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1. You've closed your piece as you planned (also the other parts layed out 'properly' according to your plans) 2. After listening it hundred of times (or more) you feel that cant improve it any more without diminishing its value

In the past few weeks, we've seen an increase in trolling in the shoutbox here on YC. As a forum administrator, it pains me to see the trolling result in the loss of one of our best contributors to the site: composerorganist. Chris Sahar has been an amazing asset to the community here on YC. His advice has helped countless younger composers, shape forum design and layout, and provide a source of reason in an otherwise dramatic field. I would like to see the trolling come to a stop. I want composerorganist back. :(

None of my music is ever finished. Anything I perform is "close enough"; however changes and revisions may happen at any time. I'm constantly evolving as a musician and as a person, why shouldn't my music do the same?

I think I know exactly what you mean, this is something I struggled with when I first started composing. I think the best advice is to listen to music, look at the score, and see exactly how they thwarted expectations. Haydn is great for this. However, in later romantic music, these expectations were not even there and odd-measured statements flow more freely into eachother. Another problem is having your little phrase/statement and then repeating it immediately to justify its existence. This is something Debussy did a lot and can be a turn off for me. But hey, if you like it, then go for it, there's nothing objectively *bad* about 4-bar phrases.

One thing that I found works for me is to focus instead on smaller motivic units and approach them similar to Phil's idea of single process structures. You'd be surprised how much you can get out of smaller units and how versatile a simple 3 or 4 note idea can be. One thing I would suggest, is perhaps to listen and study the scores of a variety of compositional styles. Eventually, you'll find what works for you.

Oxymoron.

Because I enjoy composing? Though, I admit to some degree it's for some sort of recognition and a place in the history books as arguably bad that may or may not sound to some. I don't agree with most notions that people compose music or do anything really without some sort of want of recognition and acceptance.

I had once the wish to leave YC, because of a well-known YCer tall asian guy... I recall Jason himself wanted to leave because of a similar event on Shoutbox with the same well-known tall asian guy (name starts with S)... I can make a list of good YCers did actually leave, due to the very same guy or other similar ones. "Trolling" is not a masquerade of insulting or degrading, I can take "Trolling" as Max :D he likes to troll but nothing beyond laughing, never goes beyond, I didn't see what happened, but if I'm on shoutbox and I see this happening, I will act, if someone have future complains about my Mod actions, please contact the YC Complain Departament because I prefer to loose 100 cheap trolls than 1 person like Chris Sahar.

What Phil said. I'd like everyone who reads this thread to take a couple of minutes out of their day to post here about what an asset Chris was to the community and how much we all need him to stay. Chris was an absolute wealth of intelligent comments and reviews about our pieces, advice and help regarding the education of our members, and discussion and information, both in the forums and in the SB. He never hesitated to help out a member of YC while asking for nothing in return, and consistently provided the community with great reviews and threads - not to mention his excellent music. If he doesn't decide to return to YC, there's no doubt in my mind that we'll be losing a cornerstone of the community and that the site will be sorely lacking and will noticeably miss his irreplaceable contributions.