Why Compose Music?

Yes, I’m still procrastinating from actually teaching you HOW to compose music. However, in this particular post, I will tell you my top ten reasons WHY you should compose music if you play a musical instrument.

1 – Composing music for a particular instrument allows you to explore the limits of your abilities on that instrument. For example, I found out that I have no sense of counterpoint, but I’m pretty good at playing big, sweeping arpeggios.

2 – Composing music requires you to use your musical ear. Needless to say, this is very good ear training.

3 – When you can only play music, not compose it, you see there being lowly musical performers such as yourself, vs great musical composers like Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bartok, Bizet, Bellini, Berlioz, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. When you can both play and compose music, this border between “you” and “them” begins to blur, as you put up with the same challenges that they might have had to put up with.

4 – Along with the border between “you” and “them” blurring, you now have the choice to compose your own music instead of/as well as playing music that everyone’s already heard. If there’s a musical piece you want to hear, but it hasn’t been written yet, you have to compose it yourself.

5 – You get to use that musical theory I’m sure you’ve all spent years studying. Finally, it’s good for something.

6 – Composing music is something you learn throughout your entire life: even at the end of J.S. Bach’s life, he was still experimenting with the possibilities of counterpoint.

7 – Like me, you get to complain about there not being enough musical composition blogs on the internet.

8 – Being able to write a sheet music score also improves your ability to read sheet music scores.

9 – Composing music allows you to take advantage of the interesting techniques used in pieces you’re learning/have learned how to play.

10 – Composing music improves your concentration, especially if you can write music without using an instrument.