Theoretical Sketching - Part 1 (Layout & Materials)

I personally use this approach to compose music when I am away from my studio and I am either feeling the desire to create music in a natural setting, like at the beach or when performing such mundane tasks as, waiting at the airport, taking a flight, etc… 

In our modern world the convenience of having our lap-tops with us is absolutely a wonderful option for mobile composing and I certainly encourage using them.  However, until computers are impervious to sand, water, heat, etc… containing unlimited battery life with no need for electricity and are as light as a piece of paper. I will personally continue to use sketch paper as my method of choice.

The composer's individual choice of sketch paper is of course their own. I have attached one my own personal preferences created in Sibelius years ago. It is in landscape layout form with eight bars per page on legal size 24lb. paper. 

I feel this weight of paper is much more conducive for writing on and it's weight can certainly take more erasing than traditional paper and feels better to the touch… I would also suggest picking up a kneaded art eraser for they are ideal for heavy erasing without destroying the grain of the paper.

                                                                           (Click once on image for full-size)


Regarding the staff layout... the instruments names are left blank in order to be filled in based on project demands, I prefer to think of it in traditional score layout form with the winds, brass, percs and then strings located from top to bottom respectively, I use two treble and two bass clefs for the wind and brass families… two percussion lines, and finally conventional string configuration. 

I have also created numerous other sketch sheet layouts for use with different genre's of music such as Big-Band, Jazz Combos, etc… and I would suggest doing so if your needs also require it.

I strongly recommend that as your own personal knowledge and skills develop, try and move away from pencil and more to the use of pen. I believe that when you are ready to actually commit ink to paper you have generally thought things out very clearly in your mind first. This is a great goal to strive for and I know from my personal experience that once you have you will then consider yourself to be a true composer of music.

Thank you for your patience regarding these preliminaries and I look forward to starting the actual musical sketching process in my next blog… Theoretical Sketching - Part 2 (Conception).