Think back.  Way back.  Think back to February when everything was “normal” (whatever that might mean).  We were starting a Composition Challenge. Remember that?  And then, in the middle of that came the beginning of where we are now.  And we were focused on other things – like staying healthy and safe and helping each other get through the beginning of a hard time we are still working our way through.

Earlier in the year we talked about theory and technique and practice and ways to work up our own compositions and I challenged you to develop a composition of your own and I hoped you’d share them.  We talked about noodling (here) and ostinato (here).  We crossed into March (little did we know what was coming) and talked about the theory that would help you cultivate noodling into a composition (here).   Then we endured a time change and we talked about the utility of noodling when you’re tired (here).

But then we were all consumed with trying to care for ourselves and others and the composition challenge seemed to be a little naff in light of people sickening and dying.

Nevertheless time keeps passing and it occurs to me that we should not have abandoned the challenge.  After all, making music is helping us hang on to our sanity.  Making music gives us succor and allows us to share with others to make their lives just a little bit better.

So, let’s rejoin our game!

Your composition does not need to be complex or complicated.  Instead we want to celebrate the process of becoming comfortable with generating musical ideas and putting them together.  You can perhaps put together completed ideas, or possibly just fragments.  Give ostinato a try (keep in mind that this can be humbling).  Poke around the modes and roll them around in your (figurative) mouth, keeping the tasty ones and building from there.

Let’s spend the rest of September working on this.  That’s two weeks – plenty of time.  It has been my experience that, if you don’t spend all your time telling yourself that this is hard and you can’t do it, you will put out loads of ideas.  Some will be keepers.  Some will be dreck.  And that’s ok!  I’d suggest you just set your voice recorder to go (I prop mine up on a music stand) and let your fingers do the walking!  Don’t have a voice recorder?  Just download a free app and you’re good to go.

But don’t be timid – give it a go.  You won’t know what you’re capable of until you try!  I’d also like to encourage you to share – this is a warm and generous group and you probably will never find a more welcoming and accepting audience.  Perhaps you generate some fragments but don’t feel like you’re successful…but you might find that someone else has also made some fragments – and wouldn’t it be exciting if those fit together to make a tune?!

We’ll finish up Sunday 4^th October – send an audio, a video or a score (fancy-schmancy or handwritten!) and we’ll share them soon after – just in time to enjoy for autumn!  If you have questions or need some help let me know.   Looking forward to what we come up with!