Joseph Sowa

90% of writing music is really just three steps on repeat:

1. Pulling out your staff paper, DAW, or notation app
2. Putting notes on the page
3. Deciding to keep them, change them, or scrap them.

Everything else is at the service of these three steps.

Calling someone a “tonal” (or “atonal”) composer is like identifying a writer by the language they write in.

It tells you next to nothing about their music.

Quote to stick on your mirror:

"Don't be a genius in every bar" — Gabriel Fauré

Great music is NOT relentlessly complex. It balances brilliant ideas with moments that breathe and relax.

Following this principle makes your music easier for your audience to grasp—and easier for you to write.

This mindset shift—from seeking external validation to embracing personal agency—has been far more valuable than any music theory I've learned.

What mental blocks have you had to overcome in your artistic journey? How have you reclaimed your creative agency?

That meant acknowledging that no curriculum, no teacher, no book would ever teach me everything I needed to know about MY music.

The most liberating moment in my development came when I realized: I am the author not just of my music, but of my relationship to music itself.

Again, to be clear: universities are a treasure, and I had many fine teachers who helped me overcome my misconceptions.

But, ultimately, my mentors and music degrees could only take me so far.

At some point, I had to take radical responsibility for my own musical growth.

As a result, I tied myself in knots trying to satisfy supposed aesthetic imperatives that had little basis in reality.

Though this was my experience as a product of musical higher ed, I know I'm FAR from the only one who got lost in this way.

Such misconceptions held me captive for years. Here's why:

1. They replaced the truth of how music works with fairy tales that had just enough predictive accuracy to be believable.
2. They short-circuited my curiosity with value judgments
3. They undermined my trust in following my musical truth

Other times, my "shallow music theory" misconceptions were broad:

- That theory can summed up in relation to keeping or breaking rules
- That common practice tonality is superior to other styles
- That atonal music is worlds apart from tonal music

When I had a shallow view of theory, I labored under so many misconceptions.

Sometimes, my misconceptions were very specific:

- That all time signatures tell you the number of beats in a bar
- That 7th and 9th chords are somehow more sophisticated than triads
- That parallel fifths are always bad

To be clear: Music theory itself wasn't the problem.

The insights of folks like Riemann, Schachter, Tymoczko, and Hanninen have tremendous value.

But most music theory training ends WELL before covering their ideas—so like many musicians, until I got there, I assumed these basics were all there is

Music theory, as commonly taught, does three things. It:

1. Explains staff notation and music fundamentals (e.g., rhythm, intervals, etc.)
2. Describes what is normative to a specific repertoire, focusing on harmony
3. Gives watered-down recipes to recreate those norms

Like many, I missed the memo

99% of the time I've felt overwhelmed as a composer:

It had nothing to do with composing itself . . .

And everything to do with how I *thought* about composing.

Here's one example: music theory...

What Seth Godin said to marketers is equally true for composers: “The challenge is to find a point of view if you don’t have one yet.”

What is your music's . . . ?

Style
Genre
Function
Materials
Audience
Aesthetics
Inspiration
Motivations

Answer this and you unlock your artistic voice.

Classical musicians receive years of theory training, but many still fear composing. Why?

1. "I can't compete with Beethoven."
2. "My peers will laugh at me."
3. "I'm not creative enough."

What other reasons have stopped you in the past?

Classical musicians play to a LOT of music, but many fear composing. Asking these 3 Qs about the music I played gave me courage:

- What details excite me, delight me, or stand out?
- What if this were different?
- What if I tried it?

Tomorrow's masterpieces only come from today's experiments.

If you like composing tips like this, you'll love my newsletter:

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Most of all, it doesn't have to take a car wreck and more than a decade of your life to learn these things.

That's why I founded the Wizarding School for Composers. Because I discovered:

• Writing music can be fluent and joyful.
• Your music matters because YOU matter.
• The magic of creating and sharing music with others isn’t limited to a talented few who are lucky to win all the opportunities.

Anyone who's been through a music composition program knows I'm not alone in this struggle.

Many composers end up quitting music entirely.

For many, it's the right choice.

But what if the choice to stay or leave music didn't come down to whether you want to live in unending artistic stress?

This experience taught me something crucial:

I needed to find a way to lower the emotional cost of creating art.

If writing music was truly as stressful as it felt then, it wouldn't be worth doing.

But that hope wasn't genuine—it was a healing fantasy that the career and relationships I wanted would come after putting in "enough of the right work."

The dream I was chasing before the crash.

Looking back, I realize the piece was an unconscious artistic response to the crash.

Each movement explored different forms of anxiety, eventually leading to a single cathartic movement of hope.

Two years later, I received my first major commission from the Barlow Endowment.

It became the most difficult piece I'd ever written—not just because my ambition outstripped my abilities.

I was fine, but the car—and my pride—were totaled.

This was the final blow atop my precarious balance of obligations. My world became gray, my work a drudgery.

I saw the oncoming car off in the distance—and was convinced they also saw me and I'd have plenty of time to cross.

Instead, I got a firsthand lesson in what a side-on, 45-mph collision feels like.

My car went spinning, I swore, and we finally skidded to a stop 100 feet down the road.

My composer friends and I had secured a grant to write and record seven new pieces—our ticket to career success.

Everything was going according to plan...

Until I crashed my brother's car on the way to our recording session.

It shouldn't take a car wreck to inspire you to write beautiful music—but that's what it took for me.

My junior year of college, I was drowning:

• Heavy course load
• 20 hours of work weekly
• Fresh out of a breakup.

But I had big dreams. 🧵

Composers — what was the biggest thing you had to unlearn after graduating from music school?

I'll start: Career success is directly proportional to your technical skills. (It's certainly true up to a point, after which it increasingly isn't.)

If you like composing tips like this, you'll love my newsletter:

• Gain music cognition insights to boost your music
• Get frameworks for maintaining creative momentum
• Access resources for developing your artistic voice

Join 750+ subscribers here: composersschool.com/newsletter