Sketching Music: Stage Two of the Composing Process

Sketching music is something that every composer must do at some point in the process of composing. The problem is, there seems to be very little practical information about the process.

So in this article, and several others after this one, I am setting out to explore:

1. What it means to sketch music.
2. Techniques of sketching music.
3. Why you should be working on sketching.

This is a critical skill for any composer, so I suggest you read on.

In case you think great composers don’t do this, here is an image of a single sketch page by Mozart. Scholars have not been able to find any piece that these sketches are connected to, which means, that Mozart may have been planning them for something else, or just working out ideas. Either way, Mozart didn’t composer ex nihilo (out of nothing) – he had to work out his ideas and technique like every other human being. ¹

What is Sketching Music?

At some point, when you decide to write music, you realize you have to actually write some music. Sounds obvious, but it can be harder that you think. Often, it is easy to start improvising, playing little ideas here and there – progressions, melodic doodads, or just jumping around your instrument.

After several minutes go by, you find that you’ve not actually written any music. This is what I deem “The Problem of Noodling.” (Anyone with a little philosophy should recognize that kind of phrase, i.e. The Problem of Evil).

The Problem of Noodling is like Running in Place

Noodling gets you nowhere. But it doesn’t have to. The key is commitment to writing something down. In fact, there are many different methods, or media, of sketching music, and I see a few parallels between what composers do, and what artists do. Sketching is very common for artists, and has a long history. I’ll be drawing parallels (get it!) throughout the article.

Principles of Sketching Music

My goal in this first article about sketching is to begin discovering the principles of sketching. I want to start with principles first, because clear principles often lead to more logical techniques. And composers use so many different tools and techniques to compose nowadays, this article will be more applicable to everyone.

Further articles will explore the specific aspects of sketching music by hand on paper – which I believe creates special feedback loops and leads to better music.

What is a Principle?

Sounds like an unnecessary question, but I find in the process of creating systems of thought, it helps to define as much as possible. If you system is build on principles, you should know exactly what a principle is. This definition is my own, modified from a dictionary definition.

A principle is “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of behaviors.”

We want to build our principles off of fundamentals truths so that our behaviors have a solid foundation. Once in place, we can intelligently examine our behaviors.

I want to caveat this by saying these principles are very much a work in progress. I would love input from the readers, and more importantly, I would love readers to experiment and start coming up with techniques and principles of their own. Composers need to start thinking this way – almost like scientists. Experimenting, recording the results, drawing conclusions – this will benefit us all.

So let’s dive into the principles.

Principle One: Trust Yourself

Sketching requires that you trust yourself on multiple levels.

Trust the Value of Your Sketch

What you are doing is valuable. It will have value for you as a composer by sharpening your technique, building a store house of material, and I believe, as an object of composition in it’s own right. When a composer sits down to sketch, the final piece is not just “not finished”, the possibility of it is extremely low. This makes the sketches and sketching process of composers a fascinating and valuable look into the mind of a composer.

From A Handbook to Twentieth Century Musical Sketches:

“In the visual arts, the sketch possesses a completely autonomous aesthetic value, which can neither be attained nor overtaken by the completed work.”

“Traditionally, no such claim can be made for the composer’s preliminary working documents. As a rule, they are understood to be unfinished, open and provisional: the first unsure attempts to notate ideas, the significance of which remains uncertain.”

“Contradicting this… is the positional that all sketch material… should be accorded an independent status, which is lost when this material is uncritically subsumed within the bounds of a work or work projects. This position understands sketching as a relatively autonomous process, not necessarily limited to demands or contingencies existing outside of the process itself. In this light, sketching represents the utopia of unhindered musical imagination developing on its own terms.”

Trust Your Abilities and Memory

Often, when sketching, we are forced to leave out detail (which will be addressed in another principle below). Critical to this is that you trust in your ability to fill in the this detail.

Often, what eats up the most time, is actually writing down information. There is a physical limit to the speed you can write by hand, or play ideas into a computer.

Trusting your abilities means you are trusting:

1. That you are writing down the right details, and leaving out the wrong details.
2. That you are able to fill in the missing details later.

This trust comes from practice, and a solid compositional foundation in your chosen style.

Principle Two: Set Limitations

Limitations have always been critical for me, and think they are critical for everyone. Limitations can take many forms, and you want to balance this against leaving mental space for unconnected ideas, but in general, limitations lead to more creativity.

I believe the reason is, because limitation takes away choice, and choice takes away valuable mental energy. Each time you make a compositional choice, you are using up mental energy and willpower. You only have so much of that to go around.

The more choices you make at the beginning, the fewer choices you have at the end. This is why when you are nearing the end of writing a piece, and you have a lot of material to work with, composing seems easier.

It’s not because composing has actually become easier. It’s because the composition itself limits your choices. What was only a vague possibility at the start of the process becomes an inevitability.

”My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.” – Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music

Types of Limitations

There are many things you can limit. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Time: Putting on a timer, or setting a minimum number of bars that have to be composed is an extremely effective limitation. I am not sure exactly why, but I can confirm this with my own experience as well.
   Years ago, when I wanted to jump start my composing, I started writing a series of pieces which I called “30 Minute Compositions”. While the name can be misleading – they took 30 minutes to write, not listen to – the effect was great. I had to finish an entire piece, in sketch form, within 30 minutes.
2. Instrumentation: You don’t always have to reach for a full orchestra. Setting limitations can lead to very interesting results. It can be as common as a string quartet, or as odd as you want to make it.
3. Purpose of the Sketching Period – Have a Goal: Setting a limitation on why you are sketching can help as well. If you just sit down to “write some music,” then you have too much possibility. But if you sit down to “compose three possible themes for a symphony, all for a slow movement,” then you have a better chance of reaching that goal.

The critical idea here, is that you know what you don’t want. So often, creative blocks are a matter of too much choice. But the reality is, you do have some ideas about what you don’t want to write. So start limiting your choices.

Principle Three: Focus on Essential Material

Composing is mentally taxing. This means that it can be tempting to write down things that are obvious. But when you come back to obvious material, the only thing that is obvious about it, is that it doesn’t really help. If you write a simple chord progression, like I-V-I, it’s not really helpful, because that idea is so ingrained in our ears, that you can pull that out of a hat at any moment.

Instead, you should focus on unique, and characteristic material. Characteristic means that it is what makes the piece sound like itself, and not any other piece. This is in contrast to conventional material (like the I-V-I).

A good technique for this, is to strive to add one unique thing per basic idea or motive. Here are some ideas:

1. Pick an interval you don’t use that often, and make it a focus for the basic idea. It could be a major 7th, a 9th, a half-step… it doesn’t matter. Just focus on using it.
2. Create an odd rhythm, or use two meters and find a way to combine them.
3. Take a standard chord progression, and add an impact chord. This is a chord that often comes from outside of the diatonic key, and can have an emotional impact. John Williams loves to do this. Think of the bII chord in the Indiana Jones theme (measure 10 if you have the score).

Principle Four: Leave Out Redundant Material

This principle makes sketching music more fun, because it helps you move much faster. The goal is to reduce the amount of actual writing you have to do.

There are many ways of doing this. For instance, if you write an accompaniment figure, write it out for only the first measure, and then after that, just write chord symbols, roman numerals, or even just the notes of the chords without the rhythm. It leads to much faster progress.

I am personally trying to develop a simple system to make this easier. For instance, when I create a characteristic idea, say a basic idea that is two measures, I will give it a letter name (A) and then for each measure, I will number them. So I know if I want to use idea A but only the first measure I can write A1 in the measure, and then change the next measure. This leaves a lot of flexibility, and also reduces the clutter on the page of circling and drawing an arrow, which is what I use to do.

If you come from a coding background, it is the equivalent of writing a function.

<code>
function basic_idea_no_1 ($harmony) {
$new_basic_idea = $harmony . $old_basic_idea;
return $new_basic_idea;
}
</code>

Principle Five: Write the Harder Stuff First

Now, I am not sure of this one as a principle, but I am going to test it out. My thought is that humans have a tendency to shirk responsibility and do what is easiest first. Basically procrastination. That is the crux of the Problem of Noodling, and it is the same concept with writing the easy stuff first.

What is the “harder stuff”? It will be different for every person, but it’s basically the stuff that will tire your brain out the most. It maybe figuring out your melody, or your chord progression, or counterpoint, or even orchestration.

The reason I am hesitant to say this, is because you also want to go with the flow sometimes, and not get in the way of creativity. Composing can be a very fickle endeavor, and so if you are making progress you don’t want to mess that up. This leads to the last principle.

Principle Six: Make Progress

If at anytime, you get into a state of flow, and the ideas are just coming to you – let them come. Don’t stop because it’s conventional, redundant, simple, or for some other project.

What I’ve learned more than anything else, is the only thing that matters is finished projects. Everything else is just a probability until that point.

Finishing things. That’s what this is about.

Experiments in Sketching Music

Over the next few weeks and months, I will be posting about my experiments in sketching. The goal is to find what works best for me, and hopefully for you as well.

Go forth and sketch. 🖖

1. Konrad, Ulrich. “Mozart’s Sketches.” Early Music, vol. 20, no. 1, 1992, pp. 119–130. www.jstor.org/stable/3127672. ↩