Online composition lessons

Lessons usually take place on Zoom. It works smoothly across devices and is well suited to composition teaching: we can share the score on screen, listen, mark passages directly with a digital pen, compare alternatives and discuss revisions in detail.

Lessons are usually arranged one at a time, or at a fixed weekly or fortnightly slot if you prefer. I do not require fixed times, lessons paid in advance, or any subscription. Most students come once a week or every other week; some once a month, and some several times a week when they want maximum feedback.

I teach on Central European Time (Copenhagen, UTC+1/+2), from early morning until midnight. The only hours I do not teach are between midnight and 6 in the morning, Copenhagen time. In practice that covers most of the world: an afternoon or evening in Singapore, a morning or midday on the American East Coast, an evening in Australia. Tell me roughly where you are when you write, and we will find a time.

Very little. A solid internet connection and a browser, preferably Zoom (free). A clear microphone matters more than anything else; good sound for talking is what makes a lesson feel close. And you do not need to send me notation files from a score program — it is the PDF that counts, because what we read together is the music abstracted as a score.

When I annotate a score during the lesson, the edited PDF can be sent to you afterwards. This often becomes a useful working document between lessons, because the discussion is not lost once the call is over.

Yes. For small groups or classes, online teaching can sometimes work even better than a physical room, because everyone can follow the same score, example or annotation closely on their own screen.

Usually you begin by showing me your material, most often what you have done since the last lesson. I page through the score, form an overview, and quickly spot the problems worth addressing — always in the light of who you are as a student. Some things I may not mark at all, because they are out of reach for now; others I press hard on, especially mistakes that return week after week. With the strongest students a whole lesson can go on a single question, why a fourth mattered more than a sixth in bar 140, and for others the focus is cleaner notation or better orchestral balance.