Ken's Blog #9
Why Composers Need to Talk to Each Other More
Composing is, by its nature, a solitary profession.
Most of us spend our days alone with our thoughts, our instruments, and increasingly, our computers. We wrestle with melodies, deadlines, orchestration challenges, technology, and the occasional existential question about whether anyone will ever hear the cue we’re working on.
The past few months have reminded me why getting out of the studio matters.
I recently had lunch with composers Jerome Gilmer and Ofer Ben-Amots, and also a late-night beer with video game composer Bonny Baez. Three great composers. Three very different careers. Three different musical worlds.
Yet I walked away from each conversation energized.
What struck me wasn’t how different our careers have been, but how much common ground we share. Whether writing concert music, teaching, scoring video games, composing for film, or creating production music, we all face many of the same questions.
How do we stay creative?
How do we adapt to a changing industry?
How do we balance artistic aspirations with the practical realities of making a living?
How do we continue growing after years—or decades—of writing music?
The answers are different for each composer, but the conversations themselves are invaluable.
There is a tendency among composers to work in isolation. We become so focused on our own projects that we sometimes forget there is a larger creative community around us. Yet every meaningful conversation with another composer seems to open a door. A new idea emerges. A different perspective appears. A challenge that felt unique suddenly turns out to be shared by many others.
I’ve discovered that some of my best professional development hasn’t come from just a book, a class, or a conference. It has come from sitting across the table from another composer and simply talking.
Not networking.
Not competing.
Not comparing résumés.
Just talking.
Listening to another composer’s journey reminds us that there is no single path through a creative life. Some careers are built in academia. Others in film, television, games, libraries, concert halls, or combinations of all of the above. Every path is different, and every path contains lessons worth hearing.
After over four decades of writing music—and a lifetime admiring composers—I’ve come to appreciate these conversations more than ever. They remind me that while we often create alone, we don’t have to navigate the journey alone.
A good conversation with another composer won’t write the next piece for you.
But it just might help you hear it more clearly.
Ken's Blog #8
“The AI didn't replace the composer.
It replaced the empty room.”
I expected a calculator.
Instead, I found myself having the kind of conversations I once had at Juilliard — long, searching discussions about structure, pacing, orchestration, and whether an idea was truly saying what it needed to say. At times, the experience has felt strangely familiar, as though Vincent Persichetti and Stanley Wolfe were once again leaning over my shoulder, asking questions, nudging me forward, and reminding me to trust the music and keep working through the uncertainty.
In other words, what I found was not a machine generating answers, but a remarkably useful conversational partner in the composing process.
For most of my career, writing music meant sitting alone in a room with manuscript paper, a piano, and eventually a computer screen. There are wonderful moments in that process, but also long stretches of uncertainty that nobody really talks about. You write eight bars, then delete six. You wonder whether an idea is clever or terrible. You question form, pacing, orchestration, and even whether you should continue at all that day.
That solitude has always been part of the profession.
Recently, almost by accident, I began using AI during the writing process. Not to write music for me, and certainly not to replace musicians or composers, but as a kind of ongoing conversation while I worked.
To my surprise, it became genuinely useful.
Not because it generated finished art. It doesn’t. The music is still mine, every note of it. But it helped in ways I did not expect: discussing form, reacting to titles, helping me think through ensemble sizes, suggesting alternative approaches to structure, and sometimes simply helping me continue moving forward when a project felt stuck.
In other words, the AI didn’t replace the composer.
It replaced the empty room.
That distinction matters.
Composing has always involved an enormous amount of internal dialogue. What AI offered was an external version of that dialogue — available instantly, endlessly patient, and oddly effective at helping organize creative thought without demanding ownership of the work itself.
I understand the fear surrounding AI in the arts.
Some of it is justified. But my own experience has been far less dramatic and far more practical. I have not found a machine capable of replacing artistic identity, life experience, emotional intuition, or musical taste. What I found instead was a tool that helped reduce friction between ideas and execution.
Oddly enough, it has made me feel more creative, not less.
That may ultimately be the most important point. Creativity is not merely the production of material; it is the ability to remain engaged, curious, and willing to continue exploring despite uncertainty. Anything that helps sustain that process without diminishing the humanity behind the work deserves, at the very least, thoughtful consideration.
And perhaps even more surprisingly, it has made the process feel a little less isolated — although I should immediately point out that my wife has never allowed me to spend much time feeling isolated in the first place. She remains, quite enthusiastically, my most consistent conversational partner.
