Templates

Something that can save you a lot of time when writing music, planning to teach music, creating music on your computer, or arranging or composing music in a notation program is using templates.

I know this is something that’s a little basic, but it can save you a lot of setup time because you’ll have everything ready to go at the beginning. It might seem unnecessary, but when you need to do something quickly it can be incredibly useful.

For writing music by hand maybe that means keeping a sheet of music that’s already arranged for different ensembles that you either special order or that you photo copy. I personally don’t keep a template for writing music by hand, but most of the time I write by hand I only write a piano sketch and orchestrate it later. I do however use a number of notebooks for this purpose to keep everything together, and it’s always the same type of manuscript paper. A composer friend of mine orders music manuscript paper from Judy Green Music and he finds the paper they have incredibly useful.

For planning to teach music maybe that means keeping a document with the different sections of a lesson already labelled and setup. I keep an electronic version and printed versions of this because I plan much better and remember much better when I write stuff out by hand. It has places for me to write the grade level, time allotment, topic, unit, and different sections of the lesson. Those sections are Introduction, Direct Instruction, Guided Practice, Check for Understanding, Independent Practice, and Closing. I don’t always follow this exact format, but it’s easy for me to plan and fill out those sections when I’m planning. Having this simple template helps me save a little bit of time whenever I plan my lessons.

For making music on your computer that could mean keeping a template in your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that has a number of virtual instrument tracks and effects tracks already setup. I also have a template in Pro Tools for making mockups of orchestral music. I don’t use it super often, but having it makes it just a bit easier and quicker to create. I use Albion One for my template so that I can sketch things quickly. I know this topic is a whole long conversation among media composers, but I keep mine simple for the use of making quick sketches. My computer also likely won’t be able to handle having every sample library I own open all at once. So I keep a template with Albion One. It’s simple and just has three sections for woodwinds and brass; high, middle, and low. It has two sections for strings; high and low. For percussion I have a few common instruments that I often use like harp, glockenspiel, bass drum, snare drum, and cymbals. I route all of this to two different reverbs; a convolution reverb and an algorithmic reverb. This might sound complicated, but in terms of media composition templates this is quite bare bones.

Lastly for composing or arranging music on a notation program I have a few templates in Finale. The program comes with preset templates that are quite useful, but I have one for my different orchestra classes that I teach. It includes the different instruments that I have; flute, clarinet, saxophone, and strings. This way I can arranged songs quickly and copy and paste music between the different sections easily. Not all of my classes have all of those instruments, but it’s easier to delete a whole instrument than to add an instrument in.

If there’s something that you repeatedly do it can be useful to create a template to use to make it just a little bit faster and easier to complete.

I hope this information was useful in figuring out how you can make some templates of your own.

ISJ