Music educators are particularly keen to offer learning opportunities that enhance creativity. How this happens remains something of a mystery. Within an international context, this article reports on a study that used a cross-cultural perspective on creative thinking with a particular focus on examining the link between problem-solving and composing. The study compares the individual composing pathways of a sample of students drawn from a range of data sets that tracked students' thinking as they composed, in terms of the ways in which problems were perceived, framed and solved. Several common themes were identified across students' musical backgrounds, age and cultures from Australia, Canada and the UK. One such theme with educational implications was that perceiving a compositional problem and seeking solutions utilize different types of thinking. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)