rendalli

Greetings Earthlings, Not having enough spare time and having to work for a living, regrettably I now have a collection of broken computers, a large stash of hard drives containing audio, notes, utility programs, samples; a lot. All my installation media too... I haven't suffered data loss thankfully, but the quantity is almost unmanageable. I'm hoping to have things organised at some time. I'm sorry not to have enough resources currently. I can still do some solo piano and suchlike and I will try to do some before long, but I have at least dug out a 45-second snip of a piece I was writing. This is the introduction. I did have around 1:35 of it done, but I can't find that. After the 45 seconds, there was, let's say, a sudden dramatic shift of tonality, and of mode (i.e. different scalar intervals). I look forward to continuing.

Indeed using a story for compositional inspiration is perfectly fine, but even after that is done and a piece of music comes into being, without being informed, the listener will not be able to identify the "source" material. Such is the tenuous nature of these links; they are not in any way "absolutes" themselves...

I agree there are patterns established in my neural system by musical structures, and the patterning of my brain influences what I think to compose. That is merely an "accident of experience", music itself isn't "programmatic". Performance wise, of course, a lot of musical activity is cerebellar, rather than musical analysis, which is cerebral. Surely the brain has a lot to do with the whole thing...

As in a response to - Music does not "speak" of anything but relationships of tones (my original statement). Evidently yes there are relationships of such as rhythm and timbre. These are still acoustic relationships, and my point is that music (and its analysis) can only be meaningfully discussed "acoustically". When I say "meaningully discussed", I mean there is a "shared terminology", a mutually understood "frame of reference". However "pregnant in meaning" a piece of music is to you, it will likely be pregnant with a different meaning for a different person. This is why, to me, such discussion is insignificant. Anyway, actual musical structure as exhibited in a musical score is of much greater interest to me than "psychologism" and subjective "meanings", which I do not care to hear about. Talk to me of major thirds and augmentation, chromatic scales and syncopation, instrumentation and technique, thank you...

So he did. I am very fond of Stravinsky's pronouncements. The term "king of instruments" is from Mozart (who was warned that playing the organ would ruin his piano technique). The organ definitely allows long pedal points!

Thanks Luis. Unfortunately the score is lost because of a computer accident.

Not an especially adventurous work, written in a day and a half for a funeral. I decided to upload it simply because there isn't much in the way of organ music, and the organ is the "king of instruments".

Musically simplistic and of no interest. Naturally that doesn't stop it becoming popular.

All your comments are interesting. I agree that serialism in its original (Schoenberg) form is no longer common, and I also agree that serialism in this sense produces works which can sound "the same". However, it is not "dead" (as JairCrawford points out, "dead" is maybe not an appropriate term for any kind of music). It still has some merit. What interests me about it is the contrapuntal element: it uses transformations which were applied in the work of Bach for instance, but in a dodecaphonic context. I admit that I personally do have an "intellectual pedagogical bent" and perhaps that is why I still find serialism of interest. That said, I believe that a composer has to be careful with this kind of work, because although it is an intellectual challenge, that should not detract from writing something which sounds good (of course opinion on what sounds good is varied). Many composers have enjoyed an intellectual challenge, and have played with different structures, but the best works have an undefinable quality which makes them appeal to "the ear". What is important is not the technique, but how it is used.

I've often thought of writing a piece of several movements, only one of which is "serial" (in the twelve-tone sense), even though I haven't written anything serial in years. I've maintained a vague interest in it. Needless to say the suggestion of an isolated serial movement would require some, let's say, "caution". Serialism, of course, was different in the hands of Schoenberg and, for instance, Alban Berg. Schoenberg stipulated the avoidance of sequences of three notes from "common" triads for example. That makes his compositions sound "more atonal". What's the general opinion, is serialism gone and forgotten, or is it still on people's minds? Just wondering what you all think.

I'd use the accent mark with a style notation of détaché over the stave for the effect you seem to want, avoiding the use of numerous staccato marks, as pateceramics suggests, but if you're concerned about Sibelius playback only, rather than what players would prefer, do what sounds right, even if it looks bad!

Music does not "speak" of anything but relationships of tones. What I mean is that any actual analysis of music is on a technical level only. Personally I don't have any patience with ideas such as "Beethoven's sonata conjures up an image of moonlight" (because it doesn't, it's just music). All such attributions have come from conventions which have developed over time and which are now largely accepted. String tremolo, for instance, is often associated with dramatic moments in film scores. Music does indeed relate to something within us which is not "language" (in the sense of the spoken or written word), so in that sense it does go "beyond" words, but in the same way, words go "beyond" music (even if poetry might be considered "musical").

As already explained clearly by the others, tremolo is not a specific division in time, so that point has been covered. Assuming therefore that what you do want is the specific precise time-division you refer to, you do not wish to "switch to 12/8". However, as you have worked out, 4/4 and 12/8 are closely related, by exactly this division into triplets, and it's a common thing. Likewise with, for instance, 3/4 and 9/8. Often you will need to make a choice between whether to base your tempo marking on the base time interval, or the dotted one (dotted means one and a half, so 3/2, which corresponds to the inverse ratio of 2/3 for triplets). You need to mark your triplets. If you want to save on writing, you can mark a section sim. (simile).

Greetings, You can upload into whatever section you feel is best, from the loose categories. Orchestral, Big Band and so on... On a related topic, how are links to be embedded in an upload to the sections of the site with actual music (i.e. audio)? My previous uploads were done with the on-site player, and because of my own bandwidth limits at the time, I could never get them to play properly. I seem to remember I had some difficulty working out how to include a link. I'm supposing I can do it here with the "link" button on the interface, like this: http://shikyamuya.longmusic.com/audio/Fanfare.mp3 and I'm asking since I have a small-capacity server with my audio files on it. Is there a similar link button in the uploads section? On a related topic, what does the "Attach Files" option do? Maximum single file size 200MB but where are these stored? Do people upload MP3s there? 大震

An entertaining idea, but I actually found the output too random - I should add that, although composition does have elements of chance (the choice of the individual) I'm not an advocate of alleatoric composition... I find that there are certain elements from the musical tradition which still have a place today: stepwise motion, proper voice-leading, contrapuntal thinking - all these elements are important in creating the kind of structure I prefer, and for me, it's structure that is the real raison d'être of compositional works. It is perception of this structure which gives pleasure to the audience. Perhaps some of you will disagree, but I challenge you, even for a "tune" you like, what is it you like about it? I maintain that it's the structure (in this case the intervallic relationships) which pleases you. In summary, I say it is not the source of the ideas which matters, rather it's what is done with them.