I’ve been leafing through Bill Russo’s book Jazz Composition & Orchestration for some ideas and inspiration and came across the following eight points to consider for composers wanting to have their music performed. It’s good advice, particularly for inexperienced composers.
- Write in medium registers for all the instruments
- Give the brass instruments frequent and long rests
- Deal with one aspect of composition at a time
- Write a sketch score and then a full score
- Be sure that both the score and the extracted parts are legible and that they correspond to each other completely
- Know the orchestra you are writing for and give crucial passages to the best players
- Construct parts that are enjoyable to perform
- Be brave, if your work is unpalatable to the “hip” crowd, but be careful to learn what they have to teach you and avoid attacking theme merely to disguise your own deficiencies.
If I could be so bold, I’ll add:
- When looking for new musical material see if you can derive it from motives already in the piece
What would you add?
