Reflection on Contemporary Compostion

Contemporary Composition has helped me understand many different methods of composition both within my field and out. UNCSA has a wide variety of compositional methods right here that does a decent job of representing the outside world in terms of diversity. It was fascinating to see all the great work we can do right here at the school. We learned that we are all composers because we are all capable of creating something, be it in writing, music, film, theater, visual arts, or any number of the other media or even combinations of them. We learned what sets apart the different arts and makes them unique, but more importantly we learned what the common threads are. Everyone has different creative processes that differ in specifics, but all seem to adhere to the basic idea of finding a concept you like and working to make it a reality. It was interesting to compose in fields other than my own, and helped me see composing from different points of view. It also helped me see how I might take these other forms of composing and incorporate them into my chosen field. Since my chosen field is film (animation, specifically), it already combines visual arts, acting,  and music regularly, but this has given new ideas and interesting new way to recombine and remix things. In fact, many of the compositions we've done are combinations of other works into something entirely new. In fact, almost any composition, even if it appears completely original, has had ideas or concepts taken from somewhere else wither deliberately or subconsciously. If this class has taught me anything it's that sometimes it's cool just to mix stuff up in a big pot and see what comes out. Sometimes it might be an inedible mess, but sometimes you can get some pretty neat stuff.