Hello

About 15 years ago, I played some of my compositions from high school for a composition professor at a top music school. Based on hearing those compositions, this professor agreed to allow me into his school's composition program even though I did not fulfill their general requirements. The biggest requirement was that I should have a certain level of skill with an instrument. I had very little skill with any instrument. But it seemd my stuff was just that good, or something.

I spent the following year being horrified by three things:

First, the incredible hubris I had shown by thinking I could sit down in the same classroom with the incredibly talented musicians who were in my freshman cohort.

Second, the incredible hubris I was showing by second guessing the judgment of the faculty which had agreed to allow me into the program.

Third, the focus, in that program, on what seemed to me at the time to be perverse non-music calling itself "music" under some intellectual justification or other.

Going by grades, I did well in composition, but very poorly in music theory. The latter was due to a fourth horrific: My completely inexcusable laziness. I was already behind everyone else, having been admitted to the program only as a special dispensation. That I didn't spend 40 hours a week on learning to play piano and learning to craft excellent music spoke very significantly about how little I deserved to go on. Add to this the fact that I didn't really like the kind of music this program seemed to like, and my path seemed clear to me.

And at the end of my freshman year, I ended everything--I left music composition, going into English composition instead.

Fifteen years later, I am a Philosophy professor, I now like the "perverse" music I mentioned in the third horrific listed above, and also, I haven't sat down to write music for several years. Though I am immesely satisfied with how things have turned out, I have a continuing wistful regretfulness when I think about my "lost" music-writing "career." For funsies, then, I'm trying my hand at composition again. What you'll hear from me is basically high school level stuff, (and lazy, unpracticed high school stuff at that). It's almost comical for me to even post here. (I'm listening to the compositions here with amazement.) But I can't help it--I like my stuff, as... childish?... self-indulgent?... as it is.

Thanks for creating this forum, and thank you for any comments you may have about my stuff. As you can see from the above, I have no particularly high opinion of it. I like it, but I find my liking inexplicable. I have the barest hope that perhaps someone else will find something of value in it. Good luck!

Aww.. that's a very depressing post there... but Welcome to :yc: I think you'll like it here. It's a great place!

'immesely satisfied' doesn't sound so depressing, heckle. pondering the road not taken (esp. when that road is the one you do go) is not something sad, unless you want all people to be like you ;)

@kris, welcome, enjoy, and please enlighten us with your comments as well.

What you'll hear from me is basically high school level stuff, (and lazy, unpracticed high school stuff at that). It's almost comical for me to even post here.

Sounds like you'll fit in perfectly.

I don't see an "about this board" forum so I thought I'd ask here. Is there a way for me to remove a comment I posted under a composition? I placed a comment under my own composition (2varsonaGtheme) before I realized I had a way to simply edit my description of the work. I'd like to remove the comment.

Well this is embarrassing--it turns out I'm already a member here, as I've discovered by googling myself this evening. And the same search reminds me as well that I clearly have no sense of time--it's been a couple of years since I've tried with some seriousness to write something--not "several" as I'd thought before.

Yeeps. I've alerted the admins in case they make it a policy to merge accounts in cases like this...