Alright, might as well use this since I paid for it...
Hello to all! This is the first in what I hope will be a long series of posts about music and my journey through this crazy world/business/dream. Hopefully I can entertain you with my rantings as well as inform/teach about the various facets of music. Before I do so, I'll begin by telling a bit about how I got wrapped in all of this musical insanity.
I'm originally from Olathe, Kansas, a large suburb in the southwest corner of the Kansas City metropolitan area. I took up percussion in 5th grade (somewhat begrudgingly, as my parents said I had to play something and stick with it) and have been composing since...well, I'm not too sure. It's easy to say for playing an instrument, as one can usually remember the first time they picked up some strange contraption and attempted to move air with it in a somewhat coordinated and hopefully musical fashion (that's why I've always liked percussion. No key/valve combinations, just pick up a stick and hit something).
With composition it's a bit more tricky. If we're talking about the first time I started to put notes on paper, I think that would be around age thirteen or fourteen. I wrote about 4 measures of an ode to the PC game Half-Life, then quickly got bored and impatient as I usually did and abandoned the project. A short time later I asked my parents for a copy of the engraving program Finale for Christmas, as I thought this would make writing and conceptualizing much quicker. Surprise surprise, it didn't. I only managed a few measures of melody before I again gave up on notated music making.
It was extremely frustrating for me because the music was there in my head, but not out there, in real life where I wanted it to be. This brings me to the tricky part of when I started composing. I'm of the opinion that one can compose anywhere; on paper, on the computer, on a napkin, or in their head. How else can composers like Paul Hindemith or Mozart write so much music in the course of their lifetimes? Since most of us cannot spend every waking hour of every day in front of a piano hacking out melody and harmony, a vivid musical imagination is necessary. If this is the case, I'm not sure when I started composing. I've had some sort of music bouncing around my skull as long as I can remember, but it was fairly recently that I started to put my thoughts onto paper (probably after getting through that whole awkward, immature, impatient middle schooler phase of life, good riddance).
However, even that took a bit of coaxing for me to accomplish. I had been taking percussion lessons with Keith Larson since 7th grade and towards the end of my junior year in high school he got an idea. I had a habit of "altering" my assigned music, either because I couldn't play it as written or thought of something different (i.e. better) to play. Other times I would forgo the lesson material entirely and improvise randomly. This of course didn't set well with Keith, and rightly so. Instead of chewing me out (again) he tasked me with writing a piece for the studio percussion ensemble I was in. I obliged and eventually gave him an arrangement of a Zimbabwean thumb piano melody I had been kicking around in my head (I have somewhat eclectic tastes in music). That piece led to another and soon I was writing on a relatively regular basis, mostly for Keith's percussion ensemble.
After graduation I decided to major in music and went to Kansas State University as a Bachelor of Arts in music performance. My original goal was to mix music study with social studies (ethnomusicology or something similar), but after a semester I decided just focusing on music was more rewarding (and had fewer required non-music classes). I switched the next semester to a Bachelor of Music in performance and a year after that to composition.
I'm not exactly sure why I picked performance at all instead of composition. Perhaps I was trying to impress Keith, perhaps I was unaware or ignorant of any careers in music aside from performance, or maybe I just was so enthralled by playing percussion in so many ensembles and teaching private lessons that I forgot I had always liked to compose more. A series of events my sophomore year, including wrist injuries and dealing with some severe anxiety issues, convinced me that performance probably wasn't the proper career path for me and so I finally switched over to composition and graduated this past May with my degree.
Now granted, I still play percussion as it's a lot of fun, but I would say composition is my main focus now (there are a select few composers who can get by with only writing *coughEricWhitacrecough* but those people are both extremely gifted and extremely lucky, of which I am neither). Lately I've been getting involved in aspects of electronics and audio production (recording, mastering, electronic music, etc.) which I hope to hone along with my composing and teaching skills as I get my Masters degree in Composition these next two years from Central Michigan University.
My basic career plan at the moment is this: do something involving music and preferably get paid enough doing it to be able to live off of. What seems likely for me is a career teaching at a university, but who knows what will happen these next two years? Maybe I'll get lucky and can live off composing on commission, maybe I'll join a punk-rock/polka/techno band, perhaps I'll pull a Charles Ives and dabble in insurance while composing on the side. Life's an open roads and there are several paths through it. I'll just see which turns I'll take as I get to them.
Hello to all! This is the first in what I hope will be a long series of posts about music and my journey through this crazy world/business/dream. Hopefully I can entertain you with my rantings as well as inform/teach about the various facets of music. Before I do so, I'll begin by telling a bit about how I got wrapped in all of this musical insanity.
I'm originally from Olathe, Kansas, a large suburb in the southwest corner of the Kansas City metropolitan area. I took up percussion in 5th grade (somewhat begrudgingly, as my parents said I had to play something and stick with it) and have been composing since...well, I'm not too sure. It's easy to say for playing an instrument, as one can usually remember the first time they picked up some strange contraption and attempted to move air with it in a somewhat coordinated and hopefully musical fashion (that's why I've always liked percussion. No key/valve combinations, just pick up a stick and hit something).
With composition it's a bit more tricky. If we're talking about the first time I started to put notes on paper, I think that would be around age thirteen or fourteen. I wrote about 4 measures of an ode to the PC game Half-Life, then quickly got bored and impatient as I usually did and abandoned the project. A short time later I asked my parents for a copy of the engraving program Finale for Christmas, as I thought this would make writing and conceptualizing much quicker. Surprise surprise, it didn't. I only managed a few measures of melody before I again gave up on notated music making.
It was extremely frustrating for me because the music was there in my head, but not out there, in real life where I wanted it to be. This brings me to the tricky part of when I started composing. I'm of the opinion that one can compose anywhere; on paper, on the computer, on a napkin, or in their head. How else can composers like Paul Hindemith or Mozart write so much music in the course of their lifetimes? Since most of us cannot spend every waking hour of every day in front of a piano hacking out melody and harmony, a vivid musical imagination is necessary. If this is the case, I'm not sure when I started composing. I've had some sort of music bouncing around my skull as long as I can remember, but it was fairly recently that I started to put my thoughts onto paper (probably after getting through that whole awkward, immature, impatient middle schooler phase of life, good riddance).
However, even that took a bit of coaxing for me to accomplish. I had been taking percussion lessons with Keith Larson since 7th grade and towards the end of my junior year in high school he got an idea. I had a habit of "altering" my assigned music, either because I couldn't play it as written or thought of something different (i.e. better) to play. Other times I would forgo the lesson material entirely and improvise randomly. This of course didn't set well with Keith, and rightly so. Instead of chewing me out (again) he tasked me with writing a piece for the studio percussion ensemble I was in. I obliged and eventually gave him an arrangement of a Zimbabwean thumb piano melody I had been kicking around in my head (I have somewhat eclectic tastes in music). That piece led to another and soon I was writing on a relatively regular basis, mostly for Keith's percussion ensemble.
After graduation I decided to major in music and went to Kansas State University as a Bachelor of Arts in music performance. My original goal was to mix music study with social studies (ethnomusicology or something similar), but after a semester I decided just focusing on music was more rewarding (and had fewer required non-music classes). I switched the next semester to a Bachelor of Music in performance and a year after that to composition.
I'm not exactly sure why I picked performance at all instead of composition. Perhaps I was trying to impress Keith, perhaps I was unaware or ignorant of any careers in music aside from performance, or maybe I just was so enthralled by playing percussion in so many ensembles and teaching private lessons that I forgot I had always liked to compose more. A series of events my sophomore year, including wrist injuries and dealing with some severe anxiety issues, convinced me that performance probably wasn't the proper career path for me and so I finally switched over to composition and graduated this past May with my degree.
Now granted, I still play percussion as it's a lot of fun, but I would say composition is my main focus now (there are a select few composers who can get by with only writing *coughEricWhitacrecough* but those people are both extremely gifted and extremely lucky, of which I am neither). Lately I've been getting involved in aspects of electronics and audio production (recording, mastering, electronic music, etc.) which I hope to hone along with my composing and teaching skills as I get my Masters degree in Composition these next two years from Central Michigan University.
My basic career plan at the moment is this: do something involving music and preferably get paid enough doing it to be able to live off of. What seems likely for me is a career teaching at a university, but who knows what will happen these next two years? Maybe I'll get lucky and can live off composing on commission, maybe I'll join a punk-rock/polka/techno band, perhaps I'll pull a Charles Ives and dabble in insurance while composing on the side. Life's an open roads and there are several paths through it. I'll just see which turns I'll take as I get to them.