A Prolific Composer

While UNC-Chapel Hill did not adequately prepare me to become a band director, it did accomplish other academic musical goals.  In the early l980's music curriculums were in flux.  It was difficult to discern the proper combination of college music courses that would best educate a future musician.  Luckily there were different disciplines, while that probably isn't the correct word.  Within the scope of "music major" one could choose an area of interest most prevalently Performance or Music Theory/History.  Those studying music theory or music history were choosing a future  path of college teaching, because these disciplines are not taught in the public schools.  Choosing to pursue of Bachelor of Music Education on the other hand meant, if you did your student teaching you could become certified to teach K-12 general music.  
That is a broad spectrum of grades.  General Music 1-6 or Beginning Band 7-12.  My curriculum failed to teach me either.  Instead I became an enlightened, knowledgeable, talented musician.  I could perform, I could write music, I could arrange music, and I could sing.  With the proper mental liaison, past experiences in music, and a little effort one could have managed to teach with this education.  I did teach, but I began at the collegiate level.  Jazz Studies was far above the grasp of high school students.  There were still to many rudimental things they needed to learn about music.  That is why the Master's Degree is so important.  It allows you to specialize and gather the rest of the knowledge you need for your vocation.  I chose Jazz and Commercial Music Composition.  After having all ready learned music theory by my early piano teachers, and after having all ready learned to read "chord symbols," I was ahead in the music theory discipline.  Having learned to play "songs" I all ready was familiar with chord progressions, form, expression.  Twelve years of classical piano lessons aided this knowledge.  All ready was I a talented pianist and trumpeter.  I had natural musical instincts coupled with a need to express myself through music.  Supplemental knowledge both helped and hindered this musicality.  During high school there were fierce battles for the title of First Trumpeter in our band.  While I was far from the best, I worked diligently on my horn playing abilities.  I was ahead of the game  because I had been playing piano all ready for eight years.  I could read music, both treble and bass clefs.  All I had to do was learn how to play the trumpet.  I don't remember exactly how I learned, because I had no private teacher like the better trumpeters.  Out of sheer willpower I forged ahead partly fueled by testosterone and libido.  The only way I could get a girlfriend was to be good at something.  I chose music.  It worked and my Sophomore year of high school I became the First Trumpet player in my father's band.  I not only attended The Governor's School, I made First Trumpet of the Pembroke Music Clinic under conductor Frederick Funnell, I made All State band, and one year I made it into the state's top Honor's Band.  Each time I defeated one prime competitor who we both knew was a better technician that I was.  Musicality was the key and sight-reading ability.  When I auditioned for the Pembroke Festival, I sang the music in my head mentally before I ever lifted the horn to my lips.  They were patient and egged me on.  "Hurry up."  It paid off and flawlessly I played the passage never missing or note and with the proper articulations and dynamics.  They were stunned.  David Carringer remarked I was without competition the best trumpeter of all who auditioned.  I was awarded the First Trumpeter spot in the weekend clinic band.  Clearly six weeks of continuous performance at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, North Carolina under the baton of Terry Mizesko built my chops.  This was where I learned to play the horn.  I began with a weak sound, but the sheer task of being required to play five hours a day built my embouchure and musical concept on the trumpet.  I flourished.  Upon returning to the high school band for my senior year, it was a great blow.  I was at the height of my trumpet playing, and the rest had never played a note all summer long.  I do not get to play the trumpet that much these days.  It sits in its case in the closet.  Over the years with knowledge I can pick it up, and in about fifteen minutes I can be playing at a professional level.  Some things you just never lose.  I carried my accelerated trumpeting skill to UNC-Chapel Hill, but I had lost focus.  I was not a jazzer yet.  I auditioned for the jazz band, but I didn't make the cut because James Ketch demanded I play something in jazz style.  I had been leading a high school band in both concert and marching band music for three years.  I had not yet learned how to interpret a jazz melody and thus swing.  From here in my opinion I regressed in playing ability.  My independence, my motivation (women), and my desire to excel were absent.  I focused on academics not really taking my designation of trumpet major seriously.  I did the work, but I never had developed the desire to play classical trumpet or in an orchestra.  I did like jazz, but the skills to play that music on trumpet are highly elevated.  I did not learn to do it until years later while attending The Ohio State University.  When you improvise you must see the music in your head first.  I see the keyboard and how the notes move in chordal and scaler patterns.  While I played in the big bands of both the University of South Carolina and the University of North Carolina, it was achieving the Second Trumpet position at OSU that forced me to learn to improvise.  I was working on a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.  This new found area of study augmented my all ready existent music proclivities, and  I was elected the MVP of this band twice along with winning the Ruth Friscoe Prize in Jazz Composition.  Twelve years of working as a grunt in the cruise industry has made me forget most of this until now.  I am trying to bridge the gap from my previous musical knowledge until now mainly trying to figure out HOW I composed some odd eighty serious contemporary piano pieces.  The point of this entry was to trace my musical aesthetic back to my college years.  Simply understood music theory or more specifically harmony are the core of my knowledge.  We began with J.S. Bach's four part chorale writing.  How do four individual singing voices move from chord to chord in the proper motion, smoothly and without disruption of line?  There were rules, and we followed them along with our ears.  Later I learned jazz harmony, the diminished scale, and then the Lydian Chromatic System by George Russell.  After attending OSU I began listening to the Second Viennese School, Bela Bartok, Aaron Copland, Elliot Carter, and Charles Ives.  I internalized these more  diverse tonal systems and began to build my own concept.  I wrote successful orchestral and chamber works in my style while at OSU, but it was not until over a decade later I began to pour this calling into the piano.  I was working on ships as an orchestra pianist, and there were yamaha C7 pianos all over the boat.  I began composing on them beginning seriously on the Carnival Glory.  We experienced our first hurricane which added two non working musical days to the end of the cruise.  I used this extreme quite time to exploit the Conference Room or Chapel, a private, carpeted, sanctuary-like studio with the aforementioned instrument.  It was heaven.  Never before had I been able to hear all of the notes of the acoustic piano in such clarity and detail.  It perfectly as balanced from bottom to top and the tone was rich and full.  In this environment I opened my heart and wrote down what I heard in my head.  I sang melodies that satisfied my desires at the time.  I harmonized these melodies in creative ways.  I used "registration" to spread the voices all over the piano.  I used transposition to change the key of musical motives and phrases.  I used "form" as a vehicle for tension and release.  I used motif development to make the most of my musical scratching.  I used all twelve tonal keys as equals pitting their formants and overtones against one another.  I mimicked the conversation of a man and woman in love.  I wrote for the violin and clarinet in a conversation.  I emulated Aaron  Copland with his American Nationalist sentiment, the sound of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  I wrote to express my sorrow.  I wrote to express joy.  I wrote to express love.  I wrote to express musical prowess.  I wrote to satisfy my own soul, because I had not personal life of which to speak for twelve years.  Often I asked myself whence this music came.  It would note have been possible except for the cloistered, private, and silent cruise ship environment.  It would not have been possible on land.  It would not have been possible without the people I met working on ships.  For these things I am grateful and also the whispering of God in my ears.  I just wrote it down.