Composition & Songwriting

One of the skills you will be developing this year is creating your own original music. This is a chance for you to explore your creativity, experiment, collaborate, and develop your own musicianship. 

Throughout this course you will complete a range of composition based activities. Some of these will remain simply an activity, while you may choose to develop others further into larger pieces. 

The culmination of your activities will be a complete 2 Original Compositions that have been developed , edited, and submitted to your teacher. 

One of these pieces will be a song . The other will be instrumental

The due dates for these will be communicated to you by your teacher. 

Composition Activities

Composition 1 - Instrumental

• This piece should highlight or showcase a particular instrument. You can do this in any way, but you will need to think about how it sounds, capabilities, how it sounds with other instruments, what styles it is associated with etc. 

• This piece can be in any style and using any method (notated, DAW) 

• Should be at least 48 bars long or around 2.30 minutes in length

• Notation must be clear - you should consider using notation software like MuseScore. 

• If you are writing for a live instrument ensure all music is physically playable - check with your teacher if you are unsure. 

• If you generate a score, ensure you have a title, composer, and all other relevant score information. If you are using a DAW, you will need screenshots and annotations. 

• You will need to submit your audio (MP3) and your score/screenshots with annotation as a PDF. 

Composition 2 - Song 

• You will write a song - both the words and the accompaniment. 

• You can write the words about anything you want. Your teacher will give you activities and opportunities to practice writing lyrics. 

• Your accompaniment can be simple chords on a guitar/ukulele or piano, or you may wish to create something more substantial. You may use a DAW to create an accompaniment and record your vocals. 

• You do not have to be the singer - you can have someone else sing your piece. however, you must include both vocals and accompaniment in your audio submission. 

• You will submit both the audio as an MP3 and a lyric sheet with chords and/score. If you use a DAW, you will also need to include screenshots. 

For both of these completed pieces, use what you have learned through the practice activities this year and previous years. . 

• Make sure your pieces make sense stylistically. 

• Ensure your melodies and harmonies work together

• Make sure your pieces have structures/forms that make sense musically. 

• Ensure your musical ideas are developed. 

• Present your pieces clearly and appropriately to the style. 

You Teacher will give you a timeframe and expect to see draft work regularly. 

You may be looking for inspiration or motivation. Consider the following as creative starting points:

• Live or recorded music 

• Programmatic music

• Media imagery (e.g. film, TV, computer generated, static image)

• A piece of writing

• A movement sequence

• A lived experience that had some impact on you

• An emotional, physical or spiritual state of being

• An ethnic or cultural experience

• Sounds around us: either found, natural, acoustic or electronic

• A catchy idea, riff or ostinato

As you experiment with your ideas for your music, consider ways of:

• Creating unity and contrast 

• Developing or extending your ideas

• Creating sounds through non-traditional means

• Manipulating your ideas using the elements of music

• Building and releasing tension 

• Establishing/maintaining/varying mood

You will be assessed holistically based on both of these pieces. Use the rubric below to self assess your progress.