Composing is composing

I just finished writing a piano quartet. It’s the first piano quartet that I’ve ever written. I wrote it to submit to the Hear Now Festival. It’s a new music festival here in Southern California that happens every year and they perform a number of new works by living composers. It usually last a weekend long with two or three concerts.

I’ve never submitted anything and wanted to make sure that I start submitting my music to different competitions and readings.

So I wrote a new piece.

It’s the first thing I’ve written for acoustic instruments since 2016 (when I was at Berklee College of Music). I originally thought that getting back into writing concert music would be difficult and take a lot of effort, but it didn’t. Because I’ve been writing music since then I’ve kept up my music writing chops. I’ve also been lucky enough to conduct a youth orchestra and have arranged a number of pieces for them. That’s kept my Finale chops improving as well.

So one thing I’ve learned from writing this piece is that composing is composing. Writing music is writing music. Even if it’s a slightly different style or the instrumentation is different, it’s all still the same thing; writing music.

If you’re writing electronic music, but still thinking about music the same way you would as if you were writing for orchestra it’ll likely help your orchestral writing. It obviously won’t help it as much as writing for orchestra, but it’ll keep that skill improving and getting better.

So keep writing. Even if it’s a different style.

Keep writing.