calebhines

I'm not Sibelius user, but this is pretty sad. http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/08/at-sibelius-software-the-last-staff-turn-out-the-lights.html

So... Bach was like.....really good...and stuff.... :nod: I always suspected as much! The Bach fanboy in me likes to imagine that he's the culmination of all that came before, and the standard for all that came after, but I know that isn't the complete picture. It seems the same could be argued, at the very least, for Beethoven (seems like the more I learn about the Romantic Era, the more everyone was trying to emulate and/or improve Beethoven), and probably for many other composers. I'm glad the article mentioned that, at least among other musicians, Bach was not completely unknown before Mendelssohn. I also have to agree with composerorganist that Telemann wrote some fantastic stuff -- and sometimes shockingly original.

It does take a bit of initial set-up to get it working, but it gets easier after that. Also, that tutorial you linked didn't seem particularly useful. First off, If you don't already have some type of virtual instrument plugins (Garritan, EWQL, Kontakt, etc...) then you'll need to download one before you can hear anything. Reaper doesn't come with built-in sounds. A Google search for "free vsti" should point you in the right direction. Here's a simple piano you could started with. In order to get Reaper to "see" this plugin, you can follow this tutorial. After you've got a VSTi to play with, you might find to be helpful for adding MIDI items manually. (At this point, there's still no keyboard recording involved).Also, here is the page for Recording MIDI from the Reaper wiki, which might be helpful (although you can probably ignore the section on hardware output, since we're using a VSTi).

Assuming this is still happening, I just uploaded my entry to the Chamber Music category: http://www.youngcomposers.com/music/1390/jabberwocky/

- I've never used Sibelius or Finale, so pardon my ignorance, but don't they allow you to record live midi data from a MIDI controller (e.g. keyboard)? - The little box with buttons is a type of MIDI controller called a drum pad. I personally don't write enough stuff with drums to miss having one (I either just play them on a keyboard or enter them into the piano-roll editor when I need drums. - Depending on the the keyboard you have, you'll either be able to plug it in directly with a USB cable (easy!), or you'll need a special MIDI cable. If you need a MIDI cable, then you'll also need a MIDI interface to plug it into (and then that will plug into your computer via USB or firewire). See the part below about soundcards. - The kind of software program you want is called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Reaper (which I use) is an excellent, fully-functional, and reasonably-priced alternative to Logic or ProTools. Their pricing plan stipulates that if you aren't using it "commercially" (i.e. to make more than $20k/year), it's only $60. And what's more: you can even download and try out a fully-functionally, non-crippled version for free. - Once you get into live recording, you'll need to make sure that your system can play sounds with the lowest possible latency. Latency is the delay from when you strike a key, for that signal to get processed, converted into sound, and sent out of your speakers. For example, you may not notice a 500 ms delay when you're playing back from a notation program (because all the notes are delayed by the same amount), but if each key on your keyboard takes that long to make a sound, it's very disorienting. This is going to depend on your soundcard and soundcard drivers, but an external soundcard may be in order. These will often come with a MIDI input as well, so you can get an all-in-one "Audio Interface" which handles microphones, speakers, line in, line out, and MIDI input/output. For this, I use M-Audio's Fast Track Pro, which is a cheap piece of trash, but it usually does OK. - As far as sound conversion goes, I don't know how much you might already know about using VSTi's or other virtual instruments to liven up the sound of your MIDIs (I tend to stick with free VSTi's).

I thought I'd read somewhere that harpists don't like pre-marked pedal changes, and would rather mark them themselves, which kinda confused me.

I've written plenty of stuff (granted, mostly not in a classical style) where I never bothered creating a score, and just recorded the parts directly into a DAW. But I also appreciate how difficult that would make it for a reviewer. While I wouldn't advocate making a sore a requirement, I do rather like the idea of giving the reviewer some type of advance indication in the interface of whether a piece has a score or not. That much, at least, seems like a common sense courtesy.

As usual, there's more than one side to a story. If his story can be trusted, he had put the phone in silent mode. The technology's design and user experience are at least partly to blame here (as well as the man's unfamiliarity with a new device). I mean, who would expect a device in "silent" mode to be capable of making sound? Of course, after you learn about those kind of quirks, you realize that just being muted isn't enough. Of course, I turn mine fully off when I'm at the symphony.

Sorry for not getting back to this earlier - I've been out of town for a while. Thanks for the book recommendation! Maybe I'll have to see if I can find a copy somewhere. While he borrows from Schenker, I don't know if I'd call it a dilution. From what I remember reading about Schenker (which is likely incomplete and poorly remembered) I don't recall much about chord progressions or harmonic analysis in general, aside from seeing the bass as elaboration of the I-V-I structure (or technically, scale degrees 1-5-1). I also seem to recall Schenkerian analysis being more interested in looking at an entire piece, for "long-range" voice leading patterns within the structure of the entire piece, rather than looking at how music is assembled from individual phrases. As Sutcliffe says in his Preface: I remember having this same complaint when I came across Schenker. The linguistic correlation is fairly brief (mostly mentioned in the introduction) and is used by way of analogy. Just as sentences are assembled from various components (subject and predicate), which can further be broken into various phrases and clauses, his analysis shows how musical phrases are assembled from components (static and dynamic harmony) which can be further broken into various chord progressions, prolongations, and cadences, and further decorated with voice leading effects. The later aren't exactly *new* ideas, but the static/dynamic distinction he uses provides the "glue" between those lower level structures, and the formation of complete phrases from them. (I also think it would be fascinating to see whether these syntactic concepts would aid a generative music program.)

Definitely work on the ear training! It's so useful! Actually, I see you play violin, so you may already have a pretty good ear, but if not, here's some ideas to develop it: Take a melody that you know (nothing too complicated at first), and try to figure out -- away from any instrument or software -- which notes of the scale it uses. Start out by finding the tonic (1st note of the scale - where the song wants to rest, and usually the last note of the melody) and the dominant (5th note of the scale - a sort of musical "plateau") notes. Then locate the other notes relative to these. Constantly sing (or hum) a few notes of the melody, then switch to the scale (starting on the tonic), then switch back to the melody. Go back and forth until you can identify each note of the melody in the scale. If you know what key the piece is in, you can write down the notes, if not, just write down the scale degree numbers (then you can transpose them to any key). Learn to recognize when the melody is moving stepwise, and when it is leaping by a wider interval. Once you're comfortable doing this out loud, you'll internalize the scale, and sing it in your head (you may already do this as a violinist). You may also start to recognize certain patterns that recur over and over again, like 3-2-1 at the end of phrases. If you're feeling especially adventurous, try isolating a harmony part in some song (or maybe even a bass line), and try doing the same thing. I don't know how much harmony you know, but if you're familiar with chords, learn which chords can accompany the scale degrees that you're hearing, and start thinking about that while you're listening. V-I cadences are especially easy to recognize. You don't necessarily have to identify every single chord, but recognizing a few key ones helps. Very often (but not always), and especially in pop music, the root of the chord is in the bass, so if you can pick out which scale degree the bass is playing, you have a good shot at knowing the chord. After you can do this in your head for a song that you know, you can start doing it with songs that you come up with. Oh, and one last thought: if your mind is faster than your notation skills, you could try recording yourself singing it, then go back and listen to the recording.

Fair warning: this post might get a bit technical. I really like thinking about music theory, but I don't know very many people I can discuss it with. Some time back, I came across the following website, which really changed the way I think about harmony and its relation to musical structure (we're talking mostly tonal CPP music). I'm wondering whether anyone else has seen this before, or is interested in taking a look at it. The site is www.harmony.org.uk by Tom Sutcliffe. It outlines a thesis he has developed (and a corresponding unfinished ebook, Syntactic Structures in Music) which loosely compares musical phrases to linguistic phrases, and shows how they are built up from two distinct types of harmony, which he calls static and dynamic harmony. It's based on a root progression analysis, and also incorporates some ideas from Schenker. At the very least, it's worth reading the Preface and Chapters 1 and 2 in the book to get the basic gist of the theory. You could also read through the outline thesis to see a sample analysis, and how the idea was developed. Here's my attempt to summarize his theory: First, the harmonic analysis proceeds in a fairly standard manner: - Reduce the music to it's harmonic outline by stripping out non-chord tones (which arise from voice leading effects), and chords which are produced from non-chord tones (non-functional chords). For example, cadential 6-4 chords are formed from appoggiaturas, so they would be non-functional. He attempts to be very specific about what is non-functional. - Categorize the motion of the roots of the resulting chords in terms rising and falling diatonic intervals (e.g. rising fourth, falling third). Because chord progressions are chiefly a diatonic phenomenon, the quality of the interval is not considered (e.g. major vs minor third). This means there are only a total of 6 possible progressions. - The quality of the chord (major, minor, diminished, 7ths, 9ths, etc...) is also ignored. Only the root progression is analyzed. Several observations were made from this analysis: - Sometimes root progressions come in "pairs" of opposite types (e.g. a falling fourth followed by a rising fourth), while other progressions are unpaired. - These two types of progressions (paired and unpaired) have a strong tendency to "cluster" with others of the same type. That is, paired progressions are often adjacent to other paired progressions, and unpaired progressions are almost always adjacent to other unpaired progressions. This clustering allows us to segment the music, and suggests that music is built out of two distinct types of harmony: - "Static Harmony" - sections consisting of paired progressions which oscillate around a central chord (usually the tonic, though dominant could also be used). - "Dynamic Harmony" - sections consisting of unpaired progressions which have a stronger sense of forward harmonic motion. A few additional observations can be made: - Statistically, the progressions used in Dynamic Harmony have become polarized, such that they consist almost entirely of the following three progressions, which he names after greek letters: - "Alpha" (α) - A rising 4th. By far the most common (e.g. ii-V and V-I). - "Beta" (β) - A falling 3rd (e.g. I-vi). - "Gamma" (γ) - A rising 2nd (e.g. IV-V). - The remaining 3 progressions are much rarer, and are named after their inverse, followed by a prime symbol (e.g. a rising third would be a beta-prime (β') progression). - Musical phrases (sections delimited by cadences) tend, in general, to follow some variation of the following pattern: begin with static harmony, followed by dynamic harmony, and ending in a cadence. He then compares musical phrases to linguistic phrases, and postulates that static and dynamic harmony, and cadences are the syntactic "building blocks" of musical phrases, much like subject and predicate are the building blocks of linguistic phrases. Of course, the book goes into greater detail.

I've been enjoying the TV series Terra Nova, and .

Copyright can be a funny thing sometimes.