Long Summer...

Sorry for not posting in a few months. Summer has been very hectic so far for me. I have been in Indiana the past few months spending time with family, doing further research on my family tree, and preparing for my move to Chicago on August 20. Sooo... where to begin, lol.

Family Tree: I have made a lot of surprising discoveries on my father's side of the family. My grandfather, who passed away in 1970, lived in New Jersey before moving to the region in the 1950s. The New Jersey Woodruffs of which he belonged were descended from a Thomas Ogden Woodruff and Hannah Markwith. Thomas Ogden's mother was Elizabeth Ogden. The Ogdens, from my understanding, were a very influential family on the East Coast. In fact, Elizabeth's aunt married a man by the name of John Edison. John Edison was the Great Grandfather of Thomas Alva Edison! I, at first, wasn't even aware of this connection until I came -by chance- upon an obituary for my Great Grand Uncle. Shortly after commenting on the obit, I received a message from his daughter! I was amazed! In one of the correspondences, she relayed that family stories stated we were cousins of the Edisons! Sure enough, a little research verified it! I have really learned a lot about myself and my family from this research.

Music: It's been pretty hectic to write as much as I wish I could. I've been working, slowly, on several small projects just to keep my creative juices flowing. Nothing too substantial though.

Chicago: I have a lot of stuff prepared for my move up to the Windy City. So far, I have purchased everything I'll need to make my little dorm apartment home! I've looked into working part time in between my courses. I will give it a try - hopefully, I can manage it. I move up on August 20 and then begin a week of placement testing! To prepare, I am studying to brush up on the basic stuff. Hopefully, I can place into the appropriate theory courses, etc. I'm really psyched about this opportunity!

I'll try to post at least once a week. I do apologize deeply for being a bit busy to give updates!

Why I write the way I do....

I began composition over a decade ago - 16 years to be exact. My earliest pieces, now largely gone, were very misguided. I didn't receive instruction in composition till my junior year in high school. That year, while I worked at the local library in Indianapolis, I borrowed 3 books on composition. The book that I read the most and still own was Schoenberg's Functional Structures of Harmony. At that age, I barely understood all that Schoenberg mentioned in that treatise. It did effect my compositions at the time. I moved from rather rudimentary reliance on I - V - I progressions to more adventurous use of extended harmonies and foreign tonal regions. From there, I got bored, and ventured into creating my own synthetic scales - I would literally spend weeks ensuring that my scalar basis was unique to each and every degree. The works from this period were quite different than anything I've ever composed. The melodic material was very much ruled by the synthetic tonality in which they were created. From there, I dabbled in serial technique. That really bored me. The music didn't quite seem to sound the way I wanted it to sound. The material was, to me, not fully representative of my emotional self. After a few works like this, I abandoned atonality and returned to using other tonalities. It was at this point that I went to college. During my lessons with my teacher, I centered on the use of Phrygian tonality. I loved the use of that particular mode and the sonorities that it created. However, I got bored with it - as much as I got bored with college. I've always been the type of person to research and learn indepedently. I do well in school when I'm being challenged - when I'm not.. well, I lose my desire to care. So after 2 years of college, I decided to focus on my self for a change. My compositions in 2001, reflected my tumultuous life at that point. Finally, in 2003 I settled in on a return to tonality. My goal at the time was to master it fully. 6 years onward, I am still reaching for that goal. I still have that adventurous spirit that was there in my earliest works - BUT, for myself, the experimentation isn't necessarily the prime mover in my need to compose. Music, for me, has always been about the need to vent. I, at one time, stated that to know my deepest thoughts all one has to do is listen to me improvise on my viola or listen to one of my compositions. It has seen me through some very dark periods in my life and has been there during some of the most happiest moments as well. Today, my compositions reflect all that comprises me: my interests, my tastes, my desires, and my emotions. There are times when I return to my more experimental past and times where I am so much removed from it that you would never know where I been as a composer. My one goal, besides mastery of my art, is to merge in perfectly modern techniques deep into the fabric of the strong tradition. I want to do this in a way that makes the newer techniques more interesting and listenable. Hopefully, I succeed.