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Jazz bug bit Joyner early in life
December 12, 2007
David Joyner’s first compositions weren’t played out in front of an audience or even performed by an orchestra.
In fact, Joyner, now PLU’s director of jazz studies, remembers conducting an imaginary orchestra as a teenager, surrounded by nothing more than the sofa and chairs of his family’s living room. He’d even bought a baton at a local store in Memphis.
The living room in the three-bedroom rambler was only used for guests, so he pretty much had the space – tastefully decorated in 1970s gold – to himself, Joyner said. On an old RCA cabinet box stereo that “opened like a coffin,” he’d listened to “the Readers’ Digest of golden oldie hits” or the Ted Heath Orchestra, a Brit band famous for swing compositions.
He even bought a book on the makeup of an orchestra, so he could cue the right sections of the living room wall. Joyner would listen to the notes, play along with the family organ or lay on the carpet and dream of songs he would write someday.
The rock and roll of the 70s simply didn’t penetrate.
“I had jazz in my ears,” he said.
Now, almost 40 years later, Joyner still has those jazz tunes swirling in his head. He recently talked about the life of a composer and arranger.
“It’s a lot of staring out the window for four hours before you finally start writing something,” he said. “Then you just have to reach down and pull it out.”
Or not. Joyner said that sometimes the ideas and notes elbow each other, all trying to get out of his head and onto the page. He recalled once writing an entire piece in 45 minutes (see related podcast).
Inspiration can come from just about anything, from another song to jackhammers or the dripping of the rain. Sometimes Joyner likes what comes off his pen and onto paper, but there are some songs he’d rather forget.
Joyner remembered his first composition, which he penned for his high school girlfriend, was a “Frankenstein’s monster” of a song, graphed from works he liked at the time.
“I had four bars of Henry Mancini and four bars of something else for the piece,” he laughed. “It was a mangled mess.”
But once bitten by the composing and music bug in his teens, Joyner said he didn’t want to do anything else.
“I tell my students it’s not so much a career as a terminal disease,” he chuckled. “You can’t cure it. You just have to learn how to live with it.”
University Communications staff writer Barbara Clements compiled this report. Comments, questions, ideas? Please contact her at ext. 7427 or at clemenba@plu.edu. Photo by University Photographer Jordan Hartman.
The living room in the three-bedroom rambler was only used for guests, so he pretty much had the space – tastefully decorated in 1970s gold – to himself, Joyner said. On an old RCA cabinet box stereo that “opened like a coffin,” he’d listened to “the Readers’ Digest of golden oldie hits” or the Ted Heath Orchestra, a Brit band famous for swing compositions.
David Joyner Podcast
He even bought a book on the makeup of an orchestra, so he could cue the right sections of the living room wall. Joyner would listen to the notes, play along with the family organ or lay on the carpet and dream of songs he would write someday.
The rock and roll of the 70s simply didn’t penetrate.
“I had jazz in my ears,” he said.
Now, almost 40 years later, Joyner still has those jazz tunes swirling in his head. He recently talked about the life of a composer and arranger.
“It’s a lot of staring out the window for four hours before you finally start writing something,” he said. “Then you just have to reach down and pull it out.”
Or not. Joyner said that sometimes the ideas and notes elbow each other, all trying to get out of his head and onto the page. He recalled once writing an entire piece in 45 minutes (see related podcast).
Inspiration can come from just about anything, from another song to jackhammers or the dripping of the rain. Sometimes Joyner likes what comes off his pen and onto paper, but there are some songs he’d rather forget.
Joyner remembered his first composition, which he penned for his high school girlfriend, was a “Frankenstein’s monster” of a song, graphed from works he liked at the time.
“I had four bars of Henry Mancini and four bars of something else for the piece,” he laughed. “It was a mangled mess.”
But once bitten by the composing and music bug in his teens, Joyner said he didn’t want to do anything else.
“I tell my students it’s not so much a career as a terminal disease,” he chuckled. “You can’t cure it. You just have to learn how to live with it.”
University Communications staff writer Barbara Clements compiled this report. Comments, questions, ideas? Please contact her at ext. 7427 or at clemenba@plu.edu. Photo by University Photographer Jordan Hartman.