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Interview with student composer
The following interview took place after the 2000 HSC. Debra Gilmore interviewed one of her students, Eugene Schofield, who had submitted an elective composition, representing his study of the topic Jazz.
You may find it easier to follow this interview if you print a copy of the entire composition for reference. Alternatively, you can click on each page to view it when it is referred to in the text of the interview.
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What were
the best aspects of studying the course?
You can do anything you want: heavy
metal, black metal, death metal, jazz, fusion or rock if you like. As
long as you love it, you will enjoy it.
Did
you find your ideas were influenced by the topics in the course?
Not really, because I chose my topics to suit my ideas, rather
than my ideas to suit my topics.
How
long did it take you to write your composition?
With ideas, basic composition and structure, it would have been about
two to three terms of intermittent work.
When
you look back at the concepts you've studied, your topics and aural work,
did your understanding of pitch, timbre, and duration etc. help?
Yes. I was trying to work with layers and texture and I needed the basic
understanding of all those concepts to make it work.
Was
notation a worry for you?
Only when I was writing for the markers. I've been reading and notating
for ages, so it wasn't really a problem.
What
helped your writing process the most?
The best thing was being able to get lessons from the experts, so I could
get into their thoughts and how they wrote. Writing music is like writing
essays; you have to listen widely, more than playing. You have to absorb
and analyse what you're hearing so you can use it. It doesn't matter how
you use the ideas; you just think, play, write them if there's time. When
you get ideas, you just have to work them through.
Is
it important to play a style in order to write it?
It's not so much important to play a style as to listen to it.
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