Song form taught me how to be specific without wasting time. It facilitated the economy of purpose in melodic development which is crucial to sustain in long form. Music has to sing even if, in the process of dramaturgical development, the melodic ideas are expressed in polyphony. The sectional clarity of song form, whether binary (AB), ternary (ABA), rondo (ABACA), or through-composed (A), created what was to be the exposition.

I adopted sonata form as a departure point to give me my "road map." Though, I don't adhere to the harmonic structure for which the form was originally invented (exposition in the tonic, antecedent and development in the dominant, recapitulation of the exposition and antecedent both now in the tonic, post-development and finally coda).

I find it incredibly freeing to have a structural sense of what I'm first going to create, even if later I decide to change my mind in the creative process. Nothing is cast in stone because the piece will inevitably tell me where to go next. Balance is everything!! The micro-fragments of musical figures and motifs direct the construction of various song forms for the exposition and inevitably dictate the balance within as well as the total structure itself.

This use of structural sense is especially true of my second and fourth symphonies, REGGAE and FUNK respectively. I expanded on the motifs of these specific cultural idioms and developed them into full sonata form.

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