In working with student composers, I have discovered that students struggle with 2 major areas of composition: melody and form. These trouble areas tend to manifest themselves in the following ways:
- Too many motivic ideas in one piece
- Too much repetition (too few ideas)
- Compositions are too long
- Ideas are not well developed
As a result, student compositions are often too long, too repetitious, or too busy sounding.
I know I’m not the only one that has noticed this. Speaking about a composition event that he judged, Robert Vandall recently told me, “I noticed that students did not really grasp the idea of form. They put too many ideas into one piece.” I think that these issues are true of most composition students with the exception of a few. If you find this to be true of your student composers, I hope you will take a moment to comment and sign up for the rss feed or email updates (on the right: Subscription Options) as I will be posting some ideas for tackling these issues in the near future. As always, your ideas are also welcome.
