About my music

Well, here you are. This is my music page. I'm a music major in college, studying my second year. I've had some training as a Classical composer, and I write various forms of music (although my music ALWAYS ends up coming down to some sort of arrangement for keys and strings, regardless of the style). My style is either Baroque or Romatic -- that's hard to pin down. I'm rather enamoured with both musical periods, so both have strong influences on the way I write music.

The Romantic influence comes from the fact that I like to follow rules, and also like to break them. And most of all I like to do them at the same time. Using repetition, non-standard harmonies and non-standard chord progressions, my music is very mildly experimental harmonically; though I can assure that I don't try anything that would strike modern ears as "new." It's this sort of thinking that characterizes the Romantic period; while Beethoven's ideas were preposterous and revolutionary during his day, now they sound pretty much like a more interesting type of Classical music. And it's that sort of thinking -- following the rules, but going out of my way to break them occasionally -- that I am drawn to.

My Baroque influence, on the other hand, comes from the way I like to structure harmonies. I like simple harmonies and obvious melodies, which are the hallmarks of composers like Bach. I don't like seventh chords and I like ninths even less. I like to stick with the basics; major/minor keys that follow the basic triads. Occasionally I'll write chromatically, and even more rarely I'll experiment with pentatonic scales. But I have as of yet to write any modal music or use any blues/celtic/etc sorts of scales. So, I also like to describe my style as being Baroque as well as Romantic.

I've written a lot of music over the years. I've recorded about four albums' worth of material for my old Electronic/Dance music projects, and I've written probably about thirty or forty pieces for RPGs since then. I write RPG music pretty much exclusively now. I've dabbled in some pop music, but haven't really done much with it. I might someday. The problem is that I hate writing lyrics, since singing lyrics distracts the listener from the music. If I want people to read my writing, I'll write something. If I want them to hear my music, I'll compose something. Simple as that. Don't get me wrong, though; I absolutely love Rock and Pop and wouldn't be complete without it. That sort of music writing just isn't my forte, though.

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