Essentials for Composers: Creative Process by Design

A new kind of composition textbook! Mastering the technical skills needed for fruitful music composition is relatively straightforward compared to the development of crucial creative-thinking strategies. While most introductory texts emphasize techniques, this affordable guide goes far beyond the initial stage of methods instruction to engage readers at a profound level. The author believes composers, as a first priority, must know what they are doing creatively and why they are doing it before segueing to learning the basic tools for the task.

Unique yet practical, concise yet comprehensive, Essentials for Composers guides novice composers through a set of basic steps, examples, and concepts to help them work through stages of the creative process in manageable and stimulating ways. Middleton explains how to approach each topic (harmony, melody, counterpoint, orchestration, variation) and explore the creative process through experimentation by completing related exercises. Such direction, which prompts efforts toward defining, developing, discovering, and shaping one's own creative process, unseals the essence of music composition.

Relevant for students with interests ranging from film scoring to preparing music for digital games, Essentials for Composers is suitable for those who compose with or without the aid of technology. Bibliographies, score summaries, interviews with two composers, and analytical interludes prompt further investigation of topics.

Jonathan Middleton has been teaching composition at the graduate and undergraduate levels for nearly 20 years. His work with data and music (data to music sonification) has been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, Popular Science, and major media outlets in Europe.