Music became a primary focus in my life when I was quite young – around 5 or 6, when my father bought an old upright piano and set it up in our TV room. He showed me quite a few tricks even at that tender age, mostly chord voicings and chord types. But I can also remember myself yearning to become a composer and wanting to emulate the great composers even from an early age. I would spend what seemed like hours at a time at that piano, just improvising and making things up, much to the consternation of my older brother for whom the piano was purchased so that he could take piano lessons. It would be several years before I was given the opportunity for piano lessons of my own.

Somewhere amidst all the papers I’ve kept through the years are some crude early drawings of music – staves, clefs, notes rests and the like – which are my first compositions. They were written on plain paper, so I used to have to draw in the staff lines myself. I was fascinated from an early age by how printed music looked on paper – the weird codification of lines and symbols and curvy things that made up the ‘look’ of music, plus the fact that all this visual stuff somehow magically turned into sound at the hands of someone who could decipher the code! Someday I’ll have to dig my earliest ‘manuscripts’ out of the piles of paper in my basement. I HAVE seen them within the last five years!

I am starting this weblog as Composer’s Journey, or some such title, in order to document, write about, muse over, rant, detail, etc., the ongoing struggles I have experienced in order to become a practicing composer in this modern world. Through an entire lifetime of human activity -- academic, professional, emotional, relational and avocational – I have striven, dabbled, flirted, toiled, been inspired, been elated, been on contract, been obliged, been rewarded (and even paid!) to become a composer. It is my life’s journey and my goal to define myself as a composer, and herein I propose that this blog serve as a source of enlightenment, inspiration and motivation for myself and perhaps others who might see themselves on a similar path.