arrange • compose • conduct
Every streak is right on the edge of breaking. I can’t even say how many times I’ve thought to myself, “Oh, I can’t write tomorrow and I haven’t pre-published anything!” A few hours later, and my streak would reset to 0. Writing daily here is the longest streak I’ve ever […]
That’s almost always the first question I ask. Having a framework for your creative work is essential for making choices about what to include and what to exclude. Even if the title changes later, the title itself – of an essay, of a talk, of a composition – is an […]
I’ll stop when it’s time to stop. My son asked me yesterday, “Will you ever quite writing every day?” And as a followup, “What if you run out of things to write about?” The second question is easier – there will never be a shortage of things to write about […]
How do you avoid cliches? Avoiding cliches in your writing is advisable. Cliches tend to cheapen your writing by using bland, repeated phrases or “moves” that have been heard so many times before that they don’t affect your audience. Whether you’re creating music, writing words, or creating any other art, […]
Most of the time, good writing is the natural outcome of more writing. A common refrain to my composition students (and to myself) is, simply, “More bars!” No adjectives necessary to describe the bars. Just more. We can always choose the best ones. We can always edit, revise, reimagine, or […]
Writing a piece “without thinking” is a good sign you’ve done a lot of thinking for a long time. Every piece I wrote used to take my entire brain, and hours of work crafting the perfect solution to the musical challenge at hand. Today I wrote an entire arrangement for […]
I wrote and published every day in 2021, with my streak now standing at just over seven uninterrupted years. This year, I wrote a little over 75,000 words – 6,000+ per month, or around 200 per day. In the midst of that, I also was able to take the entire […]
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Joan Didion I learn what I think by writing it down, and it’s exactly the same when I’m writing music. With every bar […]
One secret to good writing is this key command: Ctrl-A, del. (Cmd-A, del on a Mac.) Being willing to blow up your work and start over opens up possibilities. It can be painful – especially if you’ve put effort into it. But I have never – never – not been […]
I’ve been revisiting some old works of mine recently, and simultaneously thinking about the current musical trend of harmonic maximalism.* I love the rich harmonies that are at the heart of harmonic maximalism, but my heart isn’t in exploring that path. As I’ve looked at older and more recent works, […]