Leaderboard

I should have sent out this email two days ago, but I was monitoring the new site for a few days to make sure the second launch was a success. So far it seems to be! Here are some important pieces of information, in order to get started. Please don't mind the promotional talk (in bullets), some of this is going to be sent as a mass email in the near future. Young Composers Highlights You will now login through our homepage. The homepage is redesigned so that it acts as a gateway to threads on the forum and new music uploads. Our biggest attraction is our forum, and we did not forget that. Thus, the forum is better integrated with our network features. An IM system has been implemented into the entire site, even on the forum. IM your Young Composers friends anywhere on the website, and even engage in realtime group discussions! Our new intelligent system now categorizes and keeps track of your music uploads and reviews! Never scour through the forum again looking for that old submission! Discover new music using our layered navigation music directory. Find exactly the type of music you are looking for, and you can easily contact, "friend", IM a person or "favorite" a piece of music. Do a reverse search, and find specific people who compose in the style you love. Check out our advanced browse feature. If the directory isn't your style of searching, use our patented custom search engine to find music, or forum threads. Participation at Young Composers rewards those who: post regularly in the forums, write or edit our wiki content, are long-term and valued members, become staff, post new media and review others' work. [*]The more you participate, the better your "member rank" and more visible your music, profile and threads will become! [*]Regular members will receive 100 megabytes of space. If you wish to become a reviewer, talk to staff and we will increase your space from 100 MB to 800 MB. Furthermore, a paid subscription plan will increase your user space as well. I hope you all enjoy the new changes. While I have encountered many obstacles throughout the years and made my fair share of mistakes, the end result is really all that matters, and I hope the end result is finally something a little better than what we had in the past. I know a few people on here may really dislike the new changes, but I have to stress that this website is NOT a typical social networking site if you were to take the time and dig through it. The people of Young Composers are very intelligent and ambitious, and in this community for a very solid purpose. Although the site does have greater social networking capabilities, it is highly custom tailored to our needs, and finally expands past "just a forum." In conclusion, there may be a few more things going on, but for the most part, we are complete with our launch. The rest is up to you. If you are pleased with the Young Composers community, please help me spread the word about Young Composers. Oh, and depending on if I receive donations/subscriptions, I will continue to improve Young Composers throughout the years to come. Here's to the community, and to our future...wishing us luck. :)

There are several ways to go about this, but my primary advice would be to concentrate on one thing. For example, study the instrumentation (how is a specific chord divided between instruments? In what registers are the instruments playing? In which dynamics/articulations/techniques? etc.) - and this doesn't only apply to orchestral works! Even "just" a string quartet can be very enlightening in this aspect. Or study the form. If it's a sonata form (such as most first movements of classical string quartets), read up on that form, then try finding the specific parts of said form in that piece. That alone can be very challenging in many of Beethoven's later works - so I'd start out with earlier ones. Or, instead of looking at the broad form, do the contrary and only look at a very small part of the piece, but study it very closely, say, in regards to harmony etc. There are tons of different approaches, most of which are as valid as the others, if you actually concentrate on them and take them seriously. Last but not least, it's a great exercise to simply read a score, without actually analysing, and imagining how it might sound. Alternatively: Try playing it on a piano. If it's too hard to play all of it, try reducing it to something you -can- play, such as just the melody and the harmonies below it and a rough idea of the figurations and rhythms. Just the act of reducing a piece to a playable form on the piano can give you huge insights in the things that define a piece. Or, another related alternative: Try conducting the score to an imaginary group of musicians. Look through it carefully, try to see what the critical parts may be and how you would show different aspects of the piece to your performers. But again: Just be inventive. Just working through score after score with a predetermined method may be useful to some limited degree - but it's often a lot more enlightening to approach it a little bit more "playfully" (which doesn't mean non-seriously...) and challenging yourself to find a new perspective on every new piece you study. And again: Learn to limit yourself. Don't try to "understand everything" about every piece you're looking at. Set yourself specific, limited goals and go for them.