MapLabs — Modeling Music

“Mapping” has double meaning. A road atlas measures and records all the routes through a given territory. But we also call “mapping” the creative act of planning out a journey, using map information to choose between many possible routes. Composers use an array of processes to map out a musical journey. Designing a piece entails making a storytelling rhetoric, a pacing plan, and an architecture of interrelated components. 

Each Map Lab in Mapping the Music Universe presents step-by-step recipes to compose simple pieces based on models of different musical genres. Each lab also includes an original sample piece following the Map Lab guidelines, illustrating one possible creative path and outcome.

Try your own experiment with any of these lab projects:

MapLab 1. Generate a Gymnopédie

MapLab 2. Sketch a Song

MapLab 3. Construct a Canon

MapLab 4. Model a Metamorphosis

MapLab 5. Spin a Solo

MapLab 6. Paint a Landscape

MapLab 7. Twelve-Tonal Trichords in a Ternary Trio

MapLab 8. A Small Sonata

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