Music Writing Paper

Has the article been through a peer-review process?

Look for books and scores related to your topic in UNISTAR.

Look for articles on your topic in peer-reviewed journals.

Which elements from your notes strike you as important or interesting?

Write down an outline of the important points from your notes that you want to address in the paper.

I really don't recommend using music that can be repeated nonstop.

Music Writing Paper Critical Thinking Skills By Stella Cottrell

A successful term paper is the result of examining a topic or question through the reading, analysis, and synthesis of a variety of sources of information.Week 11: Create an outline of your paper and write a first draft. Consult a guide to writing about music (Irvine, Bellman, or Wingell) to learn how to incorporate musical examples into the paper. Does it contain the essential information from your notes? Does the information in the paper actually support your thesis statement at the beginning of the paper? Clean up the citations in the body of the paper and make sure the bibliography lists every source that you cite in the paper. Do not rely solely on your computer’s spell check function. Print out two copies of the final paper (one to turn in and one to keep).Although it seems obvious, you should explore topics that are directly related to the class that you are taking.For instance, if you are in symphonic literature class, a paper on jazz great Charlie Parker, while interesting, doesn’t really have anything to do with the focus of the class, while a paper on Haydn’s use of monothematicism in his symphonies is directly related to the content of the course.Avoid overly broad topics like “Romantic Music” and too narrowly focused topics like “Cross-Dressing Bolivian Flutists of the Rococo”.Read your important sources carefully and critically.Do not accept everything that you read as fact or truth. Is the book or article written by a recognized scholar in the field?Successful papers require adequate time to find and evaluate sources of information, read and reflect on the information, take notes, create an outline, and write a first draft, a second revised draft, and a third and final version. Term papers should be the result of 11-14 weeks of effort and activity.It is important to establish a timeline for completing the various steps needed in the creation of a term paper.Fortunately, computer technology allows us to much more easily generate sheet music, transposing sound directly onto the staff.If you want to learn to do it the old-fashioned way, though, you can start with the basics and develop more complex compositions.