Day 12 of the Challenge

It’s day 12 of my Musical Composition Challenge, and I’m still going strong. Well, as far as quantity of music goes. The quality of the musical pieces, as well as my enthusiasm, are going down, but I’ve composed 11 pieces already, only missing one day. So, I’ve almost finished the challenge.

I’ve come to a conclusion, though: composing one musical piece every two days for a month (that was my original goal) may have its challenges, but it’s not the best way to compose music in the long run. Composing 15 pieces of music in a month isn’t like NaNoWriMo’s idea of writing a novel in a month. Most people know how to read text in their own language very well, but if you’re a composer, you might not be able to sight read your own music perfectly and quickly. That’s working with the theory that most musicians fall into two categories: those who can sightread and play very well without knowing a lot aobut ear training and improvisation, or those who know how to improvise and play very well by ear but can’t sight read very quickly. I think that most composers like myself fall into the latter category.

Although perhaps filling one page of sheet music per day isn’t the best way to compose music, perhaps working for a certain amount of time each day is good. For example, one hour per day is perfect. It gives you a chance to allow yourself to get focused on the music, and if you get bored of working on one piece, you can always move onto the next. Working for a certain amount of time rather than aiming for a certain quantity of music would be less rushed than feeling like you have to compose a certain amount each day, but oddly enough, it might actually be more productive.