He began playing the saxophone in middle school and created his own music at an equally young age. Now, a fanfare he wrote premiered at the Dallas Wind Symphony Concert earlier this month.

Armando Aguirre, a senior creative advertising major and music minor at SMU, became one of the seven Dallas Wind Symphony composition competition winners from all around the world.

His award winning fanfare, “Fanfare Euphorie” was performed by the Louisiana State University Brass Ensemble on Nov. 8 at the Myerson Symphony Center.

Aguirre started writing music in the eighth grade and would make up basic melodies, attempting to imitate his favorite composers.

“Back then, before I knew what I was doing, I would just blindly type notes into the computer until I found something that I liked the sound of,” he said.

But now he does things a bit differently.

“For me, writing music is first and foremost about having a melody — something that someone would be able to whistle or hum,” he said.

He describes his method of composing as “horizontal,” or placing importance on melody and development on the piece rather than “vertical,” taking each second of the music into consideration.

With all the music theory aside, he believes everyone should enjoy music, regardless of whether they know music theory or not.

“I strive to write music that I would like to listen to, and in doing so hope others will find it agreeable as well,” Aguirre said.

And this was the case with the Dallas Wind Symphony concert.

“When I found out I was one of the chosen winners of the fanfare competition, I was very excited, and even more surprised,” he said.

After entering several of his pieces to numerous competitions before, he never expected to become a winner.

This time, he won.

Pleasantly surprised with the outcome, Aguirre enjoyed the experience of the night and the recognition, but doesn’t expect to become famous anytime soon.

“Writing music isn’t something that is going to make you a celebrity or get you your own reality TV show,” he said. “But that’s alright, I just do it because I love to.”

After becoming a winner of this competition, his dreams will only continue to grow.

Aguirre plans on writing more music and hopes to write music for films and commercials.