Music tuition
Composition Tuition
Individual guidance for students who write music — from a first attempt at a short piece to coursework compositions and personal projects that need shaping and refining.
How composition lessons work
Lessons begin with your material — an idea, a fragment, a draft or a brief — and work outwards. The emphasis is on developing your own musical voice while acquiring the craft to realise it clearly on the page and in performance.
- Generating musical ideas and finding a starting point
- Melody — shape, contour and memorable writing
- Harmony and harmonic direction
- Rhythm and momentum
- Structure and form
- Texture and instrumentation
- Notation, presentation and score legibility
- Developing existing ideas rather than abandoning them
- Reviewing and refining drafts with constructive feedback
Academic integrity
Composition tuition helps you develop your own work and musical understanding. I do not write or complete assessed coursework. Feedback, teaching and discussion are given so that the composition remains genuinely yours.