Research for composer Thomas McKenney often takes the shape of such activities as score studies. That is, before McKenney begins to write a piece, he examines what other composers have done. While research informs his creative process, helping to get the creative juices flowing, McKenney then strives to put aside the research and focus on what he wants to do with his own composition.

Johann Sebastian Bach was very much a tonal composer who wrote contrapuntal compositions, “which are linear in design with some vertical concepts as well.” For example, Bach would have the basses sing the melody at one point, and the altos later, creating a linear, contrapuntal design. Through such research into the work of other composers, McKenney seeks to understand how other composers have handled a certain idea, concept, or technique.

Tonality refers to the tendency of music to gravitate toward or around a pitch (or pitch class). It’s a kind of harmonic vocabulary frequently used by composers, so that “as long as there’s some pitch that’s pulling everything to it, we refer to it as ‘tonal,’” he explains, playing some chords to illustrate the tonal concept that influences and is defined by Western ears. According to legend, when Mozart sat down one evening and wrote the overture to Don Giovani, the ink was still wet when he gave it to the players. We marvel at this kind of prolific genius, yet music theorist Morton Subotnick contended that “Mozart was really improvising within a tonal system that was already set for him. He didn’t have to be concerned about the harmonic function of stuff.” One chord seemed to lead naturally to another. “The problem for twentieth-century composers,” says McKenney, “is that they must design their own tonal systems.” One might see this freedom as a blessing, but McKenney contends that, as far as composing music goes, sometimes too much freedom isn’t a blessing at all: “At some point in time, you have to put shackles on yourself and limit yourself; otherwise, it can be chaotic as far as the piece goes.”

McKenney combines pencil and paper composition methods with Finale, a professional musical transcription program. McKenney describes the pros and cons of using computer software to compose music. Mostly he uses such programs for playback (comparable to a word processor)--to check for wrong notes--and to transcribe his writing into a form that other people can read and then perform accurately. “You can’t really know until the live performance whether everything is going to work together the way you think it’s going to. You hope your ear hasn’t deceived you.” In spite of its speech synthesis ability, however, “the computer can’t sing a text.” Lacking the nuances of live performance, the computerized voices “sometimes sound like a dead woman’s choir.” Although these programs can’t reproduce the real musical instruments faithfully, McKenney still finds them useful. Listen to his recently composed choral piece, “Come Spirit Come,” as rendered via the music software program Finale.