as changing an accompaniment pattern twice in a relatively short phrase), or repeating the pattern for too long, and then changing it unexpectedly and illogically. 

   To summarize, patterns are used frequently in piano music, especially as accompaniments, and it is useful for composers to be aware of this. We also need to be aware of inherent challenges in performing the music we write; frequent pattern changes, or awkward, unidiomatic patterns can make music difficult to play, and can convey less musical logic to listeners. Depending on the challenge, and whether the performer understands the logic behind it or not, writing challenging music can sometimes have negative consequences, such as flawed performances, a performer's loss of confidence in the competency of a composer, a reluctance to perform the work at all, and outright hostility. And yes, I speak from experience…

   On the other hand, most performers I have known have had no objection to performing challenging music if they understood the musical logic behind the challenges, and the writing was idiomatic. 

  

Various Patterns and Textures in Bach, Mozart, and Chopin

Bach: WTC I, Prelude 1                                   Bach: WTC I, Prelude 2

Mozart: K. 545, I                             Mozart: K. 310, III

Mozart: K. 570, II

Mozart, K. 332, I

Mozart, K. 467, II

Chopin: Etude, op. 10, no. 1

Chopin: Nocturne, op. 9, no. 2

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Establishing a Kinesthetic Connection. With the Universe Piano.

   Although you do not have to play piano well in order to write well for it, establishing a kinesthetic (i.e., tactile) connection with the piano can help you to develop a better feel for writing idiomatic piano music.

   Write a few bars of piano music, then go to the piano and see how it feels to play it. This is a kinesthetic exercise, the point of which is to develop some tactile connection between the music you write and the way it feels to play it on the piano.  If you are a non-pianist and are perhaps reacting to this suggestion with sudden-onset apoplexy, don't concern yourself too much if/when you play wrong notes (unless they are off by an octave or more... then you may wish to worry); the goal is to find out how it feels to perform your music, not to find out how your music sounds.  A good pianist is likely to play the right notes.  Think of yourself as an actor in a movie playing the part of a pianist; the actor just has to pretend to play the piano and move his/her hands accordingly, while the actual sound would be overdubbed later, performed by a competent professional.  Hopefully.

   Or, do the opposite: Compose a few bars at the piano, then enter the music on your computer or write it down, evaluating your musical fragment as you do.  How many motives are there? Are they related?  How can this idea be expanded? Work on these things for a while away from the piano, and then return to the piano to hear how your added bits sound/feel.

   Either way, the point is to try out your music at the piano.  Don't rely solely on your notation programme's playback function as you compose, because it won't give you a feel for the music; it can play passages without hesitation that sound great to your ears, but which are extremely impractical or even impossible for a performer.

   I also recommend doing this kinesthetic exercise with very challenging music by the great composers (e.g., Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Bartok, etc.); simply attempting to perform a bar here, a bar there, will give you a sense of what is possible in terms of idiomatic writing for piano.

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On Attempting to "Out-Shred" Liszt and Rachmaninoff

   "Shredding" refers to impressively fast, loud, and flashy playing of an instrument, usually guitar. But you can apply the concept to piano as well; Liszt did!

   Attempting to outdo or emulate the great romantic composers in writing works of spectacular, showy virtuosity may not be wise in the early stages of compositional training. There is much to be said for simplicity: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" (attributed to Einstein, but many people have articulated a similar sentiment, notably the 14th-century philosopher and theologian, Ockham, and possibly Yogi Berra as well).

   I do not mean to suggest that one should never write showy, flashy compositions — highly-skilled performers like to show off (there's a sweeping statement!), and showy, flashy compositions allow them to do this. 

   However, most composers associated with this type of music (e.g., Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Albéniz, Brahms, Prokofiev, etc.) were themselves spectacularly-accomplished piano virtuosi, and as such, they understood the capabilities of the instrument better than most non-pianists and pianists alike. If you are reading this blog post because you wish to improve your ability to write idiomatically for the piano, then perhaps trying to beat Liszt and Rachmaninoff at their own game (i.e. write showier, flashier music than they did) may not be a very practical way to do this.

   There are, as every composer knows (and embraces!), exceptions to every rule or sweeping statement, of course. Maurice Ravel was one of the greatest composers of piano music that ever lived, but he evidently did not consider himself sufficiently skilled to perform his more challenging compositions, and he is described as merely a "competent pianist" in Wikipedia (Wikipedia: Maurice Ravel, retrieved 18 Jan. 2014). György Ligeti (28 May 1923–12 June 2006) has said he never became a "good pianist" because he did not begin piano lessons until he was 14, and yet he has written some impressively-virtuosic piano music, such as his three volumes of Etudes, and his Piano Concerto. Here's an example:

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L.H. and/or R.H. Octaves; For what purpose?

   Although it is possible to play many bass lines in octaves if the notes don't move too fast, don't make that your default approach to writing for the left hand (or the right hand, for that matter); the ear can tire of constant octaves pretty quickly. One or both hands playing in octaves can be an effective way to bring out a melodic line, and/or create more sound volume than would otherwise be the case, but octaves are likely to be more effective if used sparingly, perhaps saved for a particularly dramatic section, as in the two examples above in which left-hand octaves are used (Mozart, K. 332, bar 157, and Chopin, Etude, op. 10, no. 1).

   If you wish to double a melodic line in octaves, consider having each hand play the melody two (or more) octaves apart (as in #5 below); the effect is quite different than a line doubled one octave higher or lower, and it (i.e., #5) is also easier to play than having all the octaves in one hand.

   Below is a one-bar passage, mostly in 16th-notes, played at a relatively quick tempo, in eight different versions (discussion to follow):

Recordings of the above examples:

   The initial passage in the left hand is, by itself, fairly challenging, because it moves quickly (8 notes per second) and doesn't follow a pattern. If it were a rapid chord arpeggiation, pianists would find it less challenging because they typically practice arpeggiation patterns that span multiple octaves; you see this sort of thing in piano concertos frequently. Check out the start of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto to see what I mean.

   Although #1 is not an easy passage, a good pianist should be able to play it cleanly in each hand with a little practice.

   If you ask the pianist to play the left hand in octaves (as in #3 above), the difficulty level increases significantly. There are undoubtedly pianists who could play #3 cleanly in one hand at this speed, but (a) it would likely require a tremendous amount of practice, (b) even with tremendous practice it may well be a challenge to play cleanly every time, (c) the pianist would probably play it with staccato articulations on the 16th-notes in order to get through it in tempo, and (d) it may even be intimidating and discouraging to many pianists, making at least some pianists unwilling to play your composition unless you were to simplify the passage (and other, similarly demanding passages).

   If you give octaves to each hand (#8), you have just upped the difficulty level another few notches, which is bordering on insanity!

   Regarding examples 3 and 8 above, students have occasionally told me that a particularly challenging or awkward passage they have written is playable by someone they know, so there is no need to change it. This may be true, but if a passage seems likely to be extraordinarily difficult for most pianists, the question becomes, is it worth it? Examples 5, 6, and 7 sound quite similar to example 8, but they are less challenging for the performer (although they too are not easy); is the relatively small difference in sound worth asking the pianist to put so much work into it, and the risk that it will not be performed cleanly?

   I would not write anything like #8, UNLESS the pianist had expressed a desire for an extraordinarily challenging score, AND I showed them the passage was told they could play it, AND I listened to them playing it and liked it.

   There are other options: You could add selective octave doubling within each hand if it does not add significantly to the difficulty level, like this:

  #9 might be pushing the limits of what is reasonable to ask of a pianist, but it's worth trying if you want a somewhat-bigger sound than #7, and if you show it to a pianist to get their take on it.

   Another option involves octave displacements between LH and RH; this works well, but bear in mind that, at least in this example, the pitch changes are twice as slow as in previous examples, although the surface-level 16^th-note activity remains the same:

    Always have a good reason for writing a passage in octaves. The main justifications for such a passage are (a) you want the big sound that octaves can give you, or (b) you like the colour (including the colour of octaves played quietly). If you want octaves for their colour, also consider both hands playing the passage one, two, three (or more if feasible) octaves apart; each of these options produces a slightly-different colour.

Having each hand play octaves simultaneously, as in #8, is entirely feasible if the notes are moving less quickly, or if the notes are following a familiar pattern for the pianist, like an ascending chromatic scale, for example. 

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Pedal Power

   Consider the pedals. Or, more precisely, consider what they do, and how they differ. Once you are done considering them, consider writing piano pieces that use the two pedals that hardly ever get used: Una corda, and Sostenuto.

   There are three pedals on most grand pianos and many uprights, yet most composers only ever require (or at least politely ask) the pianist to use one. This need not be the case, although it is of course fine if you only use the sustain (also called "damper," which seems counter-intuitive since it lifts the dampers from the strings, as opposed to dampening them) pedal, or no pedal at all.  But no matter what pedals you use, make sure you indicate your intentions in the score.

   Here are the three pedals, and what they do on a grand piano:




1.    Una corda, or "soft" pedal (on the far left).  Its function is, as you might guess, to soften the sound, but bear in mind that it also changes the tone colour slightly.  A chord played using the soft pedal can sound just as loud as a chord played without it (if you play the una corda chord more forcefully to compensate for the effect of the soft pedal), but the timbre will be slightly different. 
   
   
      Una corda, by the way, means "one string" in Italian; on a grand piano, depressing this pedal will shift all hammers slightly so that only one string is struck, producing less sound than when all strings (two or three, depending on the register) are struck, which is what normally occurs when you play a note on piano. 
   
   
      If you have not spent much time looking inside a piano to see what happens when a note is played, or when the una corda pedal is depressed, give it a try next time you have the opportunity! It's very interesting. The score indication for this pedal is: una corda, or U.C., followed by tutti le corde, or tre corde, or even _* to release the pedal.


2.    Sostenuto pedal (the middle pedal on most grands), described in Wikipedia as "the least used pedal of the three on the piano." This makes it sound a bit like the poor cousin of the pedal family, but it can produce very attractive resonance effects, and can be a useful device for contemporary composers. 
   
   
   What it does, and how it works:  It causes the piano to sustain only selected notes, while continuing to dampen others. If you (a) depress any number of piano notes, (b) depress the sostenuto pedal, then (c) release those notes but keep the sostenuto pedal down, those notes will continue to ring, although other notes will not.  The sostenuto pedal sustains only the notes that are sounding at the point the pedal is depressed, as well as the overtones of those notes.
   
   
      Its ability to produce selective resonances can create interesting sound effects.  If you silently depress several notes that are in the harmonic series of another pitch and then depress the sostenuto pedal, when you play the fundamental staccato, and fairly loud, to be effective, we hear the attacked staccato fundamental, which is dampened immediately, followed by ringing harmonics of that note. Or, you could do the opposite, as in the example below in which fundamentals are depressed silently in a low register, while overtones are articulated forcefully in a higher register. 
   
   
      As with any sound effect, overuse may reduce its impact, but, if you like this idea, consider finding interesting ways to use it as the basis a piece, perhaps a study.  If you want piano notes to be depressed silently, make sure you give the pianist sufficient time to to this; try this yourself at a piano to get a feel for the time required.
   
   
      Most uprights do not have this feature.  Instead, many have a middle pedal that dampens the sound in a much more pronounced way than the regular una corda pedal (which itself can produce an interesting effect).  To create a sostenuto pedal effect on an upright, you can silently depress notes in one hand and keep them depressed while you play other notes in the other hand; the example below can be played this way.
   
   
      The score indication for the sostenuto pedal is: "Sost. Ped." followed by _* to release it, and composers usually indicate the notes to be sustained with nonstandard note-heads, such as diamond shapes: 
   
   
   



3.    Damper, or "sustain" pedal.  This is the default/standard pedal; it lifts all dampers from the piano strings, causing them to continue sounding while hands are removed from the keys (which would otherwise result in dampers being lowered onto the strings, killing the sound). This is the pedal to which "ped." indications refer, followed by _* to release it. You can also use line/bracket indicators for this pedal:  ________^_________^_______|


   Even if you use only the damper pedal in your compositions, I recommend indicating in your scores as clearly as possible where you want it used, and where it is to be lifted.  I used to do this inconsistently, thinking that pianists would probably prefer to make their own judgements as to when to use the pedal. While this may be true of many pianists, it resulted in lots of questions from performers about my intentions regarding pedal use, and writing scores that cause performers to request clarity on what we want is an inadvisable practice for composers. I therefore try to be as specific as possible now, but I also usually let pianists know that they are free to use their own judgement regarding modifying my pedal indications.

Another use of the damper pedal is to provide sympathetic resonance to notes played on other instruments, somewhat similar to the sostenuto pedal. If the damper pedal is depressed and loud notes are played by other instruments or sung, you should be able to hear the resonance of these notes in the piano.  The instruction, "play into piano" is sometimes used to achieve this effect.

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  The texture discussion above on the challenge of finding a balance between too much repetition with too little, which is something that I have written about in other posts, if you still have a pulse and wish to check them out:

• The Ross (née Heisenberg) Uncertainty Principle
• Two musical dichotomies: Familiar vs. Unfamiliar, and Expected vs. Unexpected
• More musical dichotomies

How can Non-Composers Teach K-12 Composition?

• How do you teach and encourage your students to compose if you have little or no experience composing?

There was a round-table discussion of “creativity in the classroom” at the 2013 Newfound Music Festival, moderated by Professors Andrea Rose and Ki Adams. The audience included music education students and others interested in this topic, and the remaining panel participants were multi-instrumentalist and improviser Paul Bendzsa, ethnomusicologist and "soundsinger" Chris Tonelli, and myself.

This was the ninth consecutive festival with a session on this topic, and the objective every year is to discuss ways in which creativity can be developed and nurtured through teaching music in the public school system, from kindergarten to grade twelve (K-12). As Dr. Rose reminded us, composing is one of the “specific curriculum outcomes” for K-12 in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (if visiting this link, see page 20).

Therein lies the challenge to be explored in today’s blog. Many school music teachers lack a background in composition; how do such teachers cultivate and facilitate composing and, more generally, creativity in their classrooms?

  • Is it possible to be a good teacher of something in which you have little experience? 
  • Is it possible to be a bad teacher of something in which you are highly skilled?

If you're in a hurry, I'll give you a hint: The answer to both questions is yes.

If you wish to continue reading, then consider this:

• Teachers are sometimes not experts in the things they teach. Example: About a week before he started his first teaching job, a friend of mine was asked/told to teach physical education, something for which (a) he had no specific qualifications, and (b) no specific skill set. As a child, gym teachers routinely gave up on my friend because he was considered physically unskilled, and, for the most part, he was okay with that; his attitude was he knew it, and they knew it, so why pretend otherwise? Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I understand he became a very good phys. ed. teacher. He researched the best ways to teach and motivate students in kinesiology (also known as human kinetics, or phys. ed. if you prefer old-school terminology), established fitness goals, and found fun ways for his students to reach them. He found ways to encourage and empower kids who had been written off by previous gym teachers, precisely because he had been one of those people.


• School wind-band teachers are required to have some knowledge of all the instruments of the wind band, but teachers can't necessarily play all (or even any) of the instruments well. They are of course proficient on their main instrument, and they may well be competent in a few others, but for most instruments, they have had very little training or experience. And yet, there they are, teaching our kids how to play these instruments! Is this a problem? Not necessarily. Good teachers find a way to teach basic skills in band instruments, and less-good teachers, for reasons that probably have more to do with pedagogical shortcomings than any lack of proficiency on these instruments, are less successful in this. 


• Many school teachers and professors have found themselves in a position of having to teach something in which they had very little training, and some have gone on to become very good at teaching that subject. This is analogous to parenthood, in that nobody has any experience before embarking on it, but some become very good parents despite this, while others don't. One of the ways many people learn best is by doing. 


• On the other hand, most musicians either know first-hand, or have heard of, cases where a virtuoso performer turned out to be a rather poor teacher of their instrument. Sometimes, the more you struggle in learning something, the better you understand how to teach it, and vice-versa. 


• Experience and proficiency in something do not necessarily make you a great teacher. Overcoming obstacles and struggling to achieve proficiency can make you better equipped to helping students overcome their own struggles.

If you are a school music teacher, and you buy into the argument that you don't need to have achieved mastery in something in order to teach it well, here are some ideas that may help in teaching/encouraging composition and creativity, even if your confidence in this area is not high:

1. Everyone is creative. We too often think of creativity as a "special" thing, a gift, which is bestowed upon some, but not others. This is wrong; we are all creative, but in different ways. In a recent study, 70% of respondents in the United States said they believed the education system stifles creativity. Some people may be more creative than others, but if true, this may be related to the encouragement or discouragement of creative activities experienced while growing up.

“One of the myths of creativity is that very few people are really creative,” said Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation. “The truth is that everyone has great capacities but not everyone develops them. One of the problems is that too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we're draining people of their creative possibilities and, as this study reveals, producing a workforce that's conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.” ["Study Reveals Global Creativity Gap"]

2. Encourage creativity.  Hypothetical situation: A child makes up a tune and plays it for her teacher; consider two different responses:
   • Teacher 1 response: "Well, I guess it's okay, but I've got to be honest and tell you that it really sounds too much like a Justin Bieber song, which makes it unoriginal, and a pretty poor choice of somebody to copy! I'll give you a C-plus for that, 'cause I'm feeling generous today!" The child is discouraged and embarrassed, and either never tries making up a tune again, or if they do, they know enough to not show it to the teacher.
   • Teacher 2 response: "Wow, that's good! And it kind of sounds like Justin Bieber… but better! You should write more songs!" The child feels encouraged, and keeps at it, keeps improving, and eventually finds their own original voice, which, not surprisingly, turns out to be nothing like The Bieb's.
   
   The act of sharing something you create with someone else makes you vulnerable; you can never be sure how people will react, and for most of us, others' responses matter. Compounding this is the self-doubt that many of us feel when trying something new. Encouraging creative activities for your students is vitally important because it assuages these self-doubts, which in turn makes it more likely that students will want to continue creating things. I think that people who self-identify as "not creative" would not be limiting themselves in this way if they had been encouraged more in their creative activities while growing up.


3. Originality is overrated, at least in the early stages of learning to compose; avoid over-emphasizing its importance to your students. Sounding like someone else when you start composing is a normal part of the process. Indeed, part of the training that many composers received throughout history was to learn to write music "in the style of" some other composer (Palestrina, Bach, Chopin, Schoenberg, Webern, Messiaen, etc.). In doing this, we learn different techniques, and we may choose to recombine aspects of these techniques in any way we wish when writing our own music. Everyone will find their own voice if they keep at it, but they won't keep at it if they are discouraged. If your students like pop music, then you could make a class project where everyone writes a short song (or even just one verse of a song) in the style of an artist they admire. Students can work in teams if they like, and then perform their songs for one another.
   
   
4. The creative process is often messy. Things we make are usually not very good before they become good. Anyone who composes knows this, I suspect. However, there is a myth about the creative process in which genius composers get their ideas in a flash, or at least relatively effortlessly, perhaps as a gift from the Almighty, and all the genius composer has to do is to take dictation feverishly quickly in order to notate the genius composition. Movies such as "Amadeus" reinforce this absurd notion. It is important to make sure your students know that every "genius" composer that ever lived had periods of struggle during the creative process, especially when they were starting out, and often throughout their creative lives as well. "Amadeus" is entertainment with some factual content, not a documentary. .
   
   
5. Self doubt is normal, both for students and teachers, when attempting something new. Self doubt can be an important part of the creative process: A person attempts to create something, but comes to the "realization" that the thing they are creating is not very good. "This sucks!" they might say to themselves, or to you.
   
   This "realization," however, may be (a) flawed; it may not "suck" at all, although it could almost certainly be improved, and (b) is a normal occurrence in the creative process, even for experienced creators; it's an illustration of how our perspective can change from day to day on things we create, and an indicator that we need to keep working on our creation in order to improve it. I have written several posts in which perspective is discussed in relation to the creative process, including this one, should you wish to read further.
   
   As teachers, we can try to ensure that our students know it's okay to doubt ourselves at times, and we can encourage students when this happens. As more experienced musicians than our students (hopefully!), we can suggest some concrete ideas for improvements, such as simplify (texture, harmony, ideas, etc.), repeat, vary earlier ideas, use a simple form like ABA, modulate, try an exotic scale, identify and clarify foreground and background (beginning composers often do not distinguish between the two, making the music sound confused), make it more idiomatic for the performers, and simplify. And simplify. And… Okay, you get it: Simplifying ideas is often a key to improving them!


6. Critique carefully, and sparingly. I think that people who are just getting started in composition or in any endeavour primarily need encouragement, and, while the role of a teacher typically includes critical assessment, often what we as teachers intend as constructive criticism is received by students as discouragement. I would therefore suggest that any critiquing we offer, which ideally can be very helpful to students, be presented in the most encouraging way possible. Students should feel that they are free to take or leave any suggestions offered.


7. Don't be afraid to admit you are not an experienced composer; there is no need to present yourself as an "authority" or "master" of composition, even if you are! Students, even at the university level, often respond well to a comment such as: "I really like your idea there, but I was hoping to hear more of it! Do you think that section could go on a bit longer?" On the other hand, a comment such as, "That section is too short and needs to be extended; what were you thinking?" is likely to alienate people, in part because it sounds like the person saying it is very full of himself. Music is generally written for audiences of non-experts (Milton Babbitt's, "Who Cares if you Listen?" notwithstanding), and non-experts can have very insightful and helpful comments too.


8. Ask the student if there is any part of their composition that they would like to improve. Or you could ask, "on a scale of one to ten, how do you feel about your piece?" Questions such as these can make the student feel empowered, and they contribute to establishing your role as a helper. Ideally, a student would feel comfortable enough to identify at least some aspect of their composition that could be improved, because that builds a bridge between your role as a helper and their desire to improve their piece; you are both on the same side, and the student needs to know this. If the answer is that the student is fully satisfied with their work, this suggests that the work is either really good or the student does not want to hear anything negative or even constructive about it. In this case, it is best not to press the matter; there is little point in attempting to help someone that does not want help. If you continue to build trust with your students, you may find that some students that were initially closed to your suggestions will gradually become more receptive to them.


9. Ask class members for suggestions or reactions to each others' pieces. Do this before you say anything about the students' creations, because once the teacher speaks, some students might not wish to say anything if their opinion differs from the teacher's, while others can be swayed by the teacher's words. If no students wish to offer feedback, you could …


10. Ask specific questions, such as,
    • What do you think of the opening? Does it work for you?
    • Where are some places where the music expresses the meaning of the text really well? 
    • Are there places where the music could better express the meaning of the text? (Possible follow-up: What are some ways of making this happen?)
    • What do you like most about this song/composition?
    • How many different musical ideas are there? Do they all work equally well, or can any be improved? Can any be eliminated?
    If you ask the right questions, many students are happy to give their opinions on things, but they need to know that their opinions are understood, acknowledged, and respected. They also need to know that it is okay for others to disagree with their opinions; different class members might have diametrically opposed opinions on the same question, and that's okay (in fact, it's great!) as long as opinions are expressed as opinions, and diplomatically, e.g., "Maybe I just didn't get it, but I didn't hear a connection between the mood of the poem and the mood of the music," versus "that sucked!", "that was LAME," or "I just didn't like it," etc. Obviously the age and experience of students has a bearing on their ability to articulate specific musical concerns, so if someone says, "I just didn't like it," the teacher could try to follow up with questions to try to narrow this down, such as "what didn't you like?" or "was it too loud?" or "were there some chords that you thought didn't work very well?"


11. GarageBand. This is perhaps the greatest facilitator of composition for untrained music-lovers ever invented, and I say this as the least-hyperbolic person in the history of the universe! ;)  If your school has Macintosh computers, the computers should already have GarageBand installed. If your school has iPads, GarageBand is available as an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch app (or sometimes it comes bundled with the iPad). I had this program on my computers for years but never used it until a few years ago, and I quickly came to realize that it is easy to use, even for (especially for) non-musicians, fun, and remarkably powerful.
    
    Briefly, GarageBand allows multi-track composition by combining any of thousands of pre-recorded (or pre-created) loops in its library (organized by categories, such as drums, guitars, basses, orchestral, country, jazz, world, cinematic, experimental, etc.), each of which can be edited, abridged, or repeated, as desired by the user. It also allows mutli-track recording and editing of live instruments or voice(s) along with these loops, or on their own, and has guitar-amp modelling that "simulates the sounds of famous guitar amplifiers." It can do a lot more, but the exciting and empowering aspect of it for me is that you don't need any knowledge of musical notation, music theory, or even how to play a musical instrument, in order to produce surprisingly-sophisticated compositions.
    
    My suggestion here is that if your school has access to this app, spend some time fooling around with it, and then get your students working with it. Alternatively, spend no time getting to know it and get your students to figure it out and explain it to you!



12. Do not force the issue.  Some people insist on defining themselves by their limitations, e.g., I'm not creative; I'm lousy at art (or sports, or math, etc.); I could spend 100 years studying music and never write anything that was any good. Like the old adage, you can lead a camel to water, but you can't make it drink, you can offer choices to your students, but it's up to them to select them or not.

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Wow… yet another tome-masquerading-as-blog-post… apologies for the length! :-$

If you would like even more-specific suggestions, consider reading (or referring your students to) a series of posts I wrote on the nuts and bolts of composition from a few years ago called Composition Issues. There is a lot of information available elsewhere on the Internet as well.

And if any of this is helpful, or if you have further suggestions or disagree with any of these suggestions, please leave a comment!

How to become a more-skilled composer

I ended my March 25 blog with a statement that I hoped would provoke (inspire?) some responses, saying:

Good composers are good by virtue of the fact that they work hard; mediocre composers are not as good because they do not work as hard. If a composition is not considered to be very good, it probably indicates more about the composer's laziness than it does about talent or inspiration.

Do I believe this? Not exactly... Here is what I do believe (stated in a less-provocative way!):

In order to become a good composer, it is necessary to work very hard at it for an extended period, and one must constantly challenge oneself to improve.  Hard work is not the only factor that leads to becoming a good composer, but it is arguably the most essential ingredient; a person with oodles of talent but a poor work ethic will not become a good composer; a person with average talent and a strong work ethic can become a good composer. 

There is something attractively democratic about this, because it suggests that any musically-skilled person is capable of becoming a good composer if they work hard enough.

If this is true, then the argument could be made that one reason that some composers do not write better music is that they have not put sufficient work into becoming better composers, which is essentially the point that my "provocative statement" attempted to make (but if you state things too reasonably, people tend not to feel provoked into responding!).

Is Bill a lazy composer? If Sarah has invested significantly more hours in compositional training than Bill, and, by virtue of that fact, Sarah is the more skilled composer, this in no way suggests that Bill is lazier than Sarah. However, if Bill wishes to become a better composer but is not interested in committing the time necessary to achieve this improvement, then perhaps Bill can be said to be lazy... or just naive.

But let us stop all this talk of laziness and move on to ask what specific things can one work on in order to become a more skilled composer? Below is a list of some of them; as always, feel free to disagree, agree, or add to the list!

1. Write more music (or, the 10,000 hour rule) . Try to write every day, if you can, or try to devote at least a couple of hours a day, four to five days a week, to composition. In order to become better performers, all musicians understand that you need to practice on a regular basis — daily, preferably. Well, the same is true for improvement in any skill, such as writing, sports, surgery, acting, etc., and, of course, composition.
   
   You may have heard of the "10,000 hour rule," a concept mentioned numerous times in "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell, who suggests that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. Using this "rule," you would have to practice composition for four hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, for ten years in order to become an expert composer!
   
   Before you throw up your hands in despair (what? You don't have four hours a day for the next ten years to spend on composition???), I will suggest that a lot of the time you have already spent training to be a musician should count in the calculation of the number of hours required to become an expert composer. Your training on an instrument, in aural skills, in music theory, your time spent jamming with friends, your time spent listening actively to music — I would suggest that they all help make you a better composer, so you may be closer to that 10,000 hour goal than you think!
   
   Benefits:
              • The basic principle here is practice makes perfect. Or, if not perfect (is there any such thing in art?), then at least better.
   
   Challenges:
              • Finding the time on a daily basis for anything beyond what we are currently doing is a challenge.
              • Doing something on a daily basis can lead to ruts; it may be necessary to vary one's routine occasionally, and/or to take breaks from the routine.
   
   
2. Find ways to gain perspective on your music. I wrote about this in my 2009-02-05 blog, "Running into a brick wall" (in which I quoted Richard Bach: "Perspective; use it or lose it"), but the basic idea is that we can easily get so wrapped up in our creations that we lose perspective on them, and the numerous ways to gain perspective include taking a break (and possibly engaging in something else for a while, including exercise), which allows us to return to our work with a refreshed mindset, and asking for honest feedback from others (including performers).
   
   I suspect most composers have had the experience of going to bed feeling quite pleased with the musical idea on which they had been working, only to awaken the next day to discover that they really don't like that idea very much at all! Clearly, when this happens to us, our perspective has changed, but which is right? Is it a great idea, a terrible idea, or somewhere in between? The only way to make a good judgement on the merits of a musical idea is to examine it from different perspectives, and ways of doing this are listed in my above-mentioned blog.
   
   Benefits:
              • Getting different perspectives on your work during the composition process will make it more likely that you will be satisfied with the finished product, no matter what your perspective or frame of mind.
              • Inviting honest feedback from others can lead to improvements you might otherwise not have considered.
              • Feedback from performers can help you to write more idiomatically, and notate your musical ideas more clearly.
   
   Challenges:
              • If one is in a highly-stressed or depressed frame of mind, finding ways to alter our perspective can be extremely challenging. Also, this frame of mind can cloud one's judgement to the point where one is unable to make good decisions about the merit of our musical ideas.
              • Soliciting honest feedback from others can result in suggestions that do not actually help your music in any way (and they may even make it worse); you have to be able to sort out the good suggestions from the less good ones.
   
   
3. Develop good musical judgment (i.e., good musical instincts). This relates to the previous point, the basic idea being that while all composers probably experience times when their judgement about their own music is clouded, good composers find ways to work through these periods and end up making decisions that lead to good compositions. Or, put another way, even great composers can have terrible musical ideas (e.g., Late at night: This is GREAT! — Next day: Oof! What was I thinking???), but they somehow manage to sort out the bad ideas from the good ones, which helps lead to good music.
   
   Benefits:
              • Good judgement leads to good music.
   
   Challenges:
              • It's easy to say, "develop good judgement" (yeah, thanks Yoda!), but how do you do this? And what does this word, "good" mean in this context, anyway? Keep reading to find out...
   
   
4. Analyze music. It would be good if at least some of this were in a formal sense, involving comprehensive structural analyses of compositions, but it could also occur in a less-structured way, involving active listening to music while taking note of anything at all that interests you, such as the structure, process, colours, orchestration, the way the composer writes for particular instruments, mood, and how it is achieved, etc. What aspects of the music would you like to try in your own compositions?
   
   Benefits:
              • Analysis helps us to find out how music works, and the knowledge we have on that subject, the better able we are to create the kind of music we would like to hear.
   
   Challenges:
              • Finding time to engage in analysis can be a challenge, but beyond that, the only potential pitfall might be that a person enjoys analysis so much that they become less interested in composing music than they are in analyzing it. As pitfalls go, that's not such a bad one, however...
   
   
5. Be curious. This is basically an extension or reinforcement of the previous point; when you play music, or hear it, or look at scores, ask yourself questions: What makes this work, or not work? How does it work? What makes audiences respond (positively or negatively) to this music? How do you respond to the music, and what is it about the music that elicits that response? How is a particular sonic colour created? How detailed is the score? What notation conventions are used, and are there any there that you could use, or even be inspired by?
   
   Benefits:
              • Perhaps the most famous adage about curiosity, sadly, is that it "killed the cat," but nothing could be farther from the truth, at least for composers (and I'm pretty sure for cats too). The benefits are, I think, self-evident, so rather than pedantically listing them all, I thought I would provide a few quotes on the topic that you might find interesting:
   
              • It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. (Albert Einstein)
              • The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. (Anatole France)
              • It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)
              • The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. (Ellen Parr, also attributed to Dorothy Parker)
              • Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. (Arnold Edinborough)
              • Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance. (William Wirt)
              • Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. (Mark Twain)
   
   Challenges:
              • It's easy to fall into ruts where we don't question things very much, so the challenge is to avoid doing so.
              • I suppose that the reason the adage about curiosity and the cat came about is that there can be such a thing as too much curiosity (although perhaps it is more a case of too much foolishness), and this may lead a person or beloved house pet (for I am a cat lover) to do nutty things, such as, Hmm... What would happen if I put my finger in that electrical socket? or They say it is not wise to stroll in a leisurely fashion across eight lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway during rush hour close to a major urban center, but is it really true? I am going to find out for myself, thank you very much! But for the most part, curiosity, combined with a dash of common sense, is a good thing.
   
   
6. Be open. This is related to curiosity, but being open isn't quite the same as being curious. Being willing to try new approaches to writing music, even when you're pretty sure you're not going to like them, is a bit like trying on new clothes that you're pretty sure you won't like; sometimes you will be surprised to discover that you do like them! Ditto for food, which is the basis for "Green Eggs and Ham," by Dr. Seuss, Sam-I-Am.
   
   Benefits:
              • Some times, when we try something (food, clothes, a musical technique) that we do not expect to like, we surprise ourselves by discovering that we do like it! If we remain closed to these possibilities, we never make these new and often rewarding discoveries.
   
   Challenges:
              • Again, as with the unfortunate cat who met his/her untimely demise, some judgement must be shown. There are many more things to try than there is time in one's lifetime to try them, so at a certain point you have to move forward with the task at hand, which in our case, is composing.
   
   
7. Be decisive. Being curious and open are great attributes, but when it comes to actually composing your piece, you need to be able to make decisions. Is this idea/section too short, or too long? Does this idea need more development? Should I have an introduction? Should the music have a climax? Something about this is not working; what is it? etc. Clearly, some decisions are better than others, but just as clearly, the inability to make decisions will lead to an inability to complete the composition; sometimes, even a bad decision is better than no decision at all, if it helps complete the the work. Besides, you can always go back later and change it. It's not like being a surgeon or an air traffic controller, where bad decisions can lead to loss of life!
   
   Benefits:
              • Being decisive helps the composition process go more smoothly.
   
   Challenges:
              • Being decisive doesn't necessarily mean you make good decisions, but even here hard work helps; the more experienced you are as a composer, the more likely you are to make better decisions.
   
   
8. Have the courage of your convictions. Again related to the previous point: Remember that nothing catastrophic can happen if you try something new as a composer and it proves to be unsuccessful. Schoenberg was reviled and ridiculed by many for coming up with his "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another," but if he had lost his confidence in the method and decided to scrap it before it was published, or decided against writing any music using this method, it seems unlikely that he would have achieved his position in history as arguably the most influential composer of the twentieth century.
   
   Benefits:
              • Having the courage of your convictions can lead to greatness.
   
   Challenges:
              • Having the courage of your convictions can also lead to being ostracized, if your convictions are radically out of step with prevailing norms.
              • Belief in one's own convictions may actually be a case of hubris, and I'm not sure hubris actually helps make you a better composer...
   
   
9. Strive to improve. The opposite to a desire to improve is complacency, and complacency is never to be a good thing for an artist.
   
   Benefits:
              • Striving to improve generally leads to improvement (another statement of Yoda-like profundity, I know), and while we must reach a point of satisfaction with whatever piece we are working on in order to feel it is finished, in order for it to be good we must constantly seek ways to make it better.
   
   Challenges:
              • Constantly striving to improve can become an unhealthy obsession. As mentioned above, you can only finish a composition if you reach a point of relative satisfaction with it, but no art is ever perfect, so you could theoretically spend your entire life trying to perfect a single composition because you know it could always be better. That's a pretty extreme example, but a more common example is one kind of writer's block, where a person recognizes (or at least believes) that their work needs to be better, but experiences creative paralysis when they cannot find a way to make it so.
   
   
10. Develop your people/networking skills. Composers mostly depend on others to perform and programme their music. Some composers perform their own music, and some composers compose electronic music that is not dependent on performers for its realization, but even in both these cases, composers often depend on others to programme their works. Good people skills can help create performance opportunities for your music, and the more opportunities you have, the more you improve as a composer
    
    Benefits:
               • You mean, besides untold wealth? The better your people/networking skills, the easier it is for people who can help your career (performers, music programmers) to think of you when they make decisions about the music they want to programme. I believe that all successful composers are good composers, but not all good composers are successful, where "success" is measured by the number and kinds of commissions, performances, and public exposure a composer has. I suspect that the main reason for this difference is the disparity in people/networking skills among good composers.
    
    Challenges:
               • One of the things that attracted me to composition was that you could practice it in private, without anyone knowing what you are up to until you actually finish a piece and get it performed. If you are shy by nature, the privacy and solitary nature of composition may be comforting. It is a challenge for naturally shy people develop better social skills (and yes, I speak from my own experience). However, it is possible, with concerted effort.
    
    But even so, I still hate having to make a "cold call" (telephone someone I don't know); it makes me so profoundly uncomfortable that, for the most part, I avoid it altogether.
    
    E-mail is a bit safer, though. Every now and then I will E-mail someone about the possibility of performing my music, and, while I don't enjoy doing this at all, it pains me considerably less than making phone calls, and it actually leads to positive results at times. Sometimes it doesn't result in a performance, but the person is nice enough to respond with complementary comments about my music, and, since we composers often do not receive very much positive feedback about our music (but this is why having the courage of your convictions is important; you have to believe in what you do, and not rely on others to validate our music for us), occasional encouragement is a good thing.
    

What about talent? Where does that fit in the makeup of a good composer?

"Talent" is an interesting and difficult-to-pinpoint concept, and, since this is already very possibly my longest blog entry ever, I will answer that question at greater length in a separate blog entry.

But briefly, I never speculate as to the relative talent levels of my students; I think every student I have had has sufficient talent to become a good composer if they are willing to work at it, hence my emphasis on the value of the work ethic.

Finally, in their comments to the deliberately-provocative concluding statement from my Inspiration, Perspiration, and Perspicacity blog post, Kim and Kate both suggested that the subjectivity of the term "good" in connection to composition makes it problematic to label a composer as lazy.

I agree. There are many compositions that some people consider to be "good" and others don't, and given the inherent subjectivity in the evaluation of artistic quality, it is unfair and harsh to classify composers as "lazy" just because they write music you don't like.

But, that said, it strikes me that the best student composers I have taught — and by "best," I mean those that composed works that I thought best demonstrated the values I stress when I teach (cohesiveness, development, imagination, finding the right balance between the expected and unexpected, and many, many more!), AND whose work seemed most highly regarded by classmates (deduced from comments class members make when critiquing each other's work every week), tend, almost without exception, to be the students who are the least complacent about their compositions. Simply put, some students seem to be more easily satisfied with their music than others, but students who strive the most diligently to improve their music generally succeed in doing so.

So, while I agree that it is a unnecessarily harsh to classify anyone as lazy, I will say that complacency stands in the way of our development as artists (point 9 above).

Also — on the point of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating art — I don't believe the evaluation process for art is completely (or even mostly) subjective. The degree to which there is consensus on what constitutes "greatness" in works of art over many centuries would suggest that there is something objective about it too, although it is culture-specific as well (another interesting topic, but for a different day!).

There is indisputably some subjectivity involved in evaluating art; many knowledgeable people agree that Beethoven wrote numerous masterpieces, but some may feel otherwise. I consider the Beatles to be the greatest pop artists ever (and Rolling Stone agrees with me), but some people can't stand them. Greatness in art, like beauty, is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

Some have even suggested that The Emperor's New Clothes effect — in which disreputable artistic "authorities" attempt to fleece the public into believing that crap is actually art —is in play. A Google search for "emperor's new clothes in art" generated 4.76 million hits for me.

I don't doubt that this effect exists, and I have had this reaction several times in my life while listening to music or looking at art.

However, it seems to me that the evaluation process for musical art is actually more objective than subjective, at least within cultures; this explains the degree to which there is agreement on the "greatness" of particular artworks. It also may explain why, when students perform their compositions-in-progress for one another in our classes, it is common for several people to pick up on the same thing in critiquing each other's work.