dark and demonic pit of doom!

My dearest Tortured Composer,

As you celebrate on this Black Friday, it has occurred to me that there is one problem nearly every composer faces.

An overwhelming mountain every composer carries around with them.

What is this overwhelming problem?

It is simply parsing through the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge available to composers to help them learn.

It can feel IMPOSSIBLE to know which book, course, article, tutorial to watch next.

I mean what's the best way to improve as a composer?

If you get on Amazon, Youtube, or any of the thousands of courses out there, it's easy to rack up a multi-thousand hour "to watch list."

I have personally seen composers get racked by guilt at the fact they have barely made any progress their own long list.

What's a composer to do?

With the dark and demonic pit of doom that is Black Friday, many composers are now faced with a conundrum.

Do they buy that new library? A course on mixing symphonic pieces? The best course ever on modern harmony? It can be OVERWHELMING.

If you're anything like me, the temptation to buy something new—when you haven't finished even half of the books/courses/tutorials you've already got—can feel unbearable.

This new thing could be it! The thing that's going to take me there! That will finally let me make that music I dream about!

Fortunately, I'm making a different choice this year.

I'm going to share with you today what I believe to be the ultimate method for getting better at composing (or any creative craft).

And one that could save you thousands of hours of pain.

And before I share this method, I want to do a little thought experiment.

I want you to consider, how did you learn to walk?

Yes, I'm talking about walking. When you were a young, aspiring composer. How did you learn to put one foot in front of the other?

Did you take a course on walking? Did you watch Youtube videos on walking? Did you hire a teacher that had graduated from a fancy walking conservatory and ask him to teach you how to walk?

No, you did none of those things.

You watched people who had mastered walking, and then you tried to copy them yourself.

This illustrates an important feature of your brain.

It tends to learn complex tasks by simply being thrown in the deep end at full complexity and trying to mimic whatever it is being done.

When you walk, you're coordinating over 200 muscles. Yet you don't learn to walk with textbooks or sequential learning.

You just take the full thing on, and fall many times.

And you can take advantage of this aspect of your brain with composing.

How did the greatest composers to ever live write their music?

They used pen/pencil and paper.

And the vast majority of their music is available on IMSLP.org for free.

So what do I believe is the best method for getting better at composing?

I believe you can make the most progress in the fastest possible time by simply copying by hand the best pieces ever composed.

Or even better yet, transcribing them from ear to paper.

You see, there is something different that happens when you write something out by hand.

Your brain stores it differently. It gets stored much deeper.

A mentor of mine calls this process "neuroimprinting" because of the deep etching that writing by hand can have on your brain.

When you copy a piece by Ravel, Bach, Beethoven you are getting into the mind of the composer.

You're forced to zoom in on minute details you may totally miss if you were just listening.

Your brain slows down, it's a slow process, and you're forced to immerse yourself into the piece.

And when you do it, your brain works in a different way. It turns on in a way where it is trying to figure out everything that is going on.

It's a process that you won't be fully conscious of, but as you do it, you'll notice yourself improving.

I truly believe the best use of your time this Black Friday to improve as a composer would be to pick 10 of your favorite pieces and commit to hand copying them over the next year.

And if you want to feel like a true craftsman, grab yourself a fidolino and make the sheet music paper yourself (this is the one I use).

Just to give you an idea, here's 10 pieces I'm planning on hand copying:

Bach - English Suite No. 3 in G minor

Ravel - Pavane pour une infante défunte

Respighi - Fontane di Roma

Chopin - Nocturne No. 21 in C-Minor

Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade

John Williams - Star Wars Theme

John Powell - Flying With Mother

Beethoven - Piano Sonata No. 24, Op. 78

Those will likely keep me busy for quite a while.

Benjamin Franklin famously used this method to hand copy books when he was learning to become a writer.

And if you really want to take it to the next level, write pieces where you "steal" an element of the ones you copy.

Use something—the harmony, melodic style, orchestration—and incorporate it into a new piece. One where you change up or add something to that original piece.

This will make the copying even more relevant because you'll be trying to understand one of the elements to use it in your own writing.

I've done this lately with the Ravel piece above.

I took the exact form, measure for measure, and used it write a new piece. And I did this after hand copying it.

This Ravel form is tattooed on my brain. I will likely remember it forever.

Combining the hand copying with "using" a part of the piece was insanely valuable.

So if you're feeling a bit confused on what to buy this Black Friday, perhaps just take out some staff paper and a pencil, go to IMSLP.org, and start hand copying a master work.

I'll be curious to see how it goes for you.

I've floated around the idea of turning this into a group challenge.

Where for 90 days a set of composers would commit to hand copying 8 measures of music every day for 90 days (or something like that).

Stay tuned. I would personally LOVE that and if there's interest, we may start next spring.

I hope your Thanksgiving and Black Friday were filled with love, music, and joy.

Continue composing, and remember…

The world waits for your music…

Luke

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