Fun Fridays: Composing a Melody

Fun Fridays offer a refreshing mid-day break from work to indulge in physical, mental, or creative activity.

Using her piano and examples of other artists, Joo walked the audience through the detailed process and several aspects of writing a melody like “Where to start?” and “What do I need to consider to make it work?” From years of teaching composition courses, Joo shared how to crave your musical creativity.

Joo Park, is a composer and pianist. She seeks to write music that explores the dual nature of existence: simple and complex, obsessive and impulsive, serious and humorous, and tonal and atonal. She wants to create music that combines fascinating musical traditions, such as tonality and counterpoint, with her approach to timbre, chords, fast-changing meters, and texture. She intends to create music that is positive and easy to listen to, and yet intellectual.

Joo is the author of the book Musical Creativity in Composition and Improvisation, published by Springer. Her CD, Passionate Message, published by Silkheart, contains six of her compositions and piano performances. She received a PhD in Composition at the University of Minnesota. She is assistant professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music.