Lately, though, he has turned to writing music -- more classical, usually, than ragtime, though rags keep sneaking into other pieces. Being an amateur musician he has played the piano for years. He has been into rags since the movie "The Sting" back in the early 70's, though he didn't start writing them until the 80's when the computer, a Commodore 64 machine, allowed him to do things his fingers wouldn't. Half of his "Commodore 64" rags are lost, but he's written a whole lot of new ones using Midisoft Studio 4.0 for Windows 95. More of them are available from W(m). M.'s Ego Tripper Music Page.

His favourite classical composers are Beethoven, Handel, Chopin and Cesar Franck. He also likes individual pieces by lots of different people (Borodin, Schubert etc.) and he also admires Bach. William says: "The piano is known as the King of instruments. If you haven't, you should listen to the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, the pianists' bible. Especially number 32, with a ragtime section in the middle of the second movement -- really. It syncopates, it moves. It rages rag!"