Month: September 2026

Fundamentals of Music Prep for Jazz Composers/Arrangers

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

If you’re not familiar with Darcy James Argue and his big band, Secret Society, I encourage you to check out his music. Argue has a unique style of big band writing that has been described as big band jazz with an art rock sensibility. I like how he explores extended formal structures, different grooves, and otherwise bends the rules while still keeping at least one foot in the big band tradition. His band, Secret Society, is made up of some of the top jazz musicians around.

Argue has put up some materials for free on his web site that offer advice to jazz composers and arrangers for how to prepare their music so that the musicians are able to most easily read the charts and play your music better. He describes standard notation practices such as how large a font you should print your charts on, what size paper, how to properly beam rhythms, and more.

Darcy James Argue’s Music Preparation Materials

Looking through his materials there’s some stuff in there that I haven’t thought of before and will start adopting in my own charts. It’s very important to prepare your sheet music in the clearest manner and follow standard notation practice in order to get the best first reading of your music and then get the best possible performance. It can be very tedious to spend all that time getting your sheet music to follow all the conventions, but anything that you can do that will make it easier on the musicians who perform your music will only make your music sound better.

The “Payam Method” – Heft or Hype?

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

I’m a bit late on this, but back in May this year 60 Minutes broadcast a report and a followup on a pedagogical system for teaching piano known as the “Payam Method.” This approach is named after its creator, Payam Khastkhodaei, a piano teacher that lives in the Seattle area.

After watching the 60 Minutes piece many of the claims and style of the reporting raised a lot of red flags for me and I bookmarked it and then forgot to do a writeup on it. The other day I came across the bookmark and started organizing my thoughts, but while doing some research I quickly learned that other, more qualified people, have already taken care of this. So I’ve deleted what I had already written and commented on and will leave you with one of the best responses I came across.

I guess that the main thing that bothers me from the 60 Minutes segment is how the reporters didn’t talk to other music teachers to learn how the basic idea Khastkhodaei claims is so unique to his method has been around long before. Music teachers have been selecting music to teach based on student interest since I was a student, and probably long before. Students are encouraged to “play” on their instruments all the time and to try to explore different ways of playing the same thing. Music teachers have been incorporating improvisation and composition into their lessons too. The 60 Minutes segment seems to largely be a fluff piece that comes off as an advertisement rather than actual reporting.