Quinn

Now, THAT is interesting, Henry! There's an irony to that!

For me, a four part ensemble playing a 3 part fugue, I'd use the spare instrument (as appropriate) to reinforce a line or entries where need be. The stretto, for example, needs clear entries. Swap the instrumental parts of the fugue around so you can marcato each voice entering.

Just my perceptions. Much music sounds the same because it rests on the more conservative foundations of tonal or modal harmony in its simplest form and, as you say, wannabe pop composers and performers want to use their gadgets straight from the box. Has anyone traced the hows and whys of “fuzz” and the accident that popularised it? It isn’t so different with “classical” music either: key-based, concern (as we’ve spoken before) with progressions; staying in one key due to lack of basic theoretical knowledge. Agreed that harmony (up to Brahms at least) allows more scope than the sadly ultra-conservative pop song so it’s there if people want to explore it. . I suppose you hit the bullseye with the “music industry”. Okay, it’s always technically been an industry of sorts. The sausage machine of species counterpoint proves that but until recently it’s been an artisan trade rather than a factory thumping out sameness. Where did it start? The arrival of recorded music and BASF tape; then multi-track recorders able to distribute the product of skills to the masses? Radio? All inspiring members of those masses to try their hand but with no understanding? Thankfully, all but my simplest efforts with “light music” don’t fit the “preferred” formulae. But my call is get playing rather than just tinkle around with a midi keyboard and sample set. Ponder what you want to do with music. Are you into composing because you crave attention or because you need to express something beyond words, or even with words/lyrics?

Well, it's good to persevere. Does it really matter how original you are? Looking at your profile you have a good range of "favourite" composers. Would more listening at perhaps a slightly broader range help, noting you like the Impressionists as well as Romantic? In a way I feel your pain. I can "do" music, went through species counterpoint and harmony (voice leading), have a good ear (the old "You whistle it and I'll play it joke") College did more harm than good so I turned to a different profession and never took music seriously. Can also appreciate stresses of work and a smaller extent family. I've also developed resentment towards cut and paste film music and the ridiculous tinkling of music that's forced on us with every TV documentary and ad. I'm sure much of it is composed by computer but having done a couple of commercial things find it too easy to throw together a few minutes' dross. None of this helps with serious composition. But let's keep on trying. Here and there something good comes of it. All the best with your endeavours.

Well........excellent as usual. Always a very high standard music- and production-wise. A bit short, though, but as it's an arrangement..... 🙂

Quite captures the mood you set out to portray. I wasn't aware of much woodwind and it could probably be done with strings alone. At first the sudden quietening at around 3'45" seemed a bit too quiet but on second listening it did become more part of the mood. I liked the ending - didn't come with a perfect cadence which to me let it carry on in my mind. Nice piece. My only trouble is I live in a cold country and autumn gives me the heebie-jeebies. We have cold autumn winds!

I went for Dorico Pro 3 originally, interested in engraving quality, having looked at several other products, their licencing arrangements, prices, and ease of use including the instructions. Dorico offered several advantages, one of which was working without a time signature. I installed it on a USB eLicenser. As Steinberg is going over to its own licenser on a computer, eLicenser support ends at end 2024. The choices were simple: if you want to go over to the new Steinberg licence, upgrade to Pro5 at a cost of £132 in the UK. I have no need for the upgrade but if I want to go on using the product - that's it. Okay. But doing this conversion was an outright headache. I kept getting error messages or claiming it can't proceed as other applications were using the eLicenser - which were rubbish. Dorico is my only product on it and it was not open. In frustration I kept clicking cancel on each popup. But then miraculously it started loading up Pro5. It took around 1.5 hours to download everything and gave me a licence key. So I was up and running. But no. Yesterday I receive an email warning me Dorico would cease to work in 7 days if I don't verify it. (I mean, for Chrissakes it must have known I already had a version to be able to upgrade it and get working). The instructions were as clear as mud. It seems that it needed to verify that I had a licence on the eLicenser before allowing me to proceed further. Thus far it had only given me a temporary licence. It took another 3 hours of faffing around, talking on the forum etc to find out what I was supposed to be doing. Just thank the Good Lord I didn't throw my eLicenser key away as I intended. It needed to see the original licence to do the verification. Eventually I got it working and "verified". I've honestly never encountered such an awkward, nightmarish installation. Even on Windows 3.1 or 95 there'd been nothing like it. A list of instructions in structured English like a program specification is cried out for. Thankfully, one of the chiefs on the Dorico forum explained what it was about and why. If only his words had prefaced the process I would have been miles more comprehensible. But it's done. The only advantage it offers me over 3.5 is that it no longer messes up tuplets when changing voices. For all that, it's probably still the best out there.

Rather morose but well balanced. Just my impression, it seemed more funereal than a run against fascism (I had in mind the likes of that N Korean bloke). I also felt the frequent use of falling chromatic intervals came as a kind of cliche to give it its sadness. The morendo ending left me feeling nothing had been resolved. All in all a good effort, good string writing. Bests

Yup, as people have more or less said, excellent. Great production values.

It would help if you numbered your bars!

Well said. Along with the rest of your post.

If you follow the (renaissance) rules of counterpoint you won't end up with poor harmony. If you subscribe to a more modern form which can be just polyphonic lines (without all the ordinances about intervals, leaps and so on) your harmony isn't limited. It all depends what you're after musically.

I envy composers who can write music like this. Most catching and lively and ok, I'm a sort-of fan of big band for relief from the other music I listen to. I'm quite fond of Harry James, so it was an easy listen for me. Very good rendering. You seem to have hit on a great sample library. Because I'm a bit naive in this genre, I can't really answer your question about what to do. When your trumpet landed on that high Bflat I expected all hell to be let loose - some kind of climax. My only comment is that I felt the piano to be too loud and present when it arrived, hiding some nice-sounding sax playing. I really think this should go in the "work in progress" section of the forum where it might receive more attention. And when you've solved the question I'll be back to hear it again. Nice.

Hmmm....'No comment' is what I usually have to say to the police..... No, seriously, I submit music here and occasionally (rarely) on another site. I have no wish to publish scores unless one was accepted by the BBC of which there's less chance than me swimming the Pacific Ocean it seems. I sometimes get 5 minutes or so for canned music to be played at a local appreciation group or live - quite rare now - at local concerts. Last one was before the pandemic. For that it has to be simple and fall into the 'light music' category.

I can only speak for the UK: there's far too much nannying - it's a growth industry. Broadcasts, through vox pop, have shown students not knowing how to boil an egg, others who can't work out how to open corned beef can with the attached key, and very few who could fit a 3-pin electrical plug. To me, AI fits in this category. It's purveyors, no doubt cheer-led by the WEF want to attenuate people's ability to think so that they become just puppets. So - for composing it has no future for me. Incidentally, did anyone see the broadcast clip of the robotic conductor..........? To me, utter rubbish. Only naive geeks would get excited. It misses the whole point of the conductor's job: to prepare the orchestra and in concert be just the figurehead and deal with anything going wrong. Imagine this machine doing an opera like Lulu when something goes wrong! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGeRlwxpDYs