A little-known fact about me, I love to compose music and write songs. Aside from video games, I spent a lot of time listening to music like Prince, Cameo, Parliament Funkadelic, etc. As for classical/modern-classical music, I cannot really say I have a favorite composer. I started teaching myself piano at age 8, by age 12, I had already learned trombone, bass, and guitar. I started composing when I was 13 which being that my knowledge of composing was very little at the time, the pieces written had many issues like instrumentation, and the harmony rarely was anything outside of just some major triads. As for soul music, I have released 3 songs already released, another one on the way, but I am trying to deal with some issues from the distribution company at this time.
I currently participate in both my high school's choir and band program and have good standing in both. One story that will always stick with me is when I wrote this one piece in C#. For a little context, nobody really writes in C#, because it's a hard key to read on music, and is annoying to try and teach the parts to the individuals singing the piece even though it is not that technical at all. I showed it to my friend who is about to graduate, and he was like, "You know people don't really read in C#, do you?" It didn't occur to me at the moment because when I hit those chords on the piano, I saw it as a C#7, not a Db7 (which are the same notes, just different names). The piece also has accidentals, which makes it more complicated for the instructor/director than the students.
I also wrote this piece for band. I got a good bit of feedback on it and I'm still working on revisions for the final product that will be "Fire Horns." This is from a section of the Pre-Final.
French Horns and Saxes have very dissonant chords at first, then all of the brass comes in with these 4 chords. The first one is a Cmin11 chord, which you can think of as a Bb Major Triad over a C Minor Triad. The purpose of these chords is to give the feeling that the music is screaming at you while the piccolo has a melody going on that is very on edge.
Here is my personal portfolio of compositions (Does not include Final Revision of Fire Horns): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qYi7Xq_3ZNZoQNaWfOu-jCZdBTGrJRb_?usp=sharing
As for some of my favorite compositions, these include some that I have actually played in band:
Melodious Thunk - This song is fun to play on trombone. The piece is very dissonant at the beginning and it's hard to feel out what it's doing at first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXVXPlzcVLI
Emblem of Unity - Also has a fun trombone part. This march is maybe one of the best in my opinion.
Pageant - Just an awesome piece that has both a slow section into a parade section which is super fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTCvsdfb-Ks
Concerto for coloratura soprano and orchestra in F minor, Op. 82 - beautiful piece featuring the soprano voice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8fq8BBrFfk
Do Not Reject Me In My Old Age - This features an Oktavist voice, which is roughly an octave below the Bass voice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ZVSTjUnJ8
Deep River - This is a spiritual that I love to sing because it's beautiful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jqqNmK754E
As for my other music that fits into the Soul/R&B category, I first started recording 2 years ago. I released some bass solos as my first projects, which looking back, I can't say they were good. Then in July, I was able to release my first song featuring vocals.
Black Jeans - https://youtu.be/h9Updwq38n4
The vocals were horrific in this song, and it's whatever at this point because I would see a lot of improvement in my next song,
Don't Hit Me Up - https://youtu.be/F4qa521IPJs
I ended up using all synthesizers for the whole song and distortion on my guitar.
Electro Revival - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57m26eYyV3o
Different style of singing, can't really say it was any better than the last one
