Platte County’s percussion ensemble puts on a yearly drum show. The show is put on for the public, where they play original pieces revolving around a central theme. This year, senior Lane Callow and freshman Ian Ludholm came together and made their own piece for the show. They started writing the piece not for the drum show but instead for a class.

“It originally started in music theory, as an assignment, and it turned from a melody into a full-blown song,” Callow said. “[Then I thought] I could turn this into a finale for the drum show.”

According to Callow, MuseScore is what a lot of composers compose on. Unfortunately, the software is not available on school provided Chromebooks, so Callow would go home and do it on my PC.

 “A lot of it was just kinda written down in my head in a sence, because I would sit down at the piano while we were writing and I would just play around with melodies.”

But melodies can’t just be standalone pieces; there are a lot of different parts that go into it and that’s were Lundholm comes in, thanks to his prior experience. Lundholm began composing in fourth grade by playing around on the piano. 

 “I did a lot of the cords, I helped him understand current aspects of the song,” Lundholm said. 

This piece has been in the works for longer than Callow even intended. 

“The main melody was a melody I wrote back in seventh grade,” Callow said. “I was messing around with a marimba, when I was learning to do four mallets. I came up with that melody, and Mr. Bailey [the former percussion teacher] told me to record it so I never forgot it. When I came here [music theory] and had to do the piece, I was like, wait, I can use the same melody.” 

The piece is called “Residence” and is inspired by his own life. 

“There was a big vision that I wanted to reflect my journey throughout band, cause the piece is called Residence, ” Callow said. “[It’s about] my journey from fifth grade to present day.”