In this opening segment of J. Anthony Allen’s talk, he shares two vivid analogies—a teacher’s advice for orchestral writing and Michelangelo’s carving approach—to illustrate how composers can simplify the daunting task of starting a piece. He explains that giving every instrument the same pitch (middle C) creates an instantly cohesive sound, just as removing excess stone reveals a statue. From these metaphors he moves to concrete creative‑thinking exercises designed to help composers generate the first notes and sustain momentum. He promises a list of practical methods, beginning with his favorite technique for getting the first note onto the page when a composer feels stuck.
Chapters
What comes first? How do we start? Let me start by telling you a story really quick. One of my teachers once, I was writing an orchestra piece, and I came to him and said, okay, I'm gonna write this piece for a full orchestra. It's like a hundred people on stage, tons of different musicians. I can literally do anything I want. I've got a big piece of blank paper in front of me, and I have no idea how to start this thing. And his advice was his brilliant advice. He said, here's what you need to remember about the orchestra. If you give everybody in the orchestra the same pitch, you tell everybody to play middle C. And you just say, okay, play. Everyone play middle C. You know, the same volume, the same everything, it's going to sound beautiful. The orchestra has evolved in a way that it sounds be beautiful all the time. So by default, that ensemble sounds awesome. So all you really have to do when you're writing for orchestra, not screw that up. It's a bit like thinking about the. I think Michelangelo, I think it was, did the statue of David. Is that right? When he did it, people said, how did you. How did you do that? How did you carve this statue of David, this beautiful thing? He said, well, I took a huge chunk of stone and I just sliced away everything that wasn't the statue of David. You know, like, it sounds so easy, but it's obviously not. But sometimes all you really need to do is get your head thinking differently, and then the doors start opening up for what needs to happen. So what I want to do in this section is talk about how to open some of those doors in your head. These are kind of creative thinking exercises, ways of getting started, and in many ways, ways of keeping going. So some of these ideas are ways to write a whole piece. Some of them are ways to just get. Get the first couple notes on the page, and then hopefully everything starts to come together after that. So let's dive in. This is a. I'm going to give you a list of a handful of mine. Maybe more later, but for now, let's start with one that is one of my favorite ones. And students always scratch their head when I tell them this. But this. This is how to get your first note on the page when you're writing a music. When you're writing a piece of music and you just don't know where to start.
