Musicpainter is a networked, graphical composing environment that encourages sharing and collaboration within the composing process. It provides a social environment where users can gather and learn from each other. The approach is based on sharing and managing music creation in small and large scales. At the small scale, users are encouraged to begin composing by conceiving small musical ideas, such as melodic or rhythmic fragments, all of which are collected and made available to all users as a shared composing resource. The collection provides a dynamic source of composing material that is inspiring and reusable. At the large scale, users can access full compositions that are shared as open projects. Users can listen to and change any piece. The system generates an attribution list on the edited piece, allowing users to trace how it evolves in the environment.