Nothing is more rewarding for us at Noteflight than hearing about how our software has helped people learn and pursue careers in music. In this feature, we hear from William Wyant, a long time Noteflight member who used Noteflight to pursue his passion for music and compose the pieces that helped him get into the Berklee College of Music.
William shared his story with us and we are extremely excited to share it with you. Enjoy and happy composing!
William’s Story
“Growing up, I had never dreamed of a career in music; in fact, my first love was theater. I was involved in an after-school theater program for almost two years, and at the time, dreaming of writing a production for the stage. The funny thing was, at first I disliked musical theater and was much keener on writing a moving story than a stunning soundtrack. And yet, in sixth grade, I decided not to join my school’s theater program but instead, I rather spontaneously decided I wanted to play the cello. After the initial learning curve and inevitably getting frustrated with myself, I found I was actually pretty good at the cello so I decided to stick with it.
A few years later in eighth grade, I discovered Noteflight. The idea of writing music popped into my head one day, and after a simple search, lo and behold there was a website just for that. I made a Noteflight account that day and started out writing what were objectively terrible compositions, though I still remember a few of them today. What struck me about Noteflight was how accessible it was—the program takes about five minutes to learn the layout and it’s easy to understand what it is you’re doing. Being a website, the developers at Noteflight are constantly improving and adding onto it, and the sound quality of Noteflight’s 85+ premium instruments is better than many other programs out there.
At the end of 8th grade, I used Noteflight to write a piece for my orchestra that was performed at the end of year concert, with myself conducting. At that point, I knew that music was what I wanted to do with my life. As years passed, my skills as a composer grew and my own style of writing began to emerge. Four years later, almost to the day, I auditioned for Berklee College of Music using an original piece I had composed entirely on Noteflight and was accepted, with a pretty hefty scholarship.
For anyone looking to learn composition, whether it’s to teach yourself or as part of a class, Noteflight is an excellent tool which I still use to compose today. It’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s accessible, and if it got this shy kid from Texas into one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, imagine what it could do for you?”
Check out William’s original piece he composed for his Berklee College of Music audition.