I'm not sure I am!
I love Adler but I fear that someone watching this will interpret his saying that, "before you think of composing you must learn
this and
this and
this...," which mishandles the most crucial instinct of any composer:
The urge to make stuff up.
The most important thing for a young composer to do is --
anything. I agree that to achieve a professional level of success, normally one needs to know a lot of things. But to do
something, you don't need to know
everything.
That does not translate to: "It's bad to know anything," or "it's ok, or even
preferable to know nothing." That is foolish. It is, however equally foolish to insist that any young person be assigned years of drudgery before being allowed to try to write music. That is stupid, because...
...the only thing that is guaranteed to make you unsuccessful as a composer is to quit.
So? What do you do?
Learn As You Go
If you hear a piece of music and think a particular passage is "cool," then figure it out, or buy the score and figure out that passage. Then do that about a thousand times (over six months or six decades) and you'll be able to say what you want to say, the
way you want to say it.
Do you need to copy out all Beethoven's / Hans' / Scriabin's great works before being permitted to compose? No. But you would learn a lot if you did copy out, say, eight (or merely four) bars of your favourite part of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," or "Back to the Future," or "Edward Scissorhands" -- or any of the many movie scores you can buy (for less than the price of the next v.i. library).
You don't need to know everything to get started, but it is helpful to know something. If you are going to survive your first low-budget feature film (and its typically impossible schedule) it's great to have a few bits and bobs figured out first.
Or copy advertising, or "The Pines of Rome" or "Carmina Burana." Learn a little here and a little there.