Sketchbook, daily exercises and constraints – free course

People often picture the composer waiting for inspiration to strike like lightning. The reality is far more encouraging: composing is a craft you work at every day, like scales. Bach wrote a cantata a week, Schubert several songs a day. Their secret was not some magic gift but a habit. This lesson gives you three tools to make it yours: the sketchbook, the daily exercise and the constraint.

1. The sketchbook: never lose an idea again

Musical ideas turn up at any time: in the shower, on the bus, while improvising absent-mindedly. And they vanish within minutes. Your sketchbook is where you capture them, all of them, even the humblest.

Voice memos: your phone is the best sketchbook. Sing or hum the idea, even out of tune, and give the file a meaningful name ("melancholy waltz, A minor").
The site's piano roll: perfect for quickly saving an idea played at the keyboard, listening to it and correcting it.
The ABC editor: to jot down a melody and its chords in a few lines of text. A dated text file of ABC sketches becomes a treasure trove over the months.
Paper: manuscript paper, or just a notebook where you write down a rhythm, a chord sequence ("C – Am – F – G, but with F minor at the end?"), a title, an image.

A sketch need not be beautiful or complete. Here is what a sketchbook entry might look like: a few bars, the chords, nothing more.

M:6/8
L:1/8
Q:3/8=60
K:Am
"Am"E3 A2 B | "F"c3 B2 A | "Dm"d3 c2 B | "E"B3 ^G3 |]

Tip: once a month, read back through your sketchbook. Ideas that seemed ordinary on the day will suddenly look full of promise. Half of a composer's pieces grow out of a forgotten sketch.

2. Ten minutes a day

Ten minutes every day are worth more than three hours on Sunday. The key is to finish something small each day: a phrase, a motif, four chords with a melody. Here is a four-week plan:

Week	Theme	Daily exercise (10 min)
1	Motifs	Invent a 2-bar motif, then 3 variations (rhythm, interval, inversion)
2	Phrases	Write an 8-bar question/answer phrase over C – F – G – C
3	Harmony and accompaniment	Take a progression from the progressions page and try a different accompaniment each day (block, waltz, Alberti, broken chords)
4	Small pieces	One 8- to 16-bar miniature a day on a set title ("Rain", "Staircase", "Letter")

3. Constraints, creativity's best friend

A paradox artists know well: faced with total freedom, we freeze; faced with a strict rule, we invent. The Oulipo writers wrote novels without the letter "e"; Bach built the whole Art of Fugue on a single theme. A constraint removes the dizziness of choice and forces you to dig deeper.

Constraint no. 1: only three notes. With C, D and E you can rely neither on range nor on leaps: everything depends on rhythm and repetition. Here is an example; notice the long note in the middle that acts as a breath.

M:4/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
K:C
E2 DC D2 E2 | C4 z2 D2 | E2 ED C2 D2 | C8 |]

Constraint no. 2: a single rhythm. Choose one cell (here, in 3/4, "half note + two eighths") and keep it in every bar; only the pitches change. The constraint automatically creates unity, and the melody has to create the direction.

M:3/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=96
K:C
%%staves {RH LH}
V:RH clef=treble
V:LH clef=bass
[V:RH] "C"c4 BA | "Em"G4 FE | "F"F4 GA | "G"G4 FD | "C"E6 |]
[V:LH] C,6 | E,6 | F,6 | G,,6 | C,6 |]

More constraints to try:

Fixed form: exactly 16 bars in ABA', no more, no less.
Black keys only: the pentatonic scale guarantees pleasant sounds and nudges you towards East Asian or Celtic colours.
The dice game: roll a die to choose the degree of each chord (1 = C, 2 = Dm, 3 = Em, 4 = F, 5 = G, 6 = Am), then compose a melody over the progression chance has given you. Mozart himself is said to have enjoyed a "musical dice game".
The coded name: turn the letters of your name into notes (A, B, C… as Bach did with B-A-C-H, where H is B natural in German) and build a motif from them.
One hand only, or one register only, or no tonic before the last bar.

Common mistakes: waiting for "the right moment" to compose (it never comes); writing down only the ideas you consider brilliant (you can't tell at the time); dropping an unfinished exercise to start another (get into the habit of finishing, even imperfectly); and piling up too many constraints at once: one or two are enough.

Your workshop

Set up your sketchbook: a voice-memo folder on your phone and a text file called "sketches.abc". Date every entry.
Today: write a 4-bar melody using only C, D and E in the piano roll. Only the rhythm and the order of the notes may change.
Tomorrow: roll a die four times to get a progression, try it out in chord progressions, then write an 8-bar melody over it.
The day after: compose 8 bars in 3/4 keeping the same rhythm in every bar, and write them down in the ABC editor.
Follow the four-week plan. At the end, pick your three best sketches: one of them will become a real piece.
Success criterion: after one month, your sketchbook should hold at least 20 entries. Quantity feeds quality.