While cleaning house a few days ago, I unearthed the first piece of music I ever wrote. It’s a piano rag, written half a lifetime ago for the first music theory class I was able to fit into my schedule.1 I was curious to see how it sounded after all these years. I could barely play it when I wrote it, and I’m way out of practice these days, so I transcribed it into Logic and let the computer play it.
It’s not as bad as I feared, but not as good as I hoped. Don’t look for the score on my sheet music page. I didn’t really know what I was doing then2, and it shows. The title is “Hairy Toes.” Please don’t ask me to explain that, or what I had in mind in the penultimate section.
Update: Uploaded a recording with a different virtual piano.
Notes
- The music department at Wichita State University offered a four-semester sequence of theory and aural skills classes. All the sections of a class met at the same time, so the students could be grouped by ability. This was great if you were a freshman or sophomore music major. If you were a senior in another college with a complicated schedule juggling classes and a job, it was not so wonderful. In all the too many years I spent at WSU, I was able to take only one other theory class.
- Not that I do now.