Chris Price's Music Journey

Early Musical Beginnings

Chris Price started getting into music around age 12 when he began playing piano and cello. The first keyboard he ever used was this little synthesizer that had been given to his sister by a family friend. It sat in the basement of the house, and he spent a ridiculous amount of time down there just messing around on it, trying to learn songs from video games by ear.

Before he ever formally learned music, he was already figuring out melodies and harmonies just by listening and experimenting. A lot of it was trial and error. He would hear something in a game soundtrack and immediately want to figure out how to play it himself.

After a while, he started taking piano lessons from a local teacher. That was where he first really learned music theory, ear training, phrasing, technique, and all the fundamentals that later became a huge part of how he writes music today.

At the same time, he joined middle school orchestra as a cellist. Even though he never took private cello lessons, he practiced consistently and got pretty comfortable with the instrument. Orchestra also gave him a much better understanding of ensemble writing and helped him start hearing the difference between orchestral music and concert band music.

High School Years

Chris continued with piano and cello through middle school and early high school before eventually switching over into brass during his junior year, mainly focusing on trombone and euphonium.

One of the biggest musical turning points for him happened freshman year when he joined jazz band as the pianist. Funny enough, he actually hated jazz at first. The early rehearsals definitely did not help either. But after spending more time around the music and learning how jazz harmony and improvisation actually worked, he started loving it.

Learning jazz theory completely changed the way he thought about music. Going to jazz festivals and hearing high level groups perform exposed him to so many new ideas that later ended up heavily influencing his own writing style.

During junior year, he joined jazz choir after being told there would be a piano spot open. While he did play piano for the group, there were multiple keyboard players, so he also ended up singing pretty often. Singing was never really his thing, something he still jokes about, but it gave him a much better understanding of vocal music, blend, balance, and ensemble sound.

Chris often credits choir director Matthew Johnson as one of the biggest influences on his musical growth. According to him, choir would not have been the same experience without Johnson’s teaching and leadership.

Around sophomore year, Chris also joined marching band as a synthesizer player. Marching band quickly became one of his favorite things because of how different it felt from every other musical experience he had been involved in. It combined music, visuals, movement, and storytelling all into one performance.

Drum Corps Experience

At the end of junior year, Chris earned a spot in the Columbians Drum and Bugle Corps as a euphonium player. Originally, he thought he would be playing synth, so suddenly marching brass at that level was a pretty huge adjustment. At the time, he had only been playing brass for around a year.

He openly admits that his first season of drum corps was rough. Looking back, though, he also sees it as one of the most important learning experiences he has ever had. The constant rehearsals, performances, and instruction taught him a ton about musicality, discipline, endurance, and marching technique.

By his second and third years in drum corps, he felt way more confident both as a player and performer, and a lot of what he learned there carried over into every ensemble he worked with afterward.

Writing and Arranging

During high school, Chris started writing and arranging music pretty regularly for jazz band, pep band, jazz choir, concert band, and wind ensemble. Around that same time, he started getting his first commissions and realized composing and arranging was something he genuinely wanted to pursue long term.

He later attended Whitworth University as a music composition major. At one point, he considered doing a computer science minor as well, but eventually decided to focus entirely on music because of how demanding the degree already was.

Throughout college, he performed in several ensembles including Concert Band, Jazz 2, Wind Ensemble under Dr. Philip Baldwin Strauch, and eventually Jazz 1 as a trombonist during his senior year.

According to Chris, the music performed in Jazz 1 was some of the hardest music he had ever played. Around that time, he also returned to piano lessons to continue improving his technique and overall musicianship.

He graduated from Whitworth University in 2022 with a degree in music.

Professional Career and Education

After graduating, Chris continued writing music for marching bands, jazz groups, concert bands, and choirs.

In 2023, he wrote the music for the inaugural production of the Boise Gems Drum and Bugle Corps while also performing with the ensemble as a baritone player.

When people ask him what it feels like to perform music he wrote himself, he usually says it honestly does not feel much different from performing anyone else’s music.

“It still feels like you're playing music. Even though you wrote it yourself, there are still the same challenges as any other performer.”

He also mentions that he originally did not even want members knowing he wrote the music because he did not want it changing the dynamic within the ensemble.

Chris continues working with the Boise Gems as both a music writer and website developer.

In 2025, he joined Central Valley High School as Head Winds and Visual Coach for the marching band program. During that season, he realized pretty quickly that his woodwind knowledge was not nearly at the same level as his brass background, which led him to begin studying tenor saxophone through the Spokane Falls Community College jazz program.

Later that winter, he composed the music for Central Valley’s indoor percussion production, Need for Speed, while also serving as a visual coach for the ensemble. That experience became a major step forward for him as both a writer and educator and expanded his understanding of indoor percussion and show design quite a bit.

Programming and Software Development

Outside of music, programming has been a huge part of Chris’s life for basically as long as he can remember.

Growing up, he spent countless hours playing games like Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and Ratchet & Clank. Those games were a huge reason he became interested in programming and game development in the first place.

At age 9, he downloaded GameMaker onto his parents’ computer and started experimenting with game development himself. A lot of his early learning process was pure trial and error. He remembers being incredibly excited after successfully creating a Pac-Man clone and later building his first 2D platformer.

Over time, he became more interested in 3D game development, although understanding how 3D systems worked was a massive challenge at first.

By middle school, he was experimenting with both web design and 3D programming. In seventh grade, he created his first multiplayer game, which was basically a very primitive online shooter, but it represented a huge breakthrough in his understanding of networking and online systems.

One of his projects, based on Lord of the Flies, ended up being featured on the front page of Game Jolt.

Later during high school, he developed a much larger multiplayer game called Overkill 2, heavily inspired by older Call of Duty titles. Compared to his earlier work, it had far more advanced systems, improved animations, larger maps, and significantly better models.

To this day, he still occasionally checks the servers and sometimes sees old classmates logging in and playing.

College and Early Software Projects

While attending Whitworth, Chris continued taking computer science classes while pursuing his music degree. Around that same time, he also started experimenting with concepts for marching band drill writing software.

Most of the early prototypes never turned into serious projects, but one of them eventually became the foundation for what would later turn into Marching Mapper.

The earliest version was honestly pretty rough and difficult to use, but the core idea stuck.

After graduating, Chris worked at TraffCom, where he gained experience working in a professional software environment. He later transitioned into media and web development work before eventually moving further into freelance web development and independent software projects.

Marching Mapper

In late 2025, Chris revisited the idea of drill writing software again. After several days of nonstop programming, he built the foundation for the modern version of Marching Mapper.

While the project reused the name from his earlier prototype, the new version was completely rebuilt from the ground up with modern workflows, usability, and performance in mind.

Today, Marching Mapper has become one of Chris’s largest ongoing software projects.

Current Projects

Today, Chris continues working as a composer, arranger, educator, programmer, and designer. Alongside commissioned music work, he develops websites, software systems, and creative tools for musicians and organizations across multiple disciplines.

One of his current long term projects is the development of his own music notation software system, which he currently uses for composition and arranging. He eventually plans to release a public version of the software in the future.