Young Composers 2019

I'll be honest, this is truly one of my favorite blog posts to write every year. I'm just so thrilled to unveil our student compositions! And this summer I was particularly excited to relaunch the Young Composers summer program after having to pause it last year due to the studio relocating. Having a composing focus rolled back into our regular summer curriculum reflects the value this studio places on creativity and self-expression as a crucial part of learning to play an instrument.

Composing & notating music is also a terrific way to apply music theory knowledge and gain a more fluent understanding of the concepts learned in lessons. And that's definitely something we saw happening this year! So many students, from beginning through advanced levels, impressed me with their ability to take what they were playing on the piano and translate that into sheet music using the notation software with very minimal guidance. And then we went one step further and during our last week of summer lessons, had mini recording sessions where we recorded each of their tracks for our album.

This year we had 25 students who wrote original pieces of music, and we saw so much creativity, thoughtfulness and musicianship demonstrated by in the process. And so, without any further ado, here is our Young Composers 2019 book & album! [insert fanfare here]

Click here, or on the image below to view this year's digital songbook with all 25 compositions.

Young Composers 2019 Book

And using the audio player below, you can listen to the Young Composers 2019 album:



All sheet music was created using Noteflight Learn, and recordings were done in Garage Band on a Yamaha P-85 digital piano. I intentionally choose to use Noteflight & Garage Band for this project because they are immediately accessible (read: free to use or download) for students who after learning how to compose and record, may want to continue writing more music at home.

If you'd like to see past years of the Young Composers project, or to learn more about it, check out this collection of blog posts that all relate to this annual studio project.