arrange • compose • conduct
“Who is it for?” is one of my top animating questions for any artistic project. The more specific you can be about who the art is for, the more decisive you can be in crafting the art. Who, then, is my new Patreon experiment for? It’s for people who want […]
Why did I choose to experiment with the Patreon direct-patronage model? First, I think the model is really good. Working for a patron when patronage was prevalent in the Baroque and Classical eras correlates with some really remarkable music being written. Moving away from the single commission model can light […]
I’ve been creating music as a career for a long time – my first paid commission came about 20 years ago, and my work is now fairly evenly divided between teaching/conducting and writing for choral ensembles. While virtually all of my work over the last 10+ years has been on […]
What will the harmonic language of your next piece be? Hopefully, your musical studies and experiences have given you fluency in multiple harmonic languages. Pentatonic; modal; tonal; functional jazz; modal jazz; atonal….the list goes on.As I begin to write a piece, I am thinking about the harmonic language, and how […]
I have long loved Steve Zegree’s beautiful setting of the Gershwins’ “Love Walked In.” It’s a study in suspension-resolution, it reaches beautiful jazz harmony while retaining excellent voice leading, and it brilliantly teaches expressive singing. I selected it for GRCC Shades of Blue this fall, because while a cappella ballads […]
Over the past year, I’ve developed a quick process for recording myself singing and playing more effectively. I’ve used it to make guide tracks for my students, to be a part of remote projects, and to make a family Christmas card. What I didn’t anticipate was that it would help […]
Every year for the last few years, music from 95 years previous has entered the public domain. 2021 is no exception, welcoming all music published in 1925. We are at the cusp of the peak years of the Great American Songbook. Early examples of the form enter the creative commons […]
Seth Godin has written frequently about using two axes of differentiation (X-Y axes) as a way to target your art. (This post lays it out with a big quote from Godin’s book This is Marketing.) In short: if you lay out two characteristics along the X-Y axis (remember coordinate geometry?) […]
There are many more than 95 reasons to love Alice Parker. She is one of the world’s leading choral composers and arrangers (two sides of the same coin, says she. The only difference is in one case you wrote the melody, and in the other case someone else did.). She […]
Dish management is the secret to a successful Thanksgiving don’t you think? For a while I thought it was oven management – the flow chart that dictated when each baked dish would slip into the oven so that everything was hot and ready at roughly the same time. But a […]