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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks
able to practice wherever he wanted to, and without anyone else being aware of it. He told me that he
did not recall ever having discussed that with anybody else, but it impressed me, and I enjoyed the 35 or
40 minutes that I spent talking with ray Charles.
Speaking of hearing musical sounds in your mind, just the same as if you were actually hearing them,
comes as no surprise to me. One of the world’s greatest composers was Ludwig van Beethoven. The last
several symphonies composed by Beethoven were composed during the part of his life that he was
absolutely 100 percent deaf. He could write notes and chords on a piece of paper, and hear the sounds in
his mind as if they were actually being produced and he was hearing them.
When I was at Stetson University, I had a classmate who was a fellow trumpet player with me in the
band, Roger Dancz, and Roger apparently had that ability also.
From time to time the music majors would be asked to write an arrangement of a song, and write out all
of the instrumental parts for the band members to play, and then we would turn them into our band
director, Dick Feasel, who would let the band play our arrangement. Most of us did these arrangements
while sitting at a piano keyboard, and sounding out whatever we wanted to get out on paper. However,
Roger Dancz could sit at a desk in his dormitory room and do the same thing without any benefit of any
piano. He truly had a musical talent far superior to any that the rest of us had, and which was borne out
by the fact that after two years of being a high school band director, the University of Georgia Red Coat
Band hired him to be head band director of the University of Georgia, which position he held for over
30 years, until he died about the year 2000.
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