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Jed Scott Music

arrange • compose • conduct

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Composition

I Can’t Label That Chord

June 28, 2021June 27, 2021 jedscottArranging, Composition, Music Literacy

More and more, I’m enamored with chords I can’t label under a triadic/diatonic/jazz framework. They might be quartal chords, whose labels never seem to quite successfully describe how they work. They might be the passing clustery nonsense in Alice Parker’s arrangement of “Vive L’Amour“, which work great because of the […]

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No Tip Jar

June 6, 2021June 5, 2021 jedscottArranging, Commissioning, Composition, Updates, Writing

For the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve had an annual Tip Jar in which I accepted donations from readers to help support my costs of maintaining the website. Many people were very generous in their encouragement of my writing. In 2020, I skipped it – it was a time […]

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Spreadsheet Arranging

May 28, 2021May 27, 2021 jedscottArranging, Commissioning, Composition

I had an interesting arrangement challenge recently – it was for a flash mob-style performance at a wedding, and had some very specific requirements, not least a very limited amount of rehearsal time. Since the commissioning party is an excellent singer but not a professional musician, I thought carefully about […]

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Making Notation Choices

May 23, 2021May 22, 2021 jedscottArranging, Composition, Music Literacy

There are almost always many different ways to notate the same thing. As simple a change as 4/4 vs 2/2, to more complex metric changes (3/4 in 1 vs 6/8 in 2, e.g.), enharmonic notation, even notating a rubato vs. just using fermatas. When you have to decide how it’s […]

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Experience to Visualize

May 20, 2021May 19, 2021 jedscottArranging, Composition, Creativity

I am completing what I sincerely hope is my last virtual choir video editing project. (It’s one more recording from Shades of Blue, to be premiered soon!) What’s been pleasing is how much more quickly this one has come together. I was able to come up with a vision for […]

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Rhythms First

April 28, 2021April 27, 2021 jedscottArranging, Composition

When I write music, I often scratch out the rhythms long before I write notes. That’s especially true with vocal music – I’ll layout the meter on a notecard and draw in rhythms that reflect my phrasing of the text. Then and only then will I experiment melodically within my […]

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Composing and Puzzling

April 24, 2021April 22, 2021 jedscottComposition, Creativity

At least twice last weekend, I heard Anders Edenroth describe his compositional process as “like a sudoku puzzle.” (He was talking about the puzzle of coordinating bottles and singing in “Water” and later about the loop-pedal writing in their version of “Good Times” and “Catch Up, Ketchup.” And he’s right […]

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Equally Important Elements of Chords

April 5, 2021April 3, 2021 jedscottArranging, Composition, Music Literacy

I’ve written before about how the insufficiency of Roman Numeral analysis leads to problems when voicing chords. But it seems to me that chord inversions change the character of chords so significantly that we should regard inversions as equally important to the the Roman Numeral. The little 6 is just […]

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April Foolishness

April 1, 2021March 31, 2021 jedscottChoral Music, Composition, Updates

I recently started building a Patreon community around new original compositions and vocal arrangements. I am loving the motivation it gives me to experiment and create new music with supporters behind me. Just yesterday, I shared the first fruit of my Patreon project, a set of Six Nonsense Canons – […]

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Unifying Concept

March 25, 2021March 24, 2021 jedscottArranging, Composition, Creativity

I have a lot of ideas that don’t amount to anything. We all do. When I’m trying to create, I often try a lot of ideas that don’t lead to very much. It’s only when I stumble (it often feels like stumbling) across a unifying concept that the creative work […]

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Jed Scott writes music and words in Rockford, Michigan. Learn more here.

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