Your Music in Words: A Practical Guide to Writing About Your Music

How do you describe something built around improvisation, interaction, texture or feeling without reducing it to a list of genres? How do you explain an experimental project without disappearing into abstract language? And how do you write about yourself without sounding either painfully modest or wildly self-important?

The good news is that you don't need to become a brilliant writer.

You need to become a good translator.

Your words are often the gateway to your music. Before a programmer clicks your live video, a journalist listens to your album or an audience member buys a ticket, they may encounter a bio, email, funding application, Instagram post, newsletter or programme description.

The job of those words isn't to explain everything. It's to give someone enough of a sound-picture that they want to listen.

Great music still needs a clean front door

Matt Fripp of Jazzfuel has a great anaology:

Imagine a friend is an extraordinary chef. They make some of the best food you've ever eaten.

Unfortunately, their restaurant is almost impossible to find. The website hasn't been updated in two years. The opening hours are wrong. The staff are rude. The floor is dirty. Nobody answers emails. And their social media gives almost no indication that the restaurant is actually open.

Would your advice be:

"You need to become an even better chef"?

Probably not.

Musicians can fall into a similar trap. We spend enormous amounts of time improving the music while overlooking relatively simple things that stop people reaching it in the first place.

Your "front door" includes your website, social media, photos, videos, EPK, emails, stage presentation — and the language you use to describe your work.

None of this makes mediocre music good. But poor presentation can make excellent music surprisingly easy to overlook.

First question: who are you writing for?

One of the biggest mistakes artists make is writing one paragraph about themselves and using it everywhere.

An audience member, festival programmer, journalist and funding assessor are looking for different information.

Audience copy should generally be evocative, accessible and inviting. What might someone experience? Why might they enjoy coming?

A programmer pitch needs to quickly answer: why this artist, why now, and why does this make sense for this particular venue, festival or audience?

A funding application needs clarity, specificity, feasibility and a direct relationship to the criteria.

Press material needs a story a journalist, editor or radio presenter can quickly understand and potentially reuse.

Social media can be much more conversational, immediate and personal.

Newsletters and Substack posts give you more space to develop a relationship with people over time — sharing stories, ideas, processes and context around the music rather than simply announcing things.

The underlying music doesn't change. The angle does.

Think of it as arranging the same material for different ensembles.

Describing your sound

Translate rather than "dumb down"

Musicians naturally use musical terminology with each other:

disjunct melody
modal harmony
irregular metre
extended techniques
contrapuntal textures
non-functional harmony
There is nothing wrong with those terms when you're writing for people who understand them.

But for general audiences, try translating musical mechanics into something perceptible:

disjunct melody → spiky

modal harmony → folk-tinged

irregular metre → unpredictable or off-kilter

dense counterpoint → tangled or layered

sparse instrumentation → spacious

unmetered improvisation → free-flowing

You're not making the music less intelligent. You're describing what the musical decisions feel or sound like rather than naming the technique used to create them.

That distinction is particularly useful in jazz and improvised music, where descriptions can otherwise become dense collections of genre terminology.

Give us a sound-picture

Compare:

"The ensemble performs contemporary jazz incorporating improvisation and influences from folk and experimental music."

with:

"Restless grooves collide with spacious improvisation, fragments of Irish melody and bursts of collective noise."

Neither sentence tells us everything. The second gives us something to imagine.

Useful questions include:

Sound: What does the music actually sound like?

Process: How is it made? Is the music composed, improvised, collectively developed, conducted, looped, processed or generated live?

Context: What musical traditions, ideas, places or themes sit behind it?

Experience: What happens in the room? Is it intimate, ecstatic, meditative, chaotic, playful, visceral?

You don't necessarily need all four. Pick the ones that make this particular project distinctive.

Use influences intelligently

Comparisons can be extremely useful because they give listeners an immediate reference point.

A simple formula is:

Artist A meets Artist B, with a touch of Artist C.

You can get more specific:

the melodic writing of Artist A + the harmonic world of Artist B + the stage energy of Artist C

Or more playful:

Imagine Jacob Collier and The Necks jamming at an Irish trad session.

Joni Mitchell meets Esperanza Spalding at the lock-in to end all lock-ins.

The aim isn't to claim that you are those artists. You're giving the reader coordinates.

Choose references that are recognisable enough to be useful but unexpected enough to create curiosity.

And don't rely exclusively on artist comparisons. Sometimes a simple sensory description is stronger:

Minimalist, voice-led songs that feel like quiet conversations.

Folk melodies suspended over a cinematic, ambient backdrop.

If you struggle to describe your own music, organise a small listening session with people whose ears you trust. Ask them to write down adjectives, images, artists, environments and feelings the music brings to mind.

Artists are often too close to their own work to hear how someone encounters it for the first time.

Writing your artist bio

One sentence — useful for introductions, listings and social media.

Approximately three sentences — often enough for programmes and short pitches.

Around 100 words — a useful standard short bio.

Around 250 words — room for more context and selected achievements.

A strong bio usually combines some mixture of:

Sound + Process + Context + Experience + Evidence

For example:

XYZ is a Dublin-based trio creating rhythmically charged music between contemporary jazz, electronics and free improvisation. Combining composed material with open structures, the group moves between intricate grooves, spacious textures and explosive collective improvisation. Their recent work has appeared at X and Y festivals, with Publication describing the trio as "XXXXX".

Notice what isn't there: a complete chronological history of everybody's musical education.

Three common bio problems

1. The life story

"She began tin whistle aged five, moved to violin aged six, studied law and eventually discovered jazz guitar..."

Occasionally that history genuinely matters. Usually it doesn't.

Start with who the artist is now.

2. The achievement avalanche

You don't need to include every venue you've played, award you've been nominated for and musician you've once shared a stage with.

Choose the achievements that are most recognisable, impressive or relevant to the person reading.

3. Word salad

Jazz and experimental music are particularly susceptible to sentences involving liminality, sonic landscapes, genre-defying explorations, boundary-pushing sound worlds and other phrases that sound impressive while communicating remarkably little.

Poetic language is welcome.

But clarity wins.

A useful editing question is:

Could somebody who has never heard my music form even a rough idea of what it sounds like after reading this?

If not, rewrite.

Writing funding applications: describe the project, not just the music

There's an important shift when writing funding applications.

You're no longer primarily describing your artistic identity.

You're describing a project.

Compare:

"I want to develop my music."

with:

"I will compose and record a six-track EP exploring migration and identity, working with X producer before presenting the new material in a live performance at X venue."

The second version gives the assessor something concrete to assess.

Strong project descriptions usually answer:

What are you going to do?

How are you going to do it?

Why are you doing it?

And, where relevant:

Why now?

Who is involved?

What will exist or have changed at the end?

Funding applications should be specific, structured and clearly aligned with the criteria. A beautifully written application that doesn't answer the actual questions is still a weak application.

Avoid forcing assessors to infer things.

If international development is important, say exactly what activity creates that development.

If experimentation is central, explain what is being tested.

If the project represents a significant step in your practice, explain what makes it significant.

Aim for a project that feels simultaneously distinctive and feasible.

Pitching programmers by email

A lot of professional opportunities begin with a surprisingly ordinary object:

an email.

Programmers receive many of them. Your job isn't to tell them everything about your career. It's to make the next action — usually clicking a link — feel worthwhile.

A good pitch generally contains:

• an informative or intriguing subject line
• who you are
• what you're proposing
• why it fits this particular programmer, venue or festival
• why now
• one clear link to hear or see more
• a simple next step

Keep it short.

Don't mass-email people as though they won't notice

Tailoring doesn't mean changing:

Dear Cork Jazz Festival

to:

Dear Bray Jazz Festival

and leaving everything else identical.

Look at what the organisation actually programmes. Who has performed there recently? What size is the room? What audience might overlap with yours? Is there a genuine reason your project belongs there?

Then say so.

Even one intelligent, specific sentence can demonstrate that this isn't the 74th identical email you've sent that morning.

Also: check the contact's name. An email addressed to somebody who left the organisation three years ago doesn't create a great first impression.

Following up is normal.

No reply doesn't automatically mean no interest.

People are busy. Emails disappear down inboxes.

A short, polite follow-up is part of professional communication, not an act of aggression.

Build an EPK that makes saying yes easier

Build an EPK that makes saying yes easier

An Electronic Press Kit doesn't need to be elaborate.

Think of it as one clean, organised place containing everything somebody needs to quickly understand, present or book you.

At minimum:

• short bio
• one or two strong, high-resolution photographs
• two or three of your best music links
• a strong live video where possible
• contact details

You might also include:

• selected press quotes
• notable previous performances
• upcoming dates
• technical information or stage plot where relevant

The important principle is friction.

Don't send somebody five attachments, seven streaming links, three Dropbox folders and an autobiography.

Send one link to an organised EPK.

And test it before you send it.

Writing a press release

A press release is a clear, structured way of telling the story of a release, concert or project to journalists, blogs, radio and other media.

Clarity and immediacy matter more than length. In most cases, aim for around one page; two pages should be the exception.

Write in third person. Parts of your press release may be copied directly into listings, articles or radio scripts, so make that easy.

A useful structure is:

Headline

What is actually happening?

Opening paragraph

Who, what, where and when — with the most interesting angle immediately visible.

The story

Why does this project matter? What is distinctive about the music, collaboration, process or context?

Quote

A concise quote from the artist can add personality and give media something usable.

Practical information

Dates, venue, ticket or release information and relevant links.

Short artist bio + contact

Don't bury the news halfway down the page.

The journalist should understand the essential story within seconds.

Social media: write like a human

Your social media copy doesn't need to sound like a funding application.

A useful basic structure is:

Hook → Context → Action

For example:

We made a record.

After two years of writing, abandoning tunes, rewriting them and improvising our way into completely different ones, XYZ is finally out next month.

First track is up now — have a listen.

Three sentences can be enough.

Behind-the-scenes material can be particularly effective for improvised music because the process itself is interesting: rehearsal fragments, decisions about structures, failed experiments, snippets from soundcheck, instrument setups, scores, improvisational prompts and conversations between collaborators.

You don't have to constantly announce achievements.

Let people see the world around the music.

Newsletters: don't only email people when you want something

An email list can be one of the most useful communication tools an independent artist has.

Unlike social media, where an algorithm decides how many of your followers actually see a post, a newsletter gives you a direct line to people who have actively chosen to hear from you.

But a newsletter shouldn't become a repeated series of:

"NEW GIG! BUY TICKETS!"

If every email asks the reader for something, people quickly learn not to open them.

Think instead about building an ongoing relationship.

A good artist newsletter might include:

• a short personal introduction
• what you're currently making or thinking about
• a story from a rehearsal, tour or recording session
• a piece of music, book, concert or artist you've been enjoying
• behind-the-scenes material
• upcoming performances or releases
• one clear invitation or call to action

You don't need all of these every time.

And it doesn't need to be long.

A useful structure is:

Something worth reading → some context about your work → the practical news

Rather than:

News → news → news → tickets → goodbye.

Give the newsletter a reason to exist

Ask:

Maybe it's more thoughtful writing.

Maybe it's early access to music.

Maybe it's demo recordings, rehearsal footage or scores.

Maybe it's reflections on improvisation, touring, instruments or the creative process.

Maybe it's simply a more personal letter once every month or two.

There is no universally correct frequency. Consistency matters more than volume.

A thoughtful newsletter six times per year can be more useful than forcing yourself to send something every Friday when you have nothing to say.

Write subject lines for humans

"August Newsletter" is accurate but not particularly enticing.

You might instead use:

The tune we nearly threw away

What happened when we removed the setlist

A new record, finally

Three nights in Berlin + one broken vibraphone

Don't turn every subject line into clickbait. Just give people a genuine reason to wonder what's inside.

Substack and long-form writing: let people into your musical mind

For some musicians, the most interesting thing you can share isn't another promotional post.

It's how you think.

Platforms such as Substack have made it much easier for artists to publish essays, reflections, interviews, listening notes and other long-form writing while simultaneously building an email audience.

That can be particularly interesting for musicians working in jazz, improvised and experimental music, because so much of the practice involves ideas that don't fit neatly into a gig announcement.

You might write about:

• how your improvisational practice is changing
• the making of a particular composition
• what you learned from a musical collaboration
• the history behind a piece or project
• touring and the places music takes you
• listening recommendations
• the relationship between improvisation and composition
• an instrument, technique or musical tradition you're exploring
• books, films, visual art or ideas influencing your work
• questions you're wrestling with artistically
• conversations with other musicians
• the realities of sustaining an artistic practice

This isn't necessarily "content marketing".

It can simply be part of the artistic practice.

Start with a real idea

The weakest long-form artist writing often begins:

I should probably post something on Substack.

The strongest usually begins:

I can't stop thinking about this.

One good question, observation or story is enough.

For example:

Why do improvised musicians rehearse?

The hardest part of recording free improvisation isn't the improvising.

What playing badly taught me about listening.

We spent three rehearsals trying to remove material rather than add it.

Those are beginnings. They create a reason to continue reading.

You don't have to become a music journalist

Writing publicly doesn't mean you suddenly need to produce definitive essays on the history of jazz.

Write from where you genuinely have something to say.

A useful distinction is:

expert writing: "Here is everything you need to know about this subject."

versus

artist writing: "Here is something I've noticed from inside the practice."

The second can be far more interesting.

Let personality survive the edit

Long-form writing is one place where polish can become counterproductive.

Your readers don't necessarily want institutional language from you. They want a recognisable mind behind the music.

Keep unusual turns of phrase.

Keep humour.

Keep uncertainty where uncertainty is real.

You can be intellectually ambitious without trying to sound academic.

And you don't need every essay to conclude with a neatly packaged lesson.

Sometimes documenting a question is enough.

Make your digital shopfront easy to navigate

Good writing can't compensate for missing information.

Before sending people anywhere, check:

Can I immediately hear the music?

Can I immediately see what the project looks like?

Are upcoming performances clearly listed?

Are dates, venues and ticket links correct?

Can somebody work out how to contact or book me?

Do all the links work?

Is the information current?

Professional doesn't have to mean corporate. Your communication can be informal, eccentric, funny or highly personal.

But it should still be clear, polite and functional.

Using AI without losing your voice

AI tools can be genuinely useful for artists who find writing difficult — particularly for restructuring, shortening or generating alternative versions of material you've already written.

But generic input tends to produce generic output.

Instead of asking:

Write me an artist bio.

try:

Here is my existing bio and three paragraphs describing my new quartet. Create a 100-word bio for a European jazz festival programmer. Keep the language direct and distinctive, avoid clichés such as "genre-defying", "unique sound" and "sonic journey", and don't invent achievements or influences.

Then edit it.

Other useful prompts might be:

Turn this 250-word bio into 100 words without losing the description of the music.

Read this funding application as an assessor. Which claims are vague or unsupported?

Give me five clearer alternatives for this sentence. Don't make the language more promotional.

Does this paragraph give someone who hasn't heard the music a meaningful idea of what it sounds like?

Remove unnecessary jargon while keeping my tone.

For newsletters or long-form writing, AI can also help organise sprawling notes — but be careful about outsourcing the part that makes the writing worth reading.

If the point of a Substack essay is to let somebody encounter your perspective, a perfectly smooth AI-generated essay may defeat the purpose.

Use AI to help find the structure.

Keep the thinking yours.

And always check factual material. AI can confidently invent press quotes, collaborators, venues, dates and achievements that never existed.

Your aim isn't perfectly polished language.

It's recognisable language that communicates.

A useful writing workflow

When you need to write about a new project, don't necessarily begin by trying to produce a perfect paragraph.

Start messily.

Write down:

What: What am I actually making or presenting?

Sound: What does it sound and feel like?

Process: What's unusual about how it's being made?

Context: Where does it sit musically or culturally?

Why: Why am I doing this?

Why now: Why does this need to happen at this point?

People: Who is involved and why them?

Audience: Who might care?

Evidence: What achievements, quotes, performances or collaborators establish credibility?

hen decide what you're writing.

A 50-word festival listing may use 5% of that material.

A funding application may use 80%.

A newsletter might begin with one story hidden somewhere in your notes.

A Substack essay might take one sentence and explore it for 1,500 words.

That's the point.

Build a bank of useful language, stories and information, rather than expecting one bio to do every job.

Before you hit send

Ask yourself:

Is it clear?

Can somebody understand what I'm actually doing without already knowing me?

Is it specific?

Could another musician replace my name with theirs and use exactly the same paragraph? If yes, it's probably too generic.

Can I cut anything?

Most artist copy improves when shortened.

Have I tailored it?

Am I writing for an audience, journalist, funder, programmer or existing supporter — and does the language reflect that?

Have I given them a reason to care?

What is intriguing, timely, moving, unusual or relevant here?

Does it sound like me?

Especially in newsletters, social media and long-form writing: would somebody who knows you recognise the person behind these words?

Have I made the next step easy?

Is there one obvious link, ticket button, contact address or call to action?

Does everything work?

Names. Dates. Links. Attachments. Venue information. Contact details.

Check them.

Then check them once more.

The main thing to remember

Writing about your music isn't about making the music sound more sophisticated than it is.

And it isn't about explaining every compositional decision.

It's about building a bridge between an experience you understand intimately and somebody who hasn't encountered it yet.

Sometimes that bridge is a 25-word festival listing.

Sometimes it's a booking email.

Sometimes it's an Arts Council application.

And sometimes it's an essay about a musical question you've been thinking about for ten years.

The form changes, but the principle doesn't:

Make it clear enough that they understand.

Make it specific enough that they remember.

And leave enough unexplained that they still want to listen.