My dearest Tortured Composer, 

I come today bearing gifts of musical metaphor. 

You see, music can do so much more than just give you feelings. It can bring you to life in numerous ways. 

And over the past week, I’ve found some excellent resources for creating these “musical metaphors.” 

I do feel that each of these could make your life significantly easier—and potentially much more fun. 

Let us begin: 

Orchestration Recipes

I found these last week and immediately purchased them. This has to be one of my favorite series of orchestration videos ever. 

It’s a set of videos that teaches you how to achieve some of the most iconic orchestration styles and “vibes.” 

I found this teacher’s education style to be one of my favorites. He basically breaks down different orchestrations into “recipes” where you’re given a step-by-step guide to create a certain sound. 

I’d recommend trying these and then attempting to put your own spin on each. 

I ended up getting all 5 of the series and have been having a blast. These are perfect for expanding your orchestration palette. And they’re also an incredibly fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 

Highly recommend you check them out—also want to note I am not being paid to say this. These are just awesome and I wanted to make sure you saw them.

Go here to discover some incredible orchestration recipes

Expressing Water on the Piano

Continuing on with the idea of metaphor. I found this great video that shows you how to express water on the piano. 

It walks you through 6 different pieces that evoke a feeling of being on or around water. 

I thought it was super interesting. If you’re feeling stuck, a good exercise would be to “steal” these different textural ideas that express water—then change something up. 

For example, you could steal a texture but then introduce a different harmonic language—octatonic scale for example. 

Change the pattern and the harmony but keep the piano texture the same. And go in with the goal to evoke the water feeling. 

Could be worth a shot. Take a look at the video below and let me know what ideas it gives you. 

6 ways to depict water with a piano

How To Compose Flying Music Like John Powell

One of my favorite scores from the past few years has come from John Powell and the How To Train Your Dragon series.

He combines traditional Irish music with some amazing sweeping string sounds to really create a feeling like you are flying on a dragon. 

I actually bought the full 200 page symphonic score and have been going through it. 

But if you’re not a full psycho like me, you might enjoy this video. 

It’s a solid breakdown of how to create that “flying” effect. 

Could be a good exercise to take some of the techniques from this video and the previous one and combine them into an A section and a B section for a piece. 

It could make for an interesting contrast. 

Here’s a link to the video: 

How To Compose Flying Music Like John Powell

I hope this gives you some good inspiration for the week. A lot of ideas and learning potential there. 

And stay tuned over the next few weeks. I’m in the process of finishing up a book.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re in a dry spell…

Like you have “composer’s block”…

Or if you’ve wanted to feel like a prolific composer that can finish music on command…

You’ll want to stay tuned. This is the combination of in-depth conversations with over 100 different composers, producers, musicians. 

Everyone from the mix engineer of one of the world’s largest Christians bands…

To a brass player for Kanye West. 

Asking them deep and in-depth questions about their creative process. 

I realized that almost all composers, producers, musicians run into the same “blocks.”

And that there’s a few easy steps to fix them. 

So keep an eye out for that. 

But until then just remember…

The world waits for your music…

Luke

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