a couple of pieces of advice I would give to young aspiring composers I think
I'm still an aspiring composer and I want to keep being that way one that's
an incredibly practical piece of advice I would say is that notation software is
a very helpful tool it's a tool so don't spend your entire time composing through
a computer or through software go get some staff paper and go off somewhere
where you're not where there's a piano or any kind of digital equipment and
just be analog being natural and jot down contours they don't have to be
fully formed melodies just get back in touch keep a foot in both be digitally
savvy and be canet be natural the other thing I would say to aspiring composers
is go hear all the music you possibly can go to concerts go to every reading
session you can start a single file library failure is on that's a that's a
big part of life right it's it's just part of everything the role that I think
failure plays in the creative process is there's a certain level of acceptance I
think that comes with work and let's like say you've send in a piece of music
and typically you're not going to send in a piece of music if you think it's
bad you're not going to send in a piece of music if you think it's okay you're
gonna send in a piece if you think this is good this is gonna this is the one
when you get a letter back that that just said simply says no thank you
eat so you have to have a certain level of discernment discerning okay is it no
thank you that it's not a good fit for this publisher or no thank you
do I really need to go back and look at why is it a no thing and I think that's
true and just in relationships too there's all there are all kinds of forms
of rejection that aren't always so easy to cope with as a piece of paper and
every once in a while an editor will give a very gracious gift which is this
was not a good fit and here's why and if it's even one or two sentences that is a
tremendous gift because editors don't really have that kind of time they
barely had the time to deal with the yeses that they're going to work through
but if it's one or two sentences like wow I some good ideas here but the level
of difficulty of the music doesn't fit the age of the text like for example
it's a the music might be a little complex but the text is more early
Elementary that's it that's a great piece of advice
so those failures can be incredible learning opportunities if you take them
as learning opportunities the other thing that is incredibly important is a
piece making it or not making it is not an assessment of you as a person and if
you take the whatever feedback you get and grow from
it then you are succeeding as a person and I've actually started to keep some
of my rejection letters I I regret throwing them away whenever I go to
visit schools and I talk about this exact thing and they all want to see the
successes and and that's great and the book and all that and then I say hey do
you want it do you want to hear a rejection letter and you're like yes
because they and then I read it and they're like oh that's like an epic bird
and I can't believe they said that and no and but they they relate to that
because we I mean if they've any time they've ever gotten a B or C or a D or
an F on work it's one thing to get a bad grade on work where you know you just
mailed it in but when you really tried and you're like oh everybody's been
there but we grow and we're gonna bit work we're in class
our entire line sometimes the teacher sits behind a desk and you sit in
columns and rows but most of the time our teachers are just the world around
us and we can choose to learn from it or not and I choose to learn