Career choice

I know exactly what I want to do in college.

I've actually had a few different ideas of what I've wanted to do since my freshman year, but it's all been in the same field: music. I've fluttered between Violin and Percussion Performance, because for a long time I was devoted to wanting to make people happy by playing other peoples music. It wasn't until this summer when I realized I'd rather be trying to make people happy by writing my own.

It's no easy feat; trying to find the time and the inspiration to write a piece of music that's worth listening to takes a lot of time. There are many variables that you need to figure out as you go along, such as what compositional program you'll spend the $500 on so you can get your piece down faster than traditional pen and paper, where you get your inspiration, what former composers you want to emulate, etc. I settled on buying a program called Sibelius 7, which is a very easy-to-use professional level program. Since getting it in January, I've had a great time learning and mastering it.

Another variable is inspiration. This is a really hard one to figure out. It took me years to even find classical composers who I wanted to emulate, and another few years to get the music theory knowledge to learn to actually write like them. More on that later, but it was a very important step in me wanting to become a composer.

There's another aspect to inspiration, though, which has to do with environment. The music aspect is almost completely taken out of the equation here. You have to ask yourself, "where do I want to go where I can relax and take in the setting?" For some people that may be somewhere completely quiet, serene, tranquil. I used to live in Monticello, IL and I would like to travel out to Allerton Park, which had trails through forests as well as a fairly sizable grassy area. It was completely quiet. I couldn't think of a single thing while out there. When things get too quiet around me, my mind starts to race and I go a little insane. For me to write interesting music (and not just single long notes over a long span of time, which is what comes to me from being too far into nature) I have to have a little bit of noise, some people chatting, some birds, cars driving by, etc. For me, I like to walk through Champaign-Urbana, or if I'm feeling especially lazy, sitting on my deck in my backyard. There's enough bustle there; not too much, but quiet enough I can still enjoy nature without it being overbearing, and I love it.

Long story short, (although not too short at this point) I find some of the most joy in my life in writing music, even though the process itself is clicking notes into a computer program, the way that hearing my music played back on a computer, and eventually an orchestra, feels, is amazing.