Steven Lebetkin

Composer, Speaker, Thought Leader

Media Composers – Raise the Bar and the Fees Will Follow

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The battle against self-commoditization

Let’s take a look at architecture. Dictionary.com defines an architect as “a person who designs buildings and in many cases also supervises their construction”.

An architect is an artist, a creative artist, and like any artist, there are all levels of talent ranging from mediocre to genius. Not all architects are of equal talent and capability. The same goes for music composers whose throngs are of unequal talent.

Over the last 20 years, the architecture has evolved and embraced technology. The manner in which this has manifest is through the advent of computer assisted design, otherwise known as CAD. These programs (like AutoCad) are miraculous operational and production tools, and generally utilized to create and manipulate geometric shapes into specific designs.

Walk into any medium sized architecture firm and look around. What you will see is physical space that segregates the architects (the “design” artists) from the CAD operators (production). There is even an industry of outsourcing the CAD operators to India and other areas of the world for capable and inexpensive operators. 

Make no mistake about it, there are many talented and capable CAD operators. However, CAD is a back-office function, a commodity, priced and billed out at lower rates than the front office creatives (the architects).

Architecture firms run efficiently, and provide a balanced set of value propositions to their clients.

Media Composing – The back-office has taken over the front office

A good friend and composer colleague often says to me “today’s modern composer has to do it all”. Yes, that is largely correct. The trend over the years is for the production aspects to gain inordinate weight in the process. Production technology is wonderful (and many of the production professionals very talented), including DAW’s, sampling, mastering software, and so much more. The back-office has taken over most of the front office, and now rules. And the buyers have bought into it, where the pricing of media composition services has wrapped completely around the commoditized bundling of production and creativity. One size fits all, and fees have plummeted, still dropping.

Now, this is not the case for all. Composers like Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer can get away with not being able to do it all for one simple reason – they have the money to pay others to do it for them. Composers like John Williams are at the other end of the spectrum, strong on musicianship and orchestration skills, and have the resources to pay for production. Take these same composers and drop them into the market as new entrants and the question arises as to whether they would be successful; I’m not so sure.

The Culprits

Schools and Curriculums Course mixes at schools like Berklee College of Music, NYU Steinhardt, Columbia University, USC Thornton School of Music and others offering media composing programs emphasize a preponderance of production and technology skills.  Musicianship skills increasingly take a back seat to production technology. The lure of tuitions of $70,000+ per year has contributed quite a bit to the lowering of standards at these “name” institutions. Composers on the scene today often aspire for recognition and artistic validation in concert halls; unfortunately, the majority cannot do it. They don’t know how.

Professional Societies For decades professionals in every walk of life work hard at brand enhancement before the public (i.e. “buyers”).  Groups like the American Bar Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, American Medical Association and other professional groups devote significant resources towards specialty designations, thereby segmenting out the memberships between general practitioners (lower paid) and specialists (higher paid). These esteemed groups work hard towards educating the marketplace of buyers through a myriad of traditional awareness initiatives, such as panel discussions, branding of specialists along with requirements for entry.  Imagine, if you would, if these professionals had a “one size fits all” pot. It wouldn’t work, and would quickly lead to commoditization. Professional fees would drop like a rock in a pond. 

The Composers Themselves Are they the culprits? Hmmm, I think not. They are the victims, doing the best they can to survive and create music for the joy of others.

Some Solutions

It takes a village. And time…..lots of it. It took years to drive the media composer car into a ditch, and it will take many years and a healthy international conversation to work its way out of it. Brands take time to restore, particularly following long term damage. Here are four areas for improvement. There are others.

Professional Societies, some of which have general membership, and those that focus on gender and ethnic constituents, can do their part by turning their attention towards the relationships between musical content and music production. The production aspects are well oiled at this point, but there is no better way of driving success into the market than composing better music. A refocus on musicianship and advanced composition skills and techniques combined with segmentation of education and branding to the buyers of music for media will no doubt achieve results. Composers will make more, the music will improve, the public will enjoy it, and producers will wind up with better product to sell with greater longitudinal value. 

Schools and universities can likewise focus in on the return to higher levels of artistic achievement in the students they accept, educate, and then turn out into the world. It’s important to bear in mind that film composing began with the composition of a symphonic score for The Brothers Karamazov in 1930, the first motion picture with a film score by the classical composer Karol Rathaus. The score came first, the picture came second. Rathaus didn’t need credibility to write for the concert hall. 

Professional groups and educational institutions can team up, and begin the long-term conversation and implementation to raise standards. Over time, the supply and demand curve will change, the result of which will be that directors and studios will come around. One size fits all will no longer be in vogue, and composers will be more adequately compensated. 

Composers also can do their part, although much more difficult for them. Composers work alone, and for the most part, lack adequate resources to compete. However, they can do their best to work on their musicianship skills, study throughout their lifetimes, and parse out production functionality (low paying) from creativity, where there is room to grow.

Continuing Education In the 20th century, Nadia Boulanger taught hundreds of composers that had already graduated. Composers in film, jazz, and classical (many household names like Aaron Copland to Charles Fox) flocked to Paris to study with her. This is no longer the case for composers in the 21st century. A very odd stigma towards continuing education for professional composers has crept into our culture. Many believe that after graduation, their musical studies are complete, and need only learn more about technology trends and production advancements to be competitive. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Composers and The Future

There are more composers now than ever before in human history. Technology has made vast musical resources available to listeners, and to those that have a calling to compose. It takes more than great ideas to be a great composer. Great ideas need shaping, nurturing – a dedication to craft and detail before new music is ready for the world to hear. Eventually, the market will turn back towards musical content and quality, and away from back-office production  solutions that have become the vogue of the day.

Steve Lebetkin is the founder of Composition Online, a pioneer in extended learning for professional composers, and the developer of the Mini-Master Class – Live and Online continued learning for composers worldwide.  For more information please direct your inquiries to: scores@compositiononline.com

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The Search For Missing Musical Architecture

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I listen to lots and lots of music. Old and new. Good and not so good. The old(er) I listen to for a variety of reasons, some purely joyful, and some to dig deeper and learn more about lesser known works by well known composers. The new music is primarily because of my work helping composers of all ages learn and improve their craft.

When you listen to and review as much new music as I do, certain patterns emerge. Yes, there is a great deal of talent out there, but there is consistency among the deficiencies noted. This article shall focus on just one of those deficiencies, how to diagnose them, the persistent reasons they occur, and solutions.

A preponderance of new compositions in the market these days, regardless of style, instrumentation, length, venue, or composer age (or gender), lack durability. These worka don’t seem to hang together, oftentimes drifting around, losing momentum, an arch, and other aspects that elude the Holy Grail of music composition – music that bears repeated listenings. I have termed music of a momentary interest (these days including social justice goals for composer groups that feel left out) as “transactional” composition – nice to hear (or at least parts thereof), but not motivating to listen to again….and again.

Diagnosing The Problem Through Reverse Engineering

A not so perfect analogy to diagnose an apparent problem is an automobile. Some cars are focused on the visual – the paint, body, styling, etc – the surface issues. In music, it’s the melody, about which lesser trained and knowledgeable composers focus in on to the detriment of the musical engineering. Composers that wish to be able to learn how to write better melodies would be best served practicing Species Counterpoint. Learn these skills and in a year or two your melodies will be first-rate.

The process of diagnosis the problem is called diminution, where the reduction of the music implies what might be called a “top down” approach – stripping out the music at the surface (yes, the melody) and dig deeper to find increasingly simple diminutions. Take out the melody (like the passing tones and the rest of the ornamentation), and see/listen to what remains as far as chords and their progressions over a continuum. We hear music on a variety of layers simultaneously, and one way to diagnose a problem is to dig deeper and identify the layers of the music presented. It is then that problems emerge that require fixing. Like an auto, we strip off the body, and start examining the parts and see how they interface, then deeper into parts that may be malfunctioning.

As one digs deeper into the various layers of the piece, it often becomes quickly apparent where the weaknesses are. The progressions don’t work, or flow from beginning to end. This is true for short pieces (like commercial songs) and longer pieces and in any style or purpose (contemporary, jazz, film, avante garde). If it becomes difficult to identify the harmonic structure, chances are there aren’t any to identify, and the problems become acutely obvious. This is painful for composers that have not gone through this exercise, but necessary to able to advance their work and achieve greater artistic goals.

How Is Great Music Architecturally Formulated?

By now it should be apparent to the reader of this article that we are not talking about form (like Sonata, Fugue, Ternary, Minuet, or Pop Song), but what we are talking about here is architecture, the musical engineering and neurological mysteries of human recognition of when it is present, and when it is not.

Talented and skilled composers do not spend all of their time on writing in a layered approach, but almost all unconsciously structure their music on a layered basis. As the music travels through time, skilled composers know exactly where they are architecturally and when they veer off course. The level of musicianship and experience in the study of other great works guide the degree of intuitive capabilities composers bring to the composition and editing process. But they are also acutely aware of where they are architecturally and consciously at any point in the composition and editing process. Another way of saying it is – If you (the composer) don’t know where you are, then the listener won’t know either!

Great music can stand up to a rigorous analytical process (which I am calling reverse engineering in this article) because the composers have applied much more than talent and inspiration to their works. Too much work, you say? Well, maybe composing is not for you.

Style And Musical Architecture

In order to really understand how this works, it is essential to set aside any preconceived notions about art and the human experience. The study of musical semiotics and musical sciences (neurologically) is at a relatively early stage, but we do know that all human brains are genetically wired identically. We have the same starting point, after which our environment effects us………to a point. There are sounds and sequences that no matter how many times we hear them, out brains will reject and are unable to digest.

Many composers, in great frustration, reject the study of music and “rules” as inhibiting their individual artistic expression and experience. For example, composers without access to advanced training or even poor instruction will dig in their heels and insist on a free style approach to composition as a better way and affording broader and more meaningful means of artistic expression. Nothing could be further from the truth. While these broad philosophical diatribes may angularly look good on paper, the reality is compositions without solid engineering will quickly go off the road and into a ditch.

The miracle of the human experience includes the broad expanse of music we can hear and enjoy across time periods, and styles. Our brains are positioned to hear and enjoy musical and architectural splendors from Bach to Takemitsu, Brahms to Britten, Ellington to Britten, and so much more. But music without engineering? It’s like driving without a map, and without a destination. Our brains will reject it.

It’s Not Your Fault – The Great University Deception

Many composers have done their level best to go to school, study, practice, work with professors with doctorates in composition, and much more. Yet, despite these best efforts, a great many composers in the world struggle with their craft. Some of this is the result of a lack of capability – not everyone who wants to compose has the requisite talent to do so. However, for many the skill sets, which are learned, are unavailable due to the deficiencies of teaching and knowledge at the university level. This is a sad state of affairs, and largely due to the tenure system coupled with the enormous profits derived from outrageously priced tuition in many parts of the world, particularly the USA. Young students on the way up lack the tools to evaluate the level and capabilities of professors at schools and universities, the result of which is musical educations that are short on musicianship and long on student loans. I have personally watched the decline in the level instruction in my lifetime while the number of composers has dramatically increased to unprecedented levels. This is a sorry state of affairs, and I can only urge the talented to focus on craft and musicianship and continue to learn throughout your life and career. There still remain some wonderful composers on the faculty of universities worldwide, but not because they have the PhD appended to their names.

Sound Design and Orchestration – Sonic Camouflage

The use of sound design – oftentimes is a camouflage for a lack of structure. Look closely at the music of Debussy, Ravel and Takemitsu – masterful composers with a deep knowledge of composition technique and musicianship, whose greatest contributions may have been the unfolding of sound design as a set of composition techniques. Composers since then imitate the beautiful soundscapes of Debussy’s work, but without the deeper aspects of his compositional prowess. Lots of glitter, but not the gold (welcome to the world of DAW’s, music samples, and production). Debussy’s sound design has been widely imitated for 100 plus years, from Messiaen to film composers of the current day, and many contemporary composers enamored with the sound design or effects of his compositional oeuvre While the music composed is often entertaining and enjoyable for the moment, much of it does not bear the test of repeated listenings. Film directors and music editors, for example have often opted for these surreal tonal landscapes to add “feel” for scenes (i.e. music cues), but when extracted from the picture, the music often doesn’t work that well. Music gets chopped up and moves from cue to cue in a transactional approach, for example without regard to key relationships and architectural issues across timelines. (I could go on for many pages about this)

Music From The Inside Out.

Start improvising. Pick out the ideas that feel right. Develop the architecture as you go along. This requires a high level of musicianship. The really talented composers bring in the architecture and structure as they move along in the creative and editing process, some of which is subliminal (a great inner ear that brings in the architecture) and the rest through conscious analysis and decisions on where to go and how things fit in as the composition process unfolds. Composing on a strictly instinctive level without mindfulness of hierarchical structures and how to manipulate the music is a surefire recipe for disaster. Orchestration and sound design will camouflage a weak composition – such music and the composers that create these works are easily forgotten.

This is very hard to do. It may be the hardest part of the composition process. The achievement of a composition of any length that is well conceived and executed on every level and dimension is very difficult to achieve. It’s very hard work. In my experience and in listening to a huge amount of new music in my daily regimen, I find there are few that can do this. Yes, there are incredible numbers of composers now in the world, more than at any time in world history. If you want to stand out, and make a memorable contribution, do the work necessary to achieve these goals. There are no shortcuts.

One of the great ways of expanding your composition skills is through continued learning. Composers that believe in studying past graduation have a much better chance of succeeding. www.compositiononline.com

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Musical Language and Attitude

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Composers often struggle with learning the rules of composition, including composing music, how to write music, and how to become a music composer.

If I had a nickel for every time a composer expresses umbrage towards “rules” of composition, I would easily be able to pay of the national debt. There appears to be a natural backlash of inexperienced and/or combative and rebellious composers towards “rules” and that somehow such rules are restrictive of creative activity and must be broken in order to break new ground and forge ahead in the quest for higher art. Unfortunately, and in my own experience, the underlying reasons for this rebellion relates to a lacking (or laziness) towards understanding what the so called “rules” are as a first step, working with them, and then going further (or abandoning them). Arnold Schoenberg, for all the controversy surrounding his music, had a deep understanding of music and the “rules” that preceded him, and stood on firm ground as a starting point in his compositional journey.

“Best practices” is defined by Wikipedia as “a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means….” For those rebellious and combative composers unhappy with rules that they wish not to follow (or understand), I have a bit of advice which is twofold – first, substitute the word “rules” with the phrase “Best Practices” in your thinking and see how that feels. Secondly, assuming that one takes adequate time to thoroughly familiarize oneself as to the details and functionality of what Best Practices consist of and their use, take a step back and think about “why” such Best Practices came to be. Then make your own determination as to where you wish to go from there.

It makes much more sense (and a sign of maturity) to look at and understand what has been done in the past and the reasons than to summarily reject prior practices and determine the path for your own creative journey. This is, in my view, a far more grounded approach than one that ignores the foundations of the human experience and the how and whys of Best Practices, not rules, evolved over time.

For more information on composing music, how to write music, and how to become a music composer, a good place to go is Composition Online. 

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Glue – The Musical Adhesive

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Among the various dictionary.com definitions of the word Adhesive, the one that relates most to the world of music is about the Physics “of or relating to the molecular force that exists in the area of contact between unlike bodies and that acts to unite them.” If one thinks of two consecutive sounds (or chords) as un-united and unlike bodies, we then need something to unite them in a way that we as humans can hear, digest, interpret, and enjoy. Without that, a musical composition can sound like a series of unrelated sounds that brings great displeasure or unbearable listening. No amount of sound design, effects, orchestration, rhythmic tricks and manipulation can overcome a disjointed series of sounds offered as music. The music fails.

Common tones are among the least understood composition techniques in music. Simply put, common tones tell us how many common tones are retained when a set of tones (or chord) is followed by another set, or chord.  An example is a note shared between two chords in a chord progression. Common tones are a consideration in the study of voice leading, particularly for harmony and counterpoint.

I of course agree with the obvious note counting aspects of the analysis of tones that are common to consecutive chords and how the various musical lines travel along (i.e. voice leading) for this type of analysis. This is generally the end of the road for musicians and composers in traditional study. It misses the point entirely of what the purpose of common tones serves and its direct relationship to music composition.

Common tones are a musical adhesive, or “glue”. It keeps the music together and prevents it from falling apart. If it is absent, or removed, from musical passages, whatever is there is “un-united”. This musical adhesive is a close conceptual approximation to a physical experience, only in sound. It matters not so much as to what the content is of the two objects that are being joined as much as the effect of being joined. Composers can get a bit lost in the loftier goal of originality and creativity by attempting to ignore traditional rules of composition, including voice leading, harmony, serialism, and more, and at the expense of music whose purpose is to move the human spirit. Glue is a musical adhesive as firmly grounded in music composition technique as the physics “of relating to the molecular force that exists in the area of contact between unlike bodies and that acts to unite them.”

Moving The Glue Around

Moving the glue (or common tone) to a different register (or place) “un-glues” the music that it seeks to join. So, whereas on paper one is looking at and doing the math in a set theory analysis, the issue of common tones as an adhesive is actually physical – the common tone must be precise – one cannot transpose it to a different octave (i.e. registration) and expect it to be effective. This is yet another example of why the serialists are so off base – notes are not only unequal to the human ear, but the registrations are as well. One cannot move the musical adhesive to a different octave as the same note and expect it to be musically effective to the listener in the joining of musical chords and/or passages.  To be clear, the underlying reasons for this are neurologically based, and are not the subject of this writing. We are at the infancy of the study of musical semiotics and how and why we hear the way we do. For now, though, advanced composers need only to understand what musical glue is and how to most effectively utilize it in their work.

A question arises as to how to effectively change registrations for a music glued together by a common tone without losing the emotional effect or even to create or prompt even greater musical interest. The answer is what I call pause and leap (up or down an octave). This is an advanced composition technique. The way this works is that the common tone, or glue, between two movements is held (the note is tied) or repeated between the two musical events, and then on the offbeat the common tone moves up or down and octave. This specific composition technique results in a moment of musical interest and can be very exciting. The musical adhesive gives the listener not only something to hold onto, but the repeats that note but in another registration. All of the issues of musical language, style, harmony, set theory, serialism and other variants have no bearing whatsoever on the effect of this on the human experience. Oh, and yes, this includes pop songs, jazz, music for film, and everything else.

Back In The Day

Schools and conservatories that require in depth study of  Species Counterpoint often cannot describe what compositional benefits and skills are to be derived from this type of study. They simply do it and carry on a course curriculum from generation to generation. Students that attend schools without the study of species counterpoint graduate without much of a real foundation in music and the human experience, a frequent state of affairs with many of the media composers of the day.  The late Nadia Boulanger, probably the most important composition teacher of the twentieth century, required graduate composers that traveled to study with her to focus in on species counterpoint exercises as part of their daily regimen. It helped these already professional composers fill in the gaps in their musical education and embed composition skills that were weak or lacking in their arsenal of techniques, no matter how innately talented.

Species Counterpoint and Musical Glue

What does this have to do with musical glue you ask? Plenty. One of the significant benefits of species counterpoint is the skillful use of common tones in the polyphonic musical fabric of the passages. The glue is utilized within all the voices on a staggered basis, and as part of the diatonic musical language of species counterpoint. 

Once composers get the hang of how glue works within the species counterpoint environment, they are then ready to apply this technique to other forms of musical language, thought, and expression.  The choice of musical language is unrelated to the effective use of musical glue as an essential composition technique that so dramatically affects the human experience of listening to music. The absence of a musical adhesive can often have a striking effect on the success or failure of music. Conversely, too much of a good thing is also counterproductive towards the human listening experience. 

Pick Out The Best Parts

I have long held that books and treatises that portend to promulgate the study of composition techniques are anything but what they represent. Most are theory books, studies of counterpoint (including species), set and serial theory (studies of musical languages), and more. Within these books are composition techniques scattered around, but generally miss the mark. Just try and listen to an hour straight of the music of Palestrina, the father of species counterpoint. There are reasons why Palestrina’s music, though contrapuntally perfect, is rarely performed, as it is lacking in composition techniques necessary to maintain musical interest.

I must confess that when I see a bowl of mixed nuts and raisins, I pick out the best parts. It is the same with composition techniques, there is a large variety to choose from and they are not all that good.

Composition techniques are to be used carefully, and culled from the composer’s bag of tricks and applied with great deliberation and taste throughout the glorious process of creation, the creation of music that moves the soul and adds to the joy of those that choose to listen….repeatedly.

Three Dimensional Music Composition

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The Path To Music That Bears Repeated Listenings

Pick up sticks

If you’ve ever played pick up sticks as a kid, you may recall how a handful of variously colored thin sticks are dropped to the floor (or in my case as a child, a living room carpet) with the goal of each player picking up a stick without moving any other stick. When the sticks are dropped, and before we look at the sticks, they are in random order. However, when we look at them, our brains immediately search for order, and the sticks are no longer random. The eye and brain assigns, or creates an ordering from the sticks thrown haphazardly on the floor. It is then that the game begins.

Music vs. Pick Up Sticks

With music, we have quite a different kettle of fish. Music does not come into existence haphazardly; it is created and with human intention. Order comes from the creator, or composer, then perceived by the listener. When we listen, we are neither assigning nor creating an ordering of sound. We hear, and our brains perceive the order that is created by the composer and an integral part of the music.

The Effect On Humans Of Musical Disorder

First, let’s start with the premise that there are many levels of disorder in music. Like a messy room, there can be a few things out of place, but the room is nonetheless appealing. (There are no perfect pieces, unless your name is Mozart!) As the room becomes more messy, and depending on the individual’s level of tolerance (or taste in music), the musical experience becomes unappealing.

Listeners are not expected to be able to articulate the reasons for an adverse reaction, but they do know or sense that something is off in the listening experience. Weaknesses in the order, or in structure of a piece of music, are perceived by listeners. Taste (and tolerance) are individual and of course subjective, but we know something is wrong and elect not to hear the piece again.

Vertical/Sectional Music vs. Horizontal Music

In broad terms, a piece of music is a series of sections, or segments, the combination of which is heard as a whole piece. This experience applies to any genre, style or form,  whether a Mozart sonata, Stravinsky ballet, jazz piece, popular song, etc. Listeners may really enjoy one or more portions of a musical work, but not all of them. The piece falters, or fails as a whole.

How this manifests itself in the listening experience affects our desire to hear the piece again and again, like the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, or a Beatles album worn down until the vinyl too scratched to play again.

There is quite a bit of music across the spectrum of likeability (again, highly subjective) with wonderful sections and musical moments that listeners lack motivation to experience again (or infrequently). This is the effect of most musical compositions. We all have our favorites.
Let’s be clear, this article discussion is not about a value judgement or opinion as to what is or is not great art through music, but rather an illumination as to some of the underlying causes of music that consistently results in the desire for repeated listenings. There is no one size fits all formula for artistic success.

Three Dimensional Music Composition

Retrospective contextual hearing, is the human phenomenon of hearing the music of a specific piece (whether single or multi-movement, from commercial songs to symphonies) at a moment in time against the backdrop of the music of that piece heard earlier. People hear music in context, as a continuum, one of the great wonders of the human condition.  We hear and absorb musical information much like one would read a book or poem, on multiple levels. In music, this is sometimes called fundamental structure (German: Ursatz), and its two subsets – foreground and middle ground levels. Somewhat analogously, this addresses the overall structure of a work (Ursatz), then a detailed chapter outline (middle ground) and then the words/notes of the piece itself (foreground). These techniques of three dimensional musical composition when applied by skilled and talented composers, regardless of the musical language selected, give rise to this three dimensional listening experience, which when achieved, makes for a more universally absorbed composition that bears repeated listenings and stands the test of time.

Two Dimensional Music That Works On A Case By Case Basis

Music composed for media can work effectively without a flow through compositional structure from beginning to end. Music for film is composed for scenes, or a large number of cues. In general, music for media is often written with an emphasis on the moment (or cue) rather than a time continuum. This leads to greater flexibility for manipulation and editing by non-musicians.

Music editors and directors generally have free reign to cut and reorder music that has been scored to picture, while composers that labored over sequential music composition cringe while music they love winds up on the cutting room floor or far different form than originally conceived. The result is often that when extracted from the film as an independent film score recording, the score may not translate well to a concert or equivalent listening environment absent the picture for which it was originally intended.

Back in the day when classical composers were first tapped to score films that had sound as distinguished from silent films, music was often composed first, then the film was created to reflect the arch and structure of the already composed music. That process would be unthinkable today, although it was quite effective at the time. Music extracted from these films had a better chance of survival in the concert hall without picture than scores created today. Scores extracted from modern films have to go through an arrangement process to create suites of music that concert audiences can enjoy.

How Composers Think Structurally

At around the turn of the twentieth century, an Austrian music theorist named Heinrich Schenker developed a notational method that actually describes how humans hear music on a structural level. This very clever and thoughtful musician divided the listening experience into three levels – the foreground (the detailed notes we all hear), middle ground (elimination of the detail and distilled version of the melody and supporting chords) and foreground (major benchmarks and structural points along the way).

Do composers really compose in this Schenkerian way? Yes and no. Sophisticated composers kind of know where they are in the overall structure to some extent within this framework on a conscious level, even though in centuries prior to Mr. Schenker the notational system for structural analysis  didn’t exist. But the composers knew about this anyway. However, the more skillful and experienced a composer, the more fluid the process of composing becomes in an almost subliminal level. Nadia Boulanger, the great composition teacher of so many wonderful composers in the twentieth century, called it the “long journey”, a clear reference to three dimensional composition technique.

After The Fact Analysis vs. Structural Hearing While Composing

Really talented and knowledgeable composers do not specifically compose in a  Schenkerian way. These are tools for after the fact analysis. But what they do is maintain top of mind “structural hearing” tools while composing. The Schenkerian analytic tools (or their equivalent) must be fully understood by the composer in learning and the study of works while growing, but then kept “in mind” almost subliminally when applying Ursatz and sub-levels to new compositions.

Very few composers’ works these days can stand up to a rigorous Schenkerian analysis (or any of its versions). As a result, most composers and their works fade into mediocrity. A piece that lacks a strong and definable Ursatz discourages listeners to return to a work again. Poorly structured music, or works with deficiencies on a three dimensional level are weak, and generally falter or fail in the sense that listeners won’t come back for a second serving.

Composing Well Isn’t Really All That Easy

It seems like there is a composer on every corner these days. With a computer, notation software, sounds, and production software there are lots of people generating music. Most of it does not bear the test of repeated listenings.

I am often reminded that there is not a single right or wrong way to compose music. I agree. However, we all start out from the same place, with human brains and an operating system referred to as genetic code for hearing and digesting sound information that comes into our brains. After that, our environment takes over, and taste emerges from our life experiences.

The keys to understanding how and why we hear in three dimensions are very much in the early stage of scientific research. It will take some time before this is fully understood. In the meantime, the more composers understand this and how it works musically through the application of musical structure both consciously and intuitively, the closer they will come to consistently creating art that the world will wish to hear again….and again.

Steve Lebetkin, Composer in Chief, Composition Online

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