The joy (and importance) of maintaining your musical compost pile

Writing every day—even if just a little ditty that you file away—you build up a substantial library of ideas that could blossom at a moment's notice

A pile of compost in my garden last spring

About a year ago while I was investigating and playing around with Prokofiev’s technique of writing scale-line melodies (with a leap!), I cooked this one up (which bears no resemblance to Prokofiev) and made a multitrack recording of it, setting it into motion with a chugging rhythm and chord progression that’s reminiscent of David Maslanka and some kind of pop song:

It’s got a kind of pop-y lullaby vibe that I really like, but I didn’t have a place for it in anything I was writing; the idea didn’t seem to want to be bigger than a minute long, so I tossed it into my compost pile of musical material where it could mature—or maybe where I could mature—ready when I needed it.

Fast forward to last month and I needed to hit send on a piece of music for a premiere, but the movement where the music pivots from a predominantly dark character to predominantly light wasn’t completely convincing to me. So I started pawing through my compost pile to inspire (quickly!) a new pivot point.

Digging through the compost pile

In my musical compost pile, ideas are organized by their level of “completeness” or “cookedness” - a purely subjective determination - ranging from 25% to 75% and organized by if it’s a melodic idea, a textural idea, or a harmonic idea.

Other than that, there isn’t much ordering beyond the vague name I’ve given each idea, which encourages (sometimes serendipitously, sometimes annoyingly when you’re in a rush) you to comb through each idea in the pile to remind yourself of what’s in it and if anything is ready for the moment - analogous to periodically turning your compost pile to allow air and light in to speed the process of decomposition (or in my case, composition!).

So I took a dive into my 75% pile hoping something would reach out and grab me that was mostly done given the short time. Before much rummaging, I came across a file named “Fleeting sweetness” that seemed to vaguely describe the gentle touch I thought was needed.

Upon listening to it for the first time in a year, I knew I had something I could work with that had the gentle uplifting feeling I was looking for. It was also fully orchestrated and self-contained and wouldn’t need much tinkering.

Sanding off the edges

However, getting into and out of the new section would be a bit of a challenge; I would need to sand off some of the edges.

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For starters, the chipper way the rhythmic vamp begins doesn’t really fit well with the mood of the music that comes before, which has a rather stern and dark character.

Here’s the music right before the breaking off point:

And here’s the beginning of the new music to add in:

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The ending of the new music is lovely but abrupt and doesn’t nicely or harmonically dovetail into the ending section of the movement.

Here’s the ending of the new music originally:

And here’s where the original music picks back up:

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Finally, the climax is a little too loud and full for what this movement needs to be - more of a sequence of passing dreams than something triumphant. Thinning out some of the textures and bringing the dynamics down while motivically tying this section in with the surrounding original music can make this moment feel more organic. In the screenshot of the climax of this section below, note the only forte dynamic is in the melodic line. Also note the passing 16th notes snuck into the alto accompaniment part, connecting this new middle section to the original outsides.

The result

In about two days I was able to identify a need in the music, paw through my pile of ideas, and shoehorn one of them in that now serves as the keystone of the piece, making the journey from dark to light feel much more natural. And this is all because most days, I’m writing something—even if I’m not working on a specific piece—and I’m filing it away where someday I can find it when I need it.

Somehow, an important part of the process is that my compost pile is organized but not TOO organized, which encourages more exploration and stumbling upon things that might unexpectedly work or might be useful a month from now but that you’d forgotten about.

Here’s the original full movement, before the addition:

And here is the movement with the new section, with the edges “sanded off” and internally amended as needed to fit more naturally:

This music forms the 3rd movement of my piece Morning Comes Always for saxophone ensemble, to be premiered by the South Sound Saxophone Ensemble directed by Dr. Erik Steighner in October of this year (2024).