Since my mentor has been a very busy person with all the marching band stuff going on, it was hard to find a time with him to do an interview.  The best time we could do was during lunch in school, and that's about the only time that would work for both of us.  Here's the interview:

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What improvements did you notice in Flight compared to Wrath?

I thought that there was improvements in the overall structure, like, the form of the piece was more sophisticated, and how you planned out the form, and I thought the harmonic structure showed more intention.

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What improvements do you think I could make in Flight?

I think it would mainly be looking at what each individual instrument plays, and making sure that everything is at the level you want it to be, especially so that you don't have a set of instruments that have 8th grade level technique, and a set of instruments that have wind ensemble technique.

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What's your overall view on my compositions?

I think they are the finest ones I have seen from students, because they are very creative, and that I appreciate that you took my advice, because I thought that it made the pieces more interesting, and that you have more thought into it, not that you didn't have thought in the beginning, but that you put more organized thought into the structure of the design.  I thought it really enhanced what you were trying to do musically.

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How successful do you think I will be with my compositions in the future?

I think you can be quite successful.  I think that if you can keep working on the things we talked about, to be discipline in your composition.  When you play tuba, you have to do some of the things like to play scales and exercises, so that you can get better at how to play the tuba, so that you can play the music.  I think that understanding form and harmony and chord progressions and stuff, those are like the technique things you have to do in composition, and you have to master those to write the music you want.  If you can do that, then I think you can make a bright future with that.  It takes a lot of hard work, composition is not easy.

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Do you think it was a good idea to switch my capstone song to Flight?

I think it was fine, whichever way you want to do it.  I think they were both quite good, and I think they both have a lot of good things about them, so I don't know if it'll make a difference, either one.