Where to Begin?

I wanted to start this topic for myself and anyone else on the board who feels relatively new to composing. To the more experienced composers on the board: How did you get started? What sparked your interest in the whole composing thing? What sorts of advice would you offer to a beginner? What's indispinsable, what can be learned later?

To newer composers: Why did you begin to get interested? What sort of plans do you have for learning?

To answer my own questions, I got started trying to write music when I ran across a relatively simple composition freeware on my friends computer. I had already been trying to write melodies with lyrics, but I hadn't done anything that could really be considered a good song. I fiddled around with it and it progressed from there. For learning, I guess the best thing to do is to listen to as much as possible. I'm trying to learn theory from a book I bought at Barnes and Noble, and I'm considering either majoring or minoring in music composition somewhere a few years later, when I'm in college.

So, uh... yeah, that's it. Anything and everything is appreciated; I just want to learn as much as I can. :)

Good thing some one started the topic, a really neat idea! Let's just hope more expirienced composers will have the parience to tutor us younglings.

I started composing by messing around the clarinet and the recorder, but i never really wrote anything until i suddenly made a very beuatiful tune and comosed it for orchestra (not a real one couse i still didn't know what instruments there are in an orchestra).

Learnig - Listening to as much music as possible, and learning as much instruments as i can (im up to 4 now), but i'm not sure about collage since there is not majoring/minoring where i come from.

A question to someone who studied music how does a composing exam look like?

I'm not sure many places have a composing exam, as such. For my degree in composition I had to submit a port folio of compositions each year and so in total there were four port folios. The general guide for my course was that each folio had to contain about twenty minutes of music: however, the emphasis was on quality and not quantity so theoretically a composer who wrote ten minutes of really good music could get a better grade than a composer who wrote fifty minutes of less good music. The folios were then discusses in a viva voce session as part of the assessment.

The only exams I did in the degree were things like music history and musicianship skills in the first and second years. Everything else was based much more on practical and essay assessments.

Viva Voce? What does that mean? Life of the voice, or something? Anyway, that sounds pretty cool, submitting a portfolio for your composition degree.

What did they mean when they said "Musicianship Skills"? I wonder what all that encompassed.

And while we're asking questions... I'm a little unclear on what fugue means. It's a name for a form, correct?

A viva voce session, if I'm not mistaken, is a live interview.