#Composition

The Long Road To Writing A Sonata

It had never been on my radar to write a sonata, but back in July 2021 I had an idea for a little ditty for my beginner piano students,...

Reflections on being a composer

Some people say they’d love to be able to compose music, and some might even ‘have a go at it’ but tend to give up when all they seem to...

How I composed ‘On Christmas Day’

Here's the piece -https://youtu.be/C3q4kGkKcEk It was early Christmas Day 2020, and I was going about doing normal things, preparing for...

Composer Cat - or should it be called 'Cat Attack'?

Haha ... no, the cat did not really compose anything! My cat, Oscar, couldn't care less about this piece, because cats are like that!...

How I compose music for the piano - complete with real examples from two of my pieces

Is it difficult to compose a piece for piano? Does it take hours, days, weeks or months? Do we have to be ‘inspired’ at the start, or can...

Things we want to do - easy or hard?

What makes us think that anything we want to do is going to be easy to achieve, or hard for that matter, or anywhere in-between? I reckon...

Feel free to play Ravel's Bolero now!

Do you know that famous orchestral piece by Ravel called 'Bolero'? It has a really catchy theme which repeats over and over. In fact it...

Creating a 'house' for your musical ideas

Do you want to know how to organise your musical ideas? In this blog, we will think of a musical composition as being like a ‘house’, and...