You Can Be Anything › All careers › Creative Arts & Design
Musician / Composer
Creates, performs, or produces music across genres — classical to electronic.
Did you know?
Mozart composed his first piece of music at age 5 and his first symphony at age 8
How subjects help
- Music: Write melodies and harmonies and arrange them for different instruments to play together.
- Mathematics: Count beats and use the patterns inside scales and chords to build a tune that holds together.
- Physics: Understand how vibrating strings and air make pitch so you can tune and shape a sound.
- History: Study how music styles grew over the centuries and borrow ideas from the past.
A famous name
Ludwig van Beethoven: German composer and pianist who kept writing music, like his Ninth Symphony, after going deaf.
Try it yourself: Build a rubber-band instrument
- Stretch the rubber bands around the open box, gently, keeping them away from your face.
- Pluck each band. Which gives the highest note, the thin one or the thick one?
- Slide a pencil under the bands like a bridge. What happens to the sound when a band is tighter or shorter?
- Make up a short tune for a happy moment, then one for a calm moment. What did you change?
Luthiers shape instruments so they sound just right, and musicians and music therapists choose sounds and rhythms to change how a moment feels.
Also try: Tell one story three ways.
Known for it in
USA, UK, Germany, Austria, South Korea