Scott Jarrett

Musical themes in composition are characterized by three main categories: motif, melodic phrase, and period. You use these three kinds of melodic elements to build your compositions. Motif: A motif is the smallest form of melodic idea. It can be as short as two notes, like “cu coo,” or the first two notes of the theme from Star Wars.

Drummers have a language all their own, and drum notation has some peculiarities as well. Rather than write out a drum part, it is often easier to say something like, “Play a half-time groove,” or “Swing.” This article guides you through some of these conventions for composing music for drummers. But first look at the way in which drum notation works.

A distinct type of lead sheet, designed specifically for guitar and bass, is called tablature, or just tab. Instead of using standard musical notation symbols, tab uses ordinary ASCII numbers and letters, making it ideal for reproducing music for the Internet and online newsgroups where anybody with any computer can link up, copy a tab file, and read it.

Making a living as a music composer is hard. And it’s not because the money isn’t out there waiting for you to come along. It’s simply because that for every legitimate composing job out there, there are dozens—or even hundreds—of budding, starry-eyed composers out there waiting in line for their big chance.Does that mean you should give up?

Although it’s perfectly acceptable to write and perform music just for yourself, most composers and musicians make music for other people to hear and, hopefully, enjoy. The given way to promote your music is to perform in public and tour as much as possible, but you also can build up a solid base of fans by using the many online platforms available for musicians.

Walk into any bookstore and check out the Music Books section, and you’ll find yourself before a wall of daunting choices. Stop by any given online bookstore and search for music, and you’ll be faced with even more. It seems there are nearly as many books written about music composition, the music business, and music appreciation as there are albums or compact discs containing music.

For quick reference, most of what you need to know about music composition is covered in this cheat sheet. Whether you’re sitting with a band and need to know what someone means when they say, “Take it up a fifth!” or you can’t remember the proper form for the 8-bar blues, this handy info is right at your fingertips on one convenient page.

Music concrête is a type of music that sprang directly out of the evolution of music technology. As a throwback to classical music being inspired by poetic forms, music concrête has its roots in the 1920s Surrealist literary practice of cut-up and fold-in composition. In cut-up, writers would physically cut up existing pieces of literature and rearrange the order of the phrases and words, whereas in fold-in compositions, a group of writers would write random phrases, one at a time, on a piece of paper, folding the paper over after each turn so that the next writer couldn't see what the previous writer had written.