Music Directors and Composers

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations · Job Skills & Competencies · SOC 27-2041 · 464 skills

Occupation context

These O*NET tasks describe the occupation. They provide context for this SOC mapping, but do not mean every listed Skill performs every task.

Use gestures to shape the music being played, communicating desired tempo, phrasing, tone, color, pitch, volume, and other performance aspects.
Direct groups at rehearsals and live or recorded performances to achieve desired effects such as tonal and harmonic balance dynamics, rhythm, and tempo.
Study scores to learn the music in detail, and to develop interpretations.

O*NET task statements are shown in their source language (English). Task data excerpted from the O*NET® 29.1 Database (USDOL/ETA) and used under CC BY 4.0.

Representative sources

A bounded sample of popular skills mapped to this occupation, with at most one Skill from each GitHub repository. The complete mapped list follows.

music-generation

bytedance/deer-flow

Use this skill when the user requests to generate, create, compose, or produce music or songs — background music, theme songs, jingles, or instrumental tracks. Generates a song from a style/mood prompt and optional lyrics via the MiniMax music API.

acestep-songwriting

ace-step/ACE-Step-1.5

Music songwriting guide for ACE-Step. Provides professional knowledge on writing captions, lyrics, choosing BPM/key/duration, and structuring songs. Use this skill when users want to create, write, or plan a song before generating it with ACE-Step.

elevenlabs-music

midudev/autoskills

ElevenLabs AI music generation - create original music from text prompts via inference.sh CLI. Capabilities: text-to-music, custom duration up to 10 minutes, genre/mood/instrument control, royalty-free commercial use. Use for: background music, soundtracks, jingles, podcasts, video scores, game audio. Triggers: elevenlabs music, eleven labs music, ai music, generate music, music generation, compose music, ai composer, create song, soundtrack, background music, jingle, elevenlabs compose, music ai

three-division-tuning-method

baojie/shiji-kb

Use when calculating pentatonic scale pipe lengths or tuning traditional Chinese instruments. Applies the three-division method (三分损益法) to derive 宫商角徵羽 from base unit 81 using alternating 2/3 and 4/3 ratios.

All mapped skills

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Skill names and descriptions remain in the language supplied by their source repository.

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music-generation

bytedance/deer-flow

Use this skill when the user requests to generate, create, compose, or produce music or songs — background music, theme songs, jingles, or instrumental tracks. Generates a song from a style/mood prompt and optional lyrics via the MiniMax music API.

acestep-songwriting

ace-step/ACE-Step-1.5

Music songwriting guide for ACE-Step. Provides professional knowledge on writing captions, lyrics, choosing BPM/key/duration, and structuring songs. Use this skill when users want to create, write, or plan a song before generating it with ACE-Step.

elevenlabs-music

midudev/autoskills

ElevenLabs AI music generation - create original music from text prompts via inference.sh CLI. Capabilities: text-to-music, custom duration up to 10 minutes, genre/mood/instrument control, royalty-free commercial use. Use for: background music, soundtracks, jingles, podcasts, video scores, game audio. Triggers: elevenlabs music, eleven labs music, ai music, generate music, music generation, compose music, ai composer, create song, soundtrack, background music, jingle, elevenlabs compose, music ai

three-division-tuning-method

baojie/shiji-kb

Use when calculating pentatonic scale pipe lengths or tuning traditional Chinese instruments. Applies the three-division method (三分损益法) to derive 宫商角徵羽 from base unit 81 using alternating 2/3 and 4/3 ratios.

yellow-bell-calculation-method

baojie/shiji-kb

Use when establishing the fundamental pitch standard (黄钟) or deriving all twelve pitch pipes. Calculates the 9-cun base unit from powers of 3 and links musical tuning to weights, measures, and seasonal timing.

a5c-ai/babysitter

Analyze and classify music genres, subgenres, and micro-genres with deep knowledge of characteristics, history, and relationships for accurate style specification

chord-lab-with-pytheory

kennethreitz/pytheory

Build, voice, and analyze individual chords with PyTheory. Use when the user asks about a single chord — its notes/intervals, inversions or drop-2/drop-3/ open voicings, the tritone substitution, what extensions it can take, how tense or dissonant it is, its Forte number / pitch-class set, figured bass, or the voice-leading between two chords. For progressions and keys use the keys-and-harmony skill; for fingerings/tab use the guitar skill.

composing-with-pytheory

kennethreitz/pytheory

Compose music with PyTheory — chord progressions, melodies, basslines, drum grooves, and full multi-part arrangements written in pure Python and rendered to audio or MIDI. Use whenever the user wants to write, sketch, generate, or arrange music — "write me a bossa nova in G minor", "make a four-chord pop loop", "lay down a funk beat", "turn this progression into a song" — or export the result to WAV, MIDI, MusicXML, LilyPond, ABC, or guitar tab. Also covers the metronome / chord-practice click / tempo trainer (`pytheory metronome`).

keys-and-harmony-with-pytheory

kennethreitz/pytheory

Analyze and generate keys and chord progressions with PyTheory. Use when the user asks what key some notes are in, the diatonic chords of a key, a Roman- numeral analysis of a progression, what chord comes next, secondary dominants, borrowed chords, chords grouped by function (tonic/subdominant/dominant), the key-level circle of fifths, negative harmony, how to modulate between keys (pivot chords / modulation path), or to generate a progression. For a single chord's voicing/analysis use the chord-lab skill; for full arrangements use the composing skill.

scales-modes-and-tunings-with-pytheory

kennethreitz/pytheory

Explore scales, modes, tones, and tuning systems with PyTheory. Use when the user asks about a scale or mode (notes of D dorian, harmonize a scale), which scale to solo with over some notes, intervals between notes, the overtone series, the circle of fifths, Hindustani ragas (aroha/avaroha, pakad, time of day, shruti just intonation), microtonal / non-Western systems (maqam, gamelan, 19-TET, just/meantone temperament), or note↔frequency↔MIDI conversions. For chords/keys use the chord-lab or keys-and-harmony skills.

transcription-and-notation-with-pytheory

kennethreitz/pytheory

Transcribe audio and convert between music formats with PyTheory. Use when the user wants to turn a recording (WAV/hum/melody) into notes or MIDI, identify the chord in an audio clip, import a MIDI file, or export a score/melody to MIDI, sheet music (MusicXML, LilyPond, ABC), or guitar tab.

songwriting-and-ai-music

agentic-in/elephant-agent

Help with lyric writing, composition structure, and AI-assisted music workflows from idea to rough demo.