Budding Composers

Two teenage boys, two cell phones, and three fifty-minute trips across town in one day. So often those trips are driven in silence, except for the occasional sound bleed from someone's iPod. No radio or CD since "in the air sound" would make earbud listening difficult. But because it was just the two of them instead of the usual four, they felt free to "play" out loud.

I listened with fascination as they worked on their personalized ringtones. One was doing his version of the James Bond theme. The other was playing through several he had created earlier, including Jingle Bells, a game show theme, and a rap.

What a laborious process! Each keypad number has its own unique pitch. Then there is a function key that determines the length of the note. There are alt keys that provide a sharp or flat pitch. They would hum the melody, then program the notes for as far as they could before they forgot. No concern for key signature or time signature. Just start wherever you happen to start, even if it means using a ton of sharp or flat keys.

This was repeated over and over ad nauseam - especially irritating for series of repeated tones like the Bond theme has. Hum two notes, program one, listen to the playback; hum three notes, program one, listen to the playback; hum five notes, program one, listen to the playback - on and on. You find yourself willing them to remember more, to be able to enter three or four notes before repeating.

Worst of all was when they identified a mistake and had to erase - especially frustrating if they didn't catch it right and away and had to erase eight or ten notes. Once they completed half of the phrase, they listened to it over and over, so pleased with the progress, often singing the rest of the line, then laughing.

Words like "cool" and "awesome" filled the air, and they dutifully listened to each other's creations with appropriate respect. Every two minutes.

On the second round, they discovered that they could text their ringtones to each other and play one's creation on a different 'instrument' - and lo and behold, they did not sound the same! Different phone's concepts of speed and pitch and timbre were vastly not the same. That brought forth peals of laughter and many comments about which version was the best one.

Finally, they began experimenting with melodies of their own not based on something they already knew and liked. They created tones with ascending scales, descending scales, each iteration at a faster speed, each iteration at a new beginning pitch, some with accidentals, some without.

I was amazed at their cleverness and unending creativity. And amused at the amount of time and energy they were investing in this project. I know if it had been a school assignment, they would have complained and whined about how much work they were doing for no good reason.

I wonder if this is how Beethoven worked? Naw.