Creating from a blank page can be an intimidating proposition. When you can do anything, it becomes hard to focus. However, if we look back at history, technology often dictates the guidelines and direction of popular music. Artists at the dawn of the recording industry had to fit their songs onto a 78 record, which held only three to four minutes of music, forcing them to stick to the medium’s limits. Similarly, as Vox points out, shorter songs were prioritized on the radio to increase the amount of music they could play.
Our current norms are set by social media, and Gibran Alcocer‘s “Idea 22” is the perfect example of what makes a TikTok hit.
Alcocer, a 22-year-old from Yucatán, Mexico, joined TikTok in 2021 and began gaining traction with piano covers of popular songs, but by 2022 had transitioned to focusing on original instrumental tunes. He kicked off his “Idea” composition series with “Idea 10,” which catapulted his career. (“Idea 10” was even our #2 most-viewed score of 2025.) He now has over 577,000 followers and over 7.8 million likes on the platform, not to mention how many users adapted his music on their own.
Gibran Alcocer is one of the most revered pianists and composers of the modern age, and it’s not for his technical virtuosity. He has a distinctly minimalist approach, using simple ideas in powerful ways. Alcocer focuses on drawing out raw emotion from just four chords and stark melodies. This stripped-back style gets straight to the point, and as a result, his songs rarely exceed two and a half minutes. That is partly by design.
His musical snapshots are a perfect fit for TikTok, which favors short-form video. According to SocialInsider, two-minute videos get the best engagement and the most views.
“From a viewer’s perspective, TikTok’s algorithm favors videos with higher total watch time,” they explain. “A 2-minute video naturally has more potential watch minutes than a 15-second one, and if viewers watch it through, that sends strong signals to TikTok that the content is worth pushing to a wider audience, leading to more overall views.”
Alcocer’s instrumental pieces also make natural additions to your own videos. Without words, the song can be left up to interpretation and touch listeners on a deeper level.
“Idea 22” showcases all of those principles. With a runtime of 2:32, it falls within the prime engagement window. It opens with a simple left-hand accompaniment for a bare melody dripping with reverb, immediately evoking a cinematic feeling. Over the two minutes, Alcocer increases the emotional pull by developing the melody, adding strings, and even stepping up the tempo. What starts as a medium melancholic tone builds into anticipation, even excitement, without drastically changing the song’s core elements.
There may be no limit to your creativity, but there are unspoken rules of how to grow your music career. You can study the sheet music for “Idea 22” in this score provided by Lucas Munoz Garcia.
