Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

This pdf ebook is a reissue of a classic AMC education resource, Andrew Ford's Inventing Music. "A beginner course in composition suited to those who have not composed before", the kit was originally published in 1991 and aimed particularly at secondary school students and teachers, although the majority of the exercises could also be used with primary students.

The pdf ebook is available from the AMC as a free download.

At the time of the reissue in April 2015, Andrew Ford wrote:

"Coming back to Inventing Music today, nearly a quarter of a century after it first appeared in print and almost as long since I last read the text, the main thing that surprises me is that I had the gall to write it. I don't think I'd have it today. Yet the fundamentals seem about right.

The book was specifically designed for senior high school students tackling composition in their final years at school. In 1991, this was a relatively new phenomenon. But while today we continually hear how the school music education in Australia must improve (and it must), composition is now more or less a core activity and teachers feel more confident about teaching it. Indeed it might be argued that a text such as Inventing Music is almost redundant, not least because many of the exercises it proposes are rather basic. I don't agree. I think we can always return to the basics of musical composition - to the basics of music - with profit, and it is the basic exercises in Inventing Music I like the best.

Writing the original foreword to the book, I stressed that while aimed at senior high school students, the majority of the exercises could be used with primary students and also with professionals. It remains true. When we return to the simplest building blocks of music, we are obliged to confront the very nature of the art. That's always a good thing. And that, I hope, is what remains useful about Inventing Music."

> Read a longer version of Ford's article on Resonate