Finding Inspiration

One of the things I find challenging as a composer is starting new pieces. There are a million and one different ways to create a piece. I end up being gridlocked, floundering, and wading in a pool of ideas, and in the end, I do not end up starting a piece. When this happens I usually try to pick a specific idea and broaden it from there to help get me started.

When picking ideas, I usually pull from different sources. One of the most common things I end up doing is finding a video with a topic that I find interesting and ending up writing with similar ideas. I usually just focus on that section and the rest follows and is formed based on that idea.

Another thing that I am aiming to try and do is to get a mason jar and put in a bunch of different prompts to base my music on. I got this idea from my professor because they had us do a “Compose The Semester” which was a myriad of different prompts like “write a 30-second piece for trumpet” or “write a 30-second piece depicting a train”. This was really inspiring because it let me get into a habit of writing for things that I might not be as comfortable with.