Essential advice from Stephen Paulus for any composer setting words to music. A must-read essay on copyright law and permissions.
Before You Set Those Words To Music.
BTW, if for some reason you don’t know Stephen’s music, run don’t walk to his website. One of our most prolific and successful living composers, a true artist.
If you want to learn to compose, compose a piece of music. Don’t ask anyone how to do it. Look at other scores, write your best piece, FINISH IT and then get real human beings to perform it. You will learn more from that single experience than you ever will from a teacher.
From my hero Ira Glass. Imagine that everything he is saying is about composing and this becomes the single most important lesson an emerging composer can learn.
John Mackey and I have known each other for 15 years. We both began our Master’s degrees at Juilliard together, both studied with John Corigliano, and we sat next to each other in the best and most... continued
I promise I’m going to resurrect the “Advice for the Emerging Composer” series once I catch my breath (that will be October 25th, the day after my LSO concert and a week after the debut of Light and Gold).
In the meantime,
Ah, composition competitions; there are hundreds, maybe thousands, every year, all over the world. Should you enter? Should you not? I’ve entered a lot of them over the years, and based on my personal experience the answer is yes.... continued
Not six hours after I had posted my “Advice for Emerging Composers: Notation” article I received an email letting me know that a lively debate over it had already begun in the forum section of youngcomposers.com. The... continued
I don’t believe there is a ‘correct’ way to compose, or even a ‘best’ way to compose. As a composer you’ve ultimately got to invent your own method – whatever it takes to get the sounds in your head onto the page. And there’s... continued
All right…
I get a LOT of emails from emerging composers looking for advice, and I know exactly how they feel. When I first began writing I tried to talk with as many composers as possible, just begging for a single crumb of an... continued
