My name is Bill and I like to make music. Joining words with melodies, and melodies with chords and rhythms can be most satisfying to me. There is still an incredible combination of un-tapped ingredients out there, but you wouldn’t think so, listening to “popular music.” I admit, I’ve fallen into the mire of “pop” influences more often than not. But each stab at it is another experiment, and with each experiment my little box of tools gets populated with ideas. Some, I constantly pursue and some sit on the back burner for years, or even decades. Occasionally, a complete or almost complete song comes to me from out of nowhere. That’s when I get this false sense of accomplishment…one that tells me I have finally mastered this art, but in reality, it is the art that has captured and mastered me. Through the years it has played a large role in molding who and what I once was, into what I have become.
My passion for music is leveraged in my work. It’s called Music Design. In some ways it’s like creating a song, but on a larger (or smaller) scale, depending on one’s perspective. Taking songs created by others, grouping them, and sub-grouping them, or not grouping them at all can be like constructing a song. It’s like working in a research kitchen. You have all the ingredients you could ever dream of at your disposal. Having such a selection can make the work of creating this art form easy, but it can also make it difficult. The Music Designer most often needs to know what it is they are looking for, and where to look for it. Once you have constructed the foundation, you may resort back to your little box of tools and dig around for something else…some kind of ingredient or spice that will complement the work as a whole and make the combination complete. Like writing a song, where you may want to escape the hum-drum formulas of “popular” music and build something with a certain twist that gives the final creation its own unique identity, it is most rewarding!
– Submitted by Bill Spencer, Music Design