Battle of the Drams Mafia

As some of you may know, I really appreciate instrumental music. As with most things, my knowledge of classical music is very limited (I only know a few of the major symphonies, for example), but that doesn't stop me from enjoying music. My tastes in music are fairly strange and specific, which I suppose comes partly from my musical background.

I have no real music theory education, but I have been playing trumpet for a while, throughout grade school and continuing in college. I like to think that I'm quite good at it, but unfortunately musical instruments are very challenging for most people and it would take me far more effort than I feel comfortable giving to get my trumpet playing to the next level. So I'm stuck playing in one of the boring bands at the university, which just has a bunch of people who feel like playing their instrument once in a while but aren't terribly good at it. And I've found myself really losing my appreciation for playing and practicing trumpet, which is very sad because I've spent so much time working on my trumpet playing over the past five years or so, but I'm not sure if there is anything that I can do about it.

But I still enjoy music a ton. Not just listening to it, but being a part of it. So I'm trying to learn how to compose music. It's quite difficult because I have no formal theory training (just whatever I've picked up over my years with trumpet and coming from a fairly musical family), and my piano playing skills are next to zero (and piano playing is basically how everyone composes music). So it will definitely be a difficult learning period, but I hope that I can push through it.

I have a keyboard in my room now, full 88 keys. I've tried to play it several times, but I'm so bad that it's painful to listen to myself. If anyone has any tips for starting on the piano, I'm very interested XD

But the piano has proved useful for testing new chords and progressions for my songs. I don't have much yet, and the progress is slow, but I'm hoping that I can figure out how to compose proper music.

I generally enjoy music with heavier usage of brass instruments (I do play trumpet, after all). John Williams has done some incredible things with brass in many of his famous movie scores and other compositions. In particular, his french horn usage is amazing. I also found an old CD of some Miklos Rosza film music, and that's been really enjoyable as well. The style of music used in film scores seems very fun to compose, play, and listen to, as there is much more freedom in the music itself (though modern movies tend to utilize the musical score more for background only, and don't use a recurring melody that brings the music directly to people's attention, which I find a bit lacking).

Despite having basically no idea what I'm doing, I'm very excited about the possibilities and hope to create some good songs.

One great band piece to end the post (or at least, I think it's a great band piece ):