Put some radio static in your music

When you picture a composer, one usually thinks of a Caucasian white haired guy. You think about the great classical composers: Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart among others who fit this description. When our guest speaker composer Paul Elwood walked in the room he fit this description as well, but his music was not very Mozart like and definitely not what I was expecting. He plays and composes mostly bluegrass and Appalachian music on the bowed banjo. I have never seen anybody play a banjo with a bow before. To me, the sound was an oriental one with some Beatles influence. The piece he played for us was him singing and playing his banjo both with and without the bow. And in the background he had a track of him playing banjo and a track of air to ground traffic control from an airport. This at first seemed rather strange to me but it had quite an interesting effect. He has composed many pieces. One of which he was telling us about was a banjo concerto with hand bell accompaniment. He believes music is organized intentional sound. And his good piece of advice to all of us soon to be armature composers was to work around our limitations and don’t be afraid to write something bad. Hearing him speak was a very interesting experience, but I think it will make my composing experience a better one.