When I went to college, back in the Dark Ages, I earned a music minor. There was no official “emphasis” for minors, but MY emphasis was composition and arranging. I became interested in music theory long before college and wrote my first arrangements before high school. I’m going to be posting some of my work both old and new.
My first love was classical music and I’ve recently started doing some composing, inspired by movie music, actually. Below is a Composition called “Big Open,” conceived as an opening piece for a concert or suite. This, like “Musings in A Minor,” “Sue’s Song” and “Ostinato With Brass” below, was done using PreSonus’ Studio One digital audio workstation (DAW) with MIDI instruments that come with it. I used the PS-49 Keyboard from PreSonus to trigger the MIDI notes.
Here is a relatively new composition I’m calling “Musings in A Minor”.
The composition below is a theme and harmony study that I call “Ostinato With Brass”.
Below is a recent composition, “Sue’s Song”, which I wrote and recorded as a music bed for the video “Sue’s Story” which I did for our company, OmegaNet Inc. It is whimsical and was written specifically to not intrude on the narration. It is very simple, consisting of a one-finger melody on Celeste, accompanied by pizzicato strings, except for the legato bridge, which is bowed strings. I didn’t use the bridge in the video because it really didn’t fit the mood and would have called attention to itself.
During the 1980s, my wife and I were in a Christian band named “Elijah Project”. That group perfomed a song I wrote called “Campmeeting” which is based on things my grandmother told me about going to campmeeting in a covered wagon in Oklahoma in the early 20th Century. It was the only country song the band did; most of the music was current Christian Contemporary. The recording is not great. It wasn’t done in a studio; just straight into a reel-to-reel recorder.
One year in college (1973?) I had a dream job working for the band director. Part of job was writing arrangements for a group known as the Collegians, an elite group of instrumentalists and vocalists. In a different school it would have been called a stage band, but this was a Christian college, so the music was different. That’s me on bass guitar in the picture. Anyway, here’s my arrangement and orchestration of “How Great Thou Art”.