Firstly, fiddle chick.. Thank you again for the lovely badges.  Other than telling a bit about us, I feel they help break up the monotony of scrolling down a thread with many responses.   I think that the badges a person has will likely be a conversation starter when new folks come in, and the color and style really adds a pleasant visual element.

Now about composing..  What I was taught back in college was that composition is the act of creating a new piece of music *or* a significantly developed arrangement of an existing piece.  Writing it down on sheet used to be the only way things could get passed down over the years.  So some people do assume it is a requirement.

But it is the act of creating it in the first place that is what is actually composing. 

To take an example from our membership. consider Worldfiddler AKA Mr. Jim.. He has put up quite a few songs very entertaining songs that he wrote.  He shared them via videos or sometimes audio files.  Later, he wrote some of them down on sheet and also shared them that way.  But obviously, he composed them before he could record them or write them down on score.

Now an example from history.. Irving Berlin is considered a great American composer.  And certainly he was, since he wrote things like "White Christmas", "God Bless America", "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and many others.  However, as Ferret pointed out a while back.. Irving Berlin didn't read or write musical notation.  Someone else always had to write it down for him after he created it and worked it all out in his head and played it for them.  But Irving Berlin is the one that gets called the composer, not the person who set it onto sheet.

Besides, if we require writing it down on sheet, what if someone uses TAB?  or ABC?  Someone somewhere is likely to argue that those don't count or something.  Or what about if someone uses midi software to work out a piece or record their playing and then has the software put what they created into standard score (or TAB, or ABC, with plug-ins for the software).. Would it be sensible to say the machine composed it?  LOL  No, the person who actually had the idea and developed it into music did.

So at least so far as I understand the term in the strict sense, yes, you would definitely be a composer.  So are Mr Jim and several others, including myself.  Further, I feel there are also others in this community who *will* earn this badge before too long.  There are a lot of very talented folks in this community.