Leaderboard

Form makes one be disciplined, especially in young composers. It makes their ideas become cohesive (ideally) and stick to connecting everything. I'm all for it!

Beautifully put! Why don't you just write a self-help book already? 😉 And, yes, I agree with this @iPiano7. Stretch yourself and see what shape you fall back into.

Great gift 🙂 I'm considering buying a VST, and I'm thinking about the Native Sounds Symphony Essentials. Seeing the results of the Eastwest libraries I'll also consider them.

I recently got eastwest hollywood strings, brass percussion and woodwinds (all gold) for christmas. They're really awesome and when they were on sale they were like $270, now I have a fully functioning orchestra. I was using mostly kontakt's stock plugins for my previous ones before "pardon my french" ...I was severely limited. Very happy with how it turned out, you can really automate all the instruments and get the exact sounds you want in specific contexts, which is a luxury I'm just becoming acquainted with. I can finally make flowing string sections that are pretty seamless in terms of texture without having to use up a lot of ram.

One of your best works, in my opinion. What VST do you use? It sounds non-cinematic while also packing quite a punch.

Form is a difficult topic with contemporary music (as the term seems to be used in the UK, as opposed to modern). As developments broke with tradition those traditional forms were eroded or abandoned leaving composers to work out things for themselves – if they found it necessary. To me, it’s feasible for the form of a contemporary work to be unique, a one-off, especially with through-composed works where proportion and episode are more relevant than traditional structural components. It isn’t saying that a contemporary work shouldn’t fit a traditional form just that it’s less likely to – and may actually be formless beyond its internal logistics – how the material is drawn together. On setting out on a new composition the last thing on my mind is its formal construction. However, proportion and contour (particularly in dynamics and timbre) are very to the front along with how well motifs can be exploited.

Different. A little macabre, but that aligns with the text. It works.