The many functions of the computer in Riley Hughes’ life are in this photo: from his composing to application of those notes by an orchestra to create a new listening experience.

This world ranged from his participation in the Stanton Street Singers, musicals, plays, and the Showstopper Award for the Muskegon Celebration Student Showcase. Scattered through that world was his playing on a wide range of instruments and music composition.

His first year of college was at Grand Valley State University, but it did not have the music concentration and focus that he wanted.

The college choice that met all his needs resulted in his transfer to Columbia College Chicago. A private Liberal Arts college, it provides top level instruction and performance possibilities in all the media arts.

Hughes, now a senior, is scheduled to graduate in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music/Composition.

Because of the college’s focus, students immerse themselves in their major. Hughes describes classes in such areas as Music Theory.

“This is critical for all your work as you learn about chord progressions, phrase terminology, how the motif of a piece works, and then how changes in that motif fit into the entire piece,” he said. “In Aural Perception: You concentrate on recognizing and analyzing music structure, pitch, and sight reading.”

Composition, of course, is the heart of the Montague native’s education. Among the basics are, “techniques of past Western music, orchestration, understanding of every traditional orchestral instrument, and the musician’s comfort in playing a composition. The challenge goes on for the composer who must then achieve a delicate balance between pushing the limits of the instrument and the musician. You must understand the levels of musicians.”

While the theoretical is vastly important, there are two other crucial aspects of Columbia College for students of the arts. One, students work with professors who are actually involved in creativity in their particular field. And two, students in composition get ‘hands on’ experience in that Columbia College hires professional ensemble musicians to play student compositions, roughly five to seven minutes long, that are recorded. In Hughes’ first year he wrote a flute and cello duet, and then other musical combinations: a large women’s choir ensemble, piano/violin and piano/sax duets, solo pieces for piano and violin.

There is constant competition, of course, and that first year Hughes’ flute/cello duet tied for first place and a $500 prize in the Turner Composition. Hughes said, “this is the strength of Chicago. You hear your work performed. You know what works and what doesn’t. It is not a guessing game.”

Not surprisingly in this electronic world, Hughes does most of his composing on the computer. “It saves countless hours with the computer making key changes for orchestral instruments, and letting you know their musical ranges. But the ideas are still personally generated.”

The senior describes his personal composing, “as being a composer, psychologist, and strategist. You, in essence, are reinventing a language when you do a new piece. You create your own way of making music.”

Hughes pays tribute to Arnold Schoenberg (1864-1951) who “inspired a musical radical revolution. We can go into new universes, with new notation techniques.”

Which leads to the question, “Who is the composer writing for?” Hughes explains that is an underlying thought as to the viability of new musical universes. “There must be a balance between the new and old rhythms, notation, and phrase structures, and at the same time, find your own voice.”

It was the student’s own voice/submitted musical scores that resulted in his being chosen, along with nine other composers, for the Columbia summer semester film scoring program of any type of visual media at Raleigh Studio in Los Angeles. This studio is located across from Paramount, and the same studio that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin used.

In morning classes students learned to coordinate music and screen events. Afternoons were spent learning the technology to cue music with film.

Hughes worked on scoring four projects: a famous scene; intense dialogue, love scene, and a battle scene from an HBO film about Pancho Villa. His composition was for 25 studio musicians. Instead of using brass in the traditional “William Tell Overture” sound for pounding horses and grunting soldiers, Hughes reinvented his own musical language with agitated strings that made the action even more vivid.

The sounds in Hughes’ life have varied from high school to Columbia College Chicago. They have created other unique universes: “I am amazed at how much of music techniques can be found in the other arts. It is a new set of vibes,” he said.