C J.

John, this is a very nice sounding piece.

I'm surprised you didn't find a canon or two posted in the archives here at YC. I can think of two canons ... both written by Pachelbel. His Canon in D is the most popular (and probably much easier to obtain for study,) but there is also his Dorian Canon. The D major Canon isn't as complex of a work as the Dorian Canon is, but both are truly worth a peek at - esp if your interested in the construction pathology of Canons from a Baroque perspective.

Fav Symphonies - Prokovief's 'Classical' Symphony, Beethovens 3rd, Mendelsohnns 1st Symphony in C, Haydn's Toy Symphony. Mozarts Linz symphony. Fav Piano Concerto - Chopin's no 1, Rachmaninov's 3rd, Beethovens 1st. Mozarts 20th and 21st. Fav Opera's - a couple The Mariage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, The Operettas of WS Gilbert and A Sullivan: The Mikado, HMS Pinafore. Fav Ballet - Tchaikovsky's The NutCracker, Swan Lake. Fav Piano Sonatas: Mozart's Cmaj k.543, A minor k.331, Beethoven's Hammerklavier, Pathenque, and Appassionata... Moonlight if I need to mellow out... heh... Fav Violin Sonatas Beethovens Kriezer(sp) , Spring sonata in F, Edvard Griegs 2 sonatas (keys escape me at the moment,) FXW Mozart's F maj and Bb Maj Sonatas. As for Viola Sonatas... Lanes Sonata No 3. (the Scherzo rocks) Fav Cello Sonatas: All of Beethoven, but my fav are his G minor, and Dmaj. One obscure piece worth mentioning is Chopin's C minor Sonata for Cello and Piano. Boccherini, and Vivaldi... to round this one out. Fav Piano Trio: None... Fav String Concertos: Corelli's Christmas Concerto, Telemanns Viola Concerto, Vivaldi's Double Cello Concerto in G, and his A minor for two violins. Mozarts Grande Concertante for Violin and Viola. Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D. Fav Wind Concerto's: Mozarts Clarinet Concerto in A, and his four Horn Concerti, Carl Maria von Webers Concerto's for Clarinet, Vivaldis Flute Concertos. Fav Piano Quintets: Schuberts "The Trout"

I'd been looking around for an older recording of "Young Persons Guide to Orchestra" for a long while, and finally managed to pick up a CD at Barnes and Noble. DECCA 417 509 - 2 LH is the catalog number. I feel this was a terriffic find, because its one of the few recordings I've seen of this composer conducting his own works with a major orchestra. On having a listen, I got to thinking that for those of you who are young composers here on the forum who are interested in learning orchestration, but have no clue where to begin, you should have a listen to his Simple Symphony. Op 4 . (tracks 2 - 5) Written when Britten was about 12 - 14 ( and with little or no training in composition rules etc,) this piece was composed entirely for Strings. The movements all have catchy and descriptive names as well: I. Boisterous Bourree II. Playful Pizzicato III Sentimental Sarabande IV. Frolicsome Finale Rounding this CD out are his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. Britten and Frank Bridge met and became friends when Britten was fairly young. The Theme and Introduction is taken from one of Bridges early String Quartets, and Britten proceeds to build on the theme by applying it to common musical forms. Adagio, March, Romance, Aria, Bourree, Waltz, Perpetual Motion, etc... The Fugue and Finale is defintely worth a listen.

I just took my third listen Steve - and I'm in agreement with you. You're going to have to sit down with the musicians you have, perform this piece and see how it presents itself live. Thats one advantage a live performance has over a sound card generated MP3 file. You've put forth a good effort though. Being a sax player myself for many years, I'm sitting here stuck in this groove with thinking once you hear it live - you'll be looking at reworking some elements in this piece. One noticable problem I see occurs between 1:00 - 1:08... it doesn't lead back into a seemless transition that one would expect. Instead its abrupt... almost like downshifting from third gear into first gear at 30mph.

I've listened to this twice... I like it... and it seems to have alot of energy. My concern would be how playable this trio is going to be in realtime with live players. You had best hope your sax players are top notch, and good sightreaders. Otherwise with a tune like this - one mistake -would fry the overall performance. Its a great effort. I'll listen to it again when its completed.

your right about the sound library compatability problem... I crashed in the middle of a project about 1 day and 3 hours later - after my post here. It opened right back up, I'm glad I saved my work. LOL Seems like the last time I was at Makemusic... looking for a solution, one of the development mods over there was having people try replacing files in order to revert them back to an earlier version of konankt 2 as a partial solution. Seemed like more bother to me than its worth. Only other choice I'd have is Midisoft... their product is complete crapola, and their customer support is even crappier. They must have chimpanzies monitoring their customer support lines. It takes about a month to a month and half, to get an answer to a simple question - back from them. Thats what they get for using drums in the jungle instead of having the internet!

Finale Notepad Plus (not free version,) allows you to save a file as a Midi. The only problem is the play back sounds corny. Click on File, save as... and midi should be a file type option right below the filename box.

What sort of Sound card are you using James? perhaps your sound card drivers need to be updated.

I found this fix to be useful in my case, because the main symptoms I was working against were: Very slow loading of Finale 2007b, and then Finale crashing either while I was playing back a file I'd be working with, or while attempting to notate in a new file. I was dreading having to take Finale off and go thru the process of re-installing it, until I decided to try and see if Chkdsk.exe would find anything first. Results will vary, depending on your PC's configuration. The above items I've indicated are what this workaround will attempt to resolve, short of removing Finale and reinstalling it. No guarantee what follows below "is implied or expressed" Whether to try it or not is being left strictly up to you. To invoke Chkdsk in Windows XP Pro and Home Ed (incl Media Center versions): Click "Start" Click on "My Computer" Right click on "Drive C" and select "Properties" at the bottom of side menu. In the "Local disk (C: ) properties" window, tab on "Tools" The first item in Tools, is Error-checking. Click on "Check Now" and in the next window box, place check marks in both boxes for Automatically repair errors, and to find and recover bad sectors. Click on "Start" You will be told that windows cannot perform a Chkdsk while windows is in operation, and it will ask you if you want to schedule your scan for the next reboot. Click yes. Close "Local disk (C: ) properties" and "My Computer" windows, and then Click "Start", "Turn off Computer" Click on "Restart" After reboot, Chkdisk will inform you it has been scheduled to run - and will start. Depending on the size of your Harddrive it will take anywhere from 45 mins to 2 hours for Chkdsk to run a five point check on various file system components and drive surface area. The system will reboot on completion, and you should see a message stating that your drive status is "Clean" before you end up on the Welcome screen. Note: If any recovered bad sectors are found, they will appear as File0000.chk in the root directory of Drive C. Discussion: In my case, this problem with Finale 2007 started to become more noticable after installing both the Finale 2007a, and 2007b updates about 1.5 months apart and the program seemed to become much worse off - operationally - after the latter upgrade. It would take anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds for Finale to load up. If I was lucky - and Finale didn't crash while opening, I could open a file and manage to work on it and play it back about 3 to 4 times before Finale suddenly lost sound during playback; I was getting an alert from my firewall that Dr Watson (Windows XP's crash analyizer,) was attempting to load and access the internet... and then last but not least the "Finale 2007b for Windows has encountered a problem and will need to close" dialog box. Conclusion Post chkdsk, so far so good. Finale 2007b seems stable. It loads normally again, and most files I've openned play back fine. Keep in mind, what worked for me - might not work for you but it is the first place I would start, as I'm all for keeping it simple short of having to uninstall, and reinstall a "malfunctioning" program.

Mostly, Mozart's wind concertos... Clarinet, Oboe, Flute, and Bassoon.

I'm really delighted to find out I'm not the only person - who employs this technique of changing keys while working on a piece of music. Sometimes I have arrived at a conclusion that a piece I began with one key in mind, sounds much better in its rekeyed state, so I'll continue working on it in the new key. :P

I remember reading an article in newsweek a number of years ago - about how Abraham Lincoln and W.A Mozart had been assessed as having the same IQ (135) by some learned Mucky Muck PH.d at some prestigious university back east. Both were home educated individuals ... Lincoln took to study of the Law in much the same way Mozart did music... only in Lincolns case, he started later in life.

You might want to make a new copy of the Midi file.. when I tried opening it to play, Media Player loaded it up then said it was unplayable. Was a good thing I have Finale. What you have so far sounds pretty good.

What a good thing to do for Meta, Mar... also what a difference an Mp3 recording makes over one saved as a Midi file ... Your Ballade is a very interesting piece of work here Meta. @2:21 its very impressively done. On or about 3:48 this part put me in mind of a young Beethoven.