How I Spent My Nights in Louisville

As I've mentioned before, I spent last Monday through Friday in Louisville at the Galt House at an educational technology conference. My original plan was that when I got back to my hotel room in the evenings I would get on the Internet and check my email and do whatever work I could remotely so that I wouldn't be behind when I came back to work. However, the wireless network at the Galt House was not prepared for hundreds of techy geeks to be on their laptops, all presumably trying to do the same thing I was attempting to do. As a result, the wireless network CRAWLED...if I could connect at all.

So what did I do to pass the time? I took out five blank sheets of paper and drew the keys of a piano on them, and then I fired up a program on my laptop called Finale Notepad. It used to be* a free music composition program, and it had the benefit of allowing the composer to export as a MIDI file whatever music he/she composed in the program.

I (poorly) self-taught myself to play the piano when I was in high school, and I also dabbled in composing music. But back then I never took the time to write down ANYTHING that I composed musically. I just memorized it and went on with it. Occasionally I'd pull out a cassette recorder and tape what I was playing, and that was my way of documenting it. As a result, I have a couple of tapes of music to this day, but when I play those tapes I'm amazed to realize I no longer know how to play about half of the pieces.

So during the evenings last week I put into Finale Notepad the first piece of music that I ever composed. I was 15 when I wrote the piece that is in the YouTube video below. At the time it was only the piano part. I added the other parts in my head over the years as I'd hum the piece while fixing dinner or painting a room or mowing the yard. So I finally had the time last week to put it down "on paper." And the computer "played" it for me. It doesn't exactly sound like real instruments, but hey! What are you wanting from a (used to be*) free program!

(I can't see the video.)

*Beginning with Finale Notepad 2009, the Finale company began charging a nominal $10 fee for the Notepad program.