Music In High School (Part 6 of 6)

I had always had a fascination with writing music since I was in second grade when I had to study the lives of composers as an assignment for my piano lessons. Several times over the years I had dabbled in writing songs. I wrote those songs just by figuring everything out by ear though trial and error on the piano.. I did buy a book on music theory, and that helped me a little. In my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to take formal instruction on how to write and arrange music. The class was a college level class called Music Theory. Years later, in college, I took a similar class, but by comparison the high school class was harder. There was myself and seven other students that took the class. The best part about it was the personalized instruction as well as the more intimate interaction between Mr. Frohm and the other students. We spent along time learning rules of musical harmony and writing our own melodies. We also took “dictation” every day. Mr. Frohm would play a melody on the piano and we had to write it down on musical staff paper with the exact notes, rhythm, time signature and key signature. I never really mastered that, but I did improve. Every so often we had tests. Mr. Frohm was notorious for his tests. Occasionally he’d throw in an extra question. Just before Christmas he included this one for extra credit: “Name, in order, and with proper spelling, all eight of Santa’s Reindeer.” At the end of the school year we had one final project. We had to write and harmonize a song and then have people come and play it. I wrote a quintet, with two violins, a viola, a cello, my sister Vera, playing the oboe, then switching to the English horn. I directed it as we recorded it and I passed it off. I thought it was very nice and the cello player said it was beautiful. Music Theory was a great experience for me.

Coming Tomorrow: Granite Youth World Tour 1979