Composing Spotlight: Early Funk-Rock

I was on the road and/or in meetings all day yesterday so I didn't have a chance to compose a Museday excerpt. Instead, I've pulled an old composition from early 1997 out of the cabinet.

This was written in my freshman year of college, in the happy period after I was proficient at the technical and mechanical process of composing, but before I knew any "better" than to use major chords, I-VIIb-VI-V progressions, or write music that people might actually want to listen to outside of a student recital.

I think composers should spend as long as possible in that peppy pocket, before getting swayed by professors who want more wrong notes or colleagues who think that anyone not writing 12-tone music should be dismissed as a non-serious composer. Composing should be fun, and it should be something you do because you want to.

When I was in grad school for music, I recall walking past a gaggle of composers who were commiserating about how awful a particular 20th century composer's music was. I was about to chime in with wholehearted agreement, until I realized that they were only talking about a single movement of a single piece, and quite liked the rest of his body of work.