Stringbreaker

I started out with perfect pitch and lost it over a long time spent tuning a 12 string guitar. The only remnant comes from having memorized the exact pitch of an A440 tuning fork. I can still hear that in my head anytime and interpolate to determine when a pitch is true, but it is no longer an automatic function. I also have synaesthesia, but I do not see notes as colors, but as textures. They are very distinctive, but are more similar to moire patterns than chips from a color wheel. As I have never seen language to describe those intricacies, it is pretty much useless to discuss this variation of sensory overlapping.

A small point on the computer as a compositional tool. I mainly compose on the guitar, but that is because of the immediate feedback of the instrument. When composing (for example) in FL Studio using the piano roll, pressing the space bar can give you immediate feedback of what you are doing in the same way. All of the previous points regarding knowing what you want to do over the entire piece of music are legitimate, but being able to steer the music based on what you are hearing at the moment has validity as well. I think this is becoming a point of compositional style, not piano vs. PC as it were. Let's bring this down to pragmatism: if it works, use it. If what you are doing doesn't work, whether it is sheet music or piano pounding, try something else! 'nuff said.

So I need to give an exceedingly restricted opinion AND justify it in some way shape or fashion? All right, bearing in mind that by selecting just one I am by definition lying to you all, I choose JS Bach (Pikachu, I choose you!) for the reason that I have heard so many people interpreting Bach and it always sounds different, yet the original composer shines through. I find joy in rearranging material from the Well Tempered Clavier: it doesn't seem to matter what I throw at it. If it sounds less than ideal, I need to work harder. If it sounds good, I am allowing what is already in the music to shine through. The other composers mentioned here are great, but the quality I will call inevitability shines through the best in Bach. What he wrote had to exist. Maybe the world might not have produced a Shastakovitch or a Mussorgsky but it HAD to create a Bach. There! Now you have a set of truthful lies. OK?