By Dan Visconti
Good composers borrow. Great composers steal.

By Dan Visconti
These comments are specifically aimed at those enrolling in colleges and universities, not because it is the only path available for a compositional education, but rather because the academic environment is often particularly confusing, full of distracting funhouse mirrors that tend to distort the problem of learning how to be a composer instead of illuminating it.

By Dan Visconti
I’ve begun a month-long stay at Aaron Copland’s former house, and a few glances through old photos reveal that I am indeed using the same butt-cushion that A.C. did. These kinds of silly epiphanies are a welcome counterbalance to the sense of weight that comes from composing at the home of the guy who composed Fanfare for the Common Man.

By Dan Visconti
While on the surface it might seem that synced scoring and stage scoring were close cousins, the sudden juxtaposition of the two has only made clearer what a laughable comparison this actually is.

By Dan Visconti

I began working on a commercial scoring project with a video artist this week, and although the collaboration has been very fruitful it’s also been riddled with minor awkwardness and misunderstandings that come with trying to communicate musical concepts to non-musicians.

By Dan Visconti
The only requirement for membership in the Portsmouth Sinfonia is that individual performers play an instrument in which they were not proficient.

By Dan Visconti
So much of human history was lived in the precious available daylight, with activities after nightfall severely limited; music must have been one of the only forms of creative expression available to humans after nightfall.

By Dan Visconti
While it’s certainly worth emphasizing the fact that a great many composers create works outside the traditions of notated music (and that others still engage in that noble practice of hand-calligraphy), it’s staggering to consider that perhaps 80 percent of all that passes for “new music” has been run through either Finale or Sibelius.

By Dan Visconti
Seeing someone turn into a blueberry in a quasi-realistic way via movie special effects taps into different creative opportunities and challenges than doing so with live singers and orchestra.

By Dan Visconti
Before spending all of last week composing against a metronome beat (whether thinking, playing, or entering music), I was unaware that I tend to compose in an imagined tempo range, a vague limbo that sometimes was too wide a range.