yeonil

In your situation, Nickthoven, i would recommend singing or humming, and recording that. It may sound ridiculous, but as a new technique, it explores other parts of your creativity. I presonally caught myself on the same thing: when composing strictly on paper/computer, the ideas are different, they are more thought out, and the piece easily gets a specific , in some way clumsy feel. On the other hand, i would never get some ideas on piano, which i spotted during a writing session, because always i am mostly locked on creating lines and harmonies i am at least slightly accustomed to. A kind of "finger-memory". When singing, another parts unlock (some hide themselves) so the effect is another kind of melody, i hope that it can be more melodic, and fluid. Yeonil

If You really want to... my website is located at http://tiny.pl/qmvl Unfortunately, I don't have any space there to link to anything... yet. So if you are still interested, check it :P Yeonil

I think theory should be taught, or better: "given" as a kind of last resort to which the composer should harbour, if he would run out of ideas. I always thought bad about some kind of universal theory, which will say, simplifying, "This is Good, and this is bad" and i think that rules are made by "putting up with" currently availible music. Imposing strict rules to music newcomers is like killing an Einstein just because he had very bad grades at maths (he had). I do realise that writing music that is edible to the audience implies that you must conform in some way to the rules that are acceptable, but writing , obeying strictly all the rules is like fighting with windmills (Don Kichote and the like) because the very nature of rules implies that once in the past someone had written something superior, which exactly obeyed the rules, because it MADE the rules using which now we suppress the odd element in the newbie composers creations. I think theory should be taught gradually, after a period of time when a composer should be told to develop his own style. Now the problem emerges, because there is often that silly situation: if a newbie composer just starts, heard nothing about music, he don't know what his future style will be, nor is interested in particular type of music, providing that he didn't hear any music at all (impossible, but i must make some rethorical statements to aid the argument). The given composer should be handed to a careful mentor, who will present to him some carefully chosen music, and, with mutual feedback, modify the selection to help develop his style. Then, the theory should be given, as a sort of supplementar resource "They did that in the ancient times, you might want to check it out". And i think improvisation should be taught at schools from the begining. The great masters were great improvisers, so it might help. What do you think? Yeonil

Music is considered for humans only, as far as now, so we need to be anxious about the end user, not in the origin of it. It's the "end user" on who we are focused on, and if he is capable of getting something from particular music, then we can equally judge the quality of it. It is not important how the music was made, as far the objective audience is concerned. (of course the method of making music is a criterion to judge the composer, not the music itself) We, as composers, in my opinion, have very little teachable knowlege about managing and administrating emotions, every one of us need to develop his/her own method of doing so. Maybe because as generations pass, the emotional feedback changes rapidly, and every new wave of composers need to readjust the principles? Yeonil

Well done! And when i said well done, i ment very, very well done. Or more ;P and ditto :P Yeonil

My first: some archaic version of Cakewalk. I never found the traditional approach in finale good in my workflow, but i got to love the concept of "piano roll" in cakewalk, cubase, which was adopted in reason also, which i prefer now because of the strong connection with the samples. But if you think of printing your music, you can't avoid finale, at one point or another :) Yeonil

i think if this is a menu piece it should be less intrusive at first. I was unpleasantly struck by the electronic ostinato, way before the "music" actually started ;P You didn't say what was the theme of the movie so i assume it fits to it. You managed to make nice laid-back feel to it, but sorry to say that, completely out of my music taste :) i would place there at least more harmonic flavours, to make sure people who don't know music well won't be offended, and those who do know won't go crazy after hearing the same ostinato for 15 mintues while they fiddle with the DVD menu. my 2 eurocents Yeonil edit. consider blending the sharp endings of the phrases, they are the potential anger makers here for the users.

I agree to that. I didn't mean the music itself can contain no emotions, but the composer :) And the prhase that music contains emotions means for me that performer/audience can make their own emotions out of the music. Yeonil

I must disagree here. The official notation AFAIK is: "+" or "aug" for augmented chords like : F+7 or Faug7 , "dim" or "o" for diminished chords like Fo or Fdim , "-" or m for minor chords, like: F-7 or Fm7, delta sign or "maj" for sharp 7th like: Fmaj7 means f a c e, but Fm maj7 (uppercase) means f as c e (and so on) As for the "Extensions" notation: it is not only correct AFAIK, but desirable, mainly for pianists and guitarists, or possibly other musicians dealing with chords. The rest sees this a little tricky, but they should cope with it as well. Basicly it means of course: play some chord PLUS a different note in the bassline. If there is something like this: A7/F7 it means, that we need to play at least f eb a c# g and so on. I am fairly certain about that. Yeonil and it doesn't have to be a non-chord note. It's the easiest notation for bass.

AFAIK there is nothing like 9th 11th and 13th chords in jazz, because it is notabene the scale which is leading the harmony and the degrees, not the other way round. So you can make a chord with ALL scale notes with it, but what there really matters is what the scale was. Yeonil

Well, Jazz treats all scale notes equally more or less now, so the notation scheme involving 9th 11th and 13th is just historical here, meaning that along with 3th there is a 2th (9th) 4th (11th) or along 5th or 7th there is also 6th (13th) that belong to ionian (major) or dorian (minor) scale. This part is important because classical masters used eolian scale to resolve minor chords and in opposition, jazz masters used dorian scale (which was used as such till Bach, AFAIK, along with dorian notation of sharps and flats, but i don't know the english name for it). In classical music you can hardly find a flat 9th in an chord. You won't find any sharp 11th until Debussy (i suppose). Romantism found the added 6th (i mean 13th). I won't bet my head on it, but it was more or less like i said :) Yeonil

I think you can write a music piece without emotions, but if either the performer, or the audience will not generate emotions from it, then where is the point? That piece will be just a masterpiece of null. Yeonil

Hmm you can make a 60 second medium quality mp3 in that range: 200-250kb... :) I think it's not a problem, i have my own host now, but why removing mp3s? if someone is not managing his 1 MB properly it is his particular problem ;P: if he wants to clutter it with one file he should be aware of consequences. And yes, midi files are better for bandwidth, but sometimes you need to post a 10 sec sample of sth... and then? Of course, as i said, for me it's not a problem, just merely pointing out. Yeonil

Looks nice. I was accustomed to some fingering tips in some places, but i think it's not necessary here. hmm vocal line looks good too. hmm. Finale font? Yeonil

AFAIK they are special because in classicism they had good guys from marketing :P They tended to overreact when they saw IV(the subdominant: a dominant placed at a fifth BELOW the I degree) and V (dominant placed on a fifth OVER the Ist), so when they discovered that when you play a tonic chord with a 5th in (the bassline) it doesn't sound like a tonic anymore, they started to use it everywhere. It is basically the same history like with suspended chords in jazz, you just like to have some sort of lighter dominant, so you can play more with the phrase. Or something. Yeonil