My name is Walter Rhoads. As a visual artist, I’m 54, but as a composer I’m only eight months old. Although I’ve had a lifetime appreciation of music, and have always sung, I never thought I had a gift for musical composition. Drawing and painting? Yes. Writing? Yes. But musical composition? That was something I thought only other people could do.

But then in January, 2008, something happened. Maybe I encountered some red kryptonite. I don’t know. What I do know is that musical ideas started coming. Pop songs, in idioms from showtunes to jazz to rock, came full-blown, many with lyrics. Snatches of melody, phrases, rhythmic lines, intimations of a long thematic piece. Where was this stuff coming from?

I have an idea that there’s a sea of creative juice, or maybe it’s an oil drum full of the stuff, that’s poised in the aether somewhere, in another dimension over our heads. It has a spigot.

Now that drum was over my head and it was leaking. The tap had somehow been turned on.

I was a composer.

The above description is metaphorical of course. It’s just another way to visualize the subconscious. Another way to see it is as a sea below, that generates bubbles that rise gently, break the surface — our conscious mind — and pop. “Bubbles in the sea of thought, hee, hee,” giggled the Maharishi. Funny, endearing little man.

I’ve never done Transcendental Meditation in my life, but I’ve got some bubble action, all right.

Wherever it comes from, I’m just glad I’ve got it, although it’s an odd experience gaining a new aptitude at an age when everything else is starting to fall apart. It’s like the superpowers I dreamed of as a kid are finally kicking in, although they’re not the ones I imagined. If and when I start flying or get super strength, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I present to you this album — sort of classical, sort of jazz, partly this, partly that, like Barnum’s “What is It?” I hope you can derive some pleasure from my meanderings on the virtual piano.

Did he say “virtual?” Yes, he did. Here’s one of the strangest facts about me so far — I don’t play. Yes, I took a beginning piano class at the local community college, starting in January … but that wasn’t the cause of my evolution, it was a response to it. Finding myself a composer, I figured I needed some basic tools, like playing an instrument.

But I had so much difficulty, both with learning to read musical notation and the playing itself, that I had to take an “Incomplete” in the class, and will be repeating it.

At the end of the class I was five songs behind, having gotten only as far as “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” I could play that. Badly.

So how did I create these piano solos? I built them. I played them in slow motion with a mouse on my computer, one note and rest at a time. That’s how I can do a two minute improvisation in two hours, which, now that I think about it, isn’t that super.

But with some labor, time, a little bit of creativity, and “Anvil Studio,” a MIDI soft- ware program that makes your computer a piano — indeed, an entire orchestra — in a box, I have managed to bring these compositions into being. As some esoteric people I know would say, “Xiqual!”*

Now, what happened to those songs I started with? Well, they exist as sung vocals, but they don’t have instrumentation (fake-but-sounds-good-enough MIDI instruments) added yet.

When they do, you’ll see a CD or two of songs. I’m still working on acquiring the necessary arranging and orchestration skills.

And what about the long thematic piece that I alluded to? Well, over the course of several months, it revealed itself to be an opera. I’ve got vocals, songs, arias, themes — it exists already in skeletal form, with a short libretto that’s like a one-page movie treatment or synopsis. To complete it, I’ll have to orchestrate two hours-plus of music, like Danny Elfman did with his score for “Batman” in 1989. So don’t expect it soon, but it’s coming. You’ll know when it arrives because, like Commissioner Gordon said at the end of that film, “He left us a sign.”

1. Sleepless in Stalingrad 1:13
2. Driving, Driven 4:35
3. Scriabin's Mystic Chord Meets the Klingon Warlord 3:06
4. Dancing Days …They Danced in Heavy Shoes That Fit Poorly 1:53
5. Conflicted, Yet Resolved 1:13
6. Dance of the Mosquitoes 1:16
7. Prelude to Destruction 0:55
8. Entrance of the Roller Derby Führer 1:08
9. He Climbed a One-Legged Ladder 2:32
10. He Was Forced To Slay Giants While Wearing Clown Shoes 2:46
11. He Wished They Could All Be California Girls, But His Soul Was Weighed Down Heavily by the Awareness of Tragedy 1:01
12. Love May Be Where You Find It But I Looked For Mona Lisa in the Casbah and She Was Gone 5:01
13. The Contending of the Gods Seth and Horus 0:49
14. Prelude to Suspense 0:43
15. Funky Nervous 1:43

All compositions by Walter Rhoads.

Credits: Composition and MIDI creation by Walter Rhoads.
Production by Walter Rhoads, Julie A. Maahs, and Brian Murphy.
Graphic design and production by Walter Rhoads and Julie A. Maahs.

All original content © Walter T. Rhoads, 2008