It was the late 2010’s, and William McGee was at St. Albans Town School for a band concert in support of his older sister. Seeing the passionate percussion section, he knew what he wanted to do in the future. Given that he already knew of people who were producing and composing music, he decided to at least give that a try.

McGee is a high school student here at BFA, but this side of him you wouldn’t necessarily know about unless you are a close friend. He joined band in the 5th grade and never looked back. Throughout middle and high school, with a few semesters off here and there, he stuck with it and made music a major part of his life, even more so than it was before.

Eventually, he started to notice that he liked some of the music from some games that he played, and used his knowledge from band to essentially recreate the music that he listened to. Now, he likes keeping roughly the same tempo as the original inspiration, but he often changes the key and the instruments used. 

The type of music he makes is often electronic chase themes, where the sections of music aren’t supposed to be all that different. “I just don’t like looping … it feels unoriginal”, he says. An important thing to note here is that repeating parts of music makes the song much more recognizable; so it’s all the more impressive that he manages to make it work without that major piece.

In his junior year, he joined the digital media program at NCTC, gaining experience with Ableton Live, one of the many professional music production software programs. Though at first he didn’t quite like it, he kept trying, eventually came around to it, and started composing. When he felt done with a piece, he would ask people for any improvements he could make so he could keep working on it for longer, proving his commitment to this hobby.

After a while, he moved to GarageBand and liked it very much because of the more orchestral instruments it has. He eventually learned about Logic Pro and explained it simply and plainly as “GarageBand but better”.

Thinking about a career in being a producer or composer, he says it’s a solid option because he really enjoys doing that kind of thing, but primarily pursues digital media. “It’s a solid option, but … digital media comes first.”