Gizmo Hall

When I find myself dried up on ideas, I like to analyze my favorite composers, or the ones inspiring me at the time. Are there any composers (you've mentioned Beethoven) that create a sound you're interested in incorporating into your style? Transcribe some of their work, or get your hands on a score of theirs. An analysis of the style your looking to get will definitely give you insight into what your music feels it's lacking. Also, it's possible the sound you're envisioning isn't entirely major in its sonority. There are plenty of ways to color chords and melodies without going fully whole tonal.

A really useful one I had used in college was MacGamut. I've heard recent versions are not very popular, but I've always found it to do the job. Though, you could probably find something similar for free.

I noticed a distinct lack of transcriptions here. While not necessary to composing, I find transcriptions offer up valuable melodic and harmonic ideas. It is great for a performer to transcribe to understand another performer's style, but a composer can easily analyze a solo for its harmonic content. I'm constantly amazed at how soloist like Ronnie Cuber weave in and out of chord changes spontaneously. The first transcription I'm going to post is Dig from his album In A New York Minute in Concert Pitch, Bass, Eb Transposed and Bb Transposed. This is his full, 4 chorus solo, in all its glory. I have also included my analysis of his solo here, in concert bass clef for analysis purposes. Anyone else doing the transcriptions? Do you find it useful? What, for you, is the most difficult part of transcribing? What do you find the most useful to transcribe? What's your favorite transcription youve made? The wonderful thing about transcriptions is that they only get easier the longer you do them. I find saxophonists the most useful to transcribe (but that might be because I'm a saxophonist), and big band arrangements (although those can be seriously difficult to transcribe, totally worth it). My favorite transcription I've made was of Ronnie Cuber's solo on Mingus' Moanin'

I'm really digging the originality of Cheese at Night, especially how the piece gravitated around the one three note motif (That first eighth note line that starts D-G-Bb-Hold, D-G-C-Hold). It just kept drawing me back in, noticing new interactions as it passed through different harmonies. And now its stuck in my head.

A truly amazing resourceful book is Sammy Nestico's The Complete Arranger. Not only does it have tons of info on arranging, it has tons of Sammy's scores inside for analysis.