Music Composition: Starting a Piece

This course shares insights into the process of composing music, all with the aim of developing your skills and confidence as a composer. You might be a musician looking to take your composition skills to the next level, or you might be a teacher in a secondary school searching for new techniques to share with your own students. You might already have a developed working knowledge of tonality, in which case, we will complement that knowledge by introducing alternative scales and chord structures. We’ll be focussing on everything involved in writing for live acoustic instruments, using some form of notation. We’ll look at ways to push the boundaries of traditional notation, as well as introducing alternative approaches, such as graphic notation and indeterminacy. We’ll explore ways to maximise the effects you can create using instruments as well as to expand your rhythmic palette. A feature of the course will be to introduce the concept of gesture as a key tool in your working method. It also presents ways to tap into your imagination as part of your process which has the potential to transform the way that you compose. Musical examples are brought to life in this course in performances by Scotland’s foremost contemporary music ensemble, Red Note Ensemble.