JGarrick

Anyone out there have pieces from their admissions portfolio swimming around the site? I'm looking to get into Berklee or Oberlin, but I'm not sure if I suck at composition or not. I live in BFE and the only people I hang out with are construction workers and farmers. You know, people who generally aren't too keen on the fine arts. As an aside, does anyone have an opinion on those schools?

I've actually been researching this a lot for a composition I'm writing in my jazz piano class. My assignment is to write a jazz piece using techniques and scales of a different culture's folk music. Anyway, there are two main pentatonic scales used in oriental music, The In and Yo scales. The Yo scale is the common "all black key" variety, while the In scale uses semitones on the 1st and 4th intervals. (D-e flat-g-a-b flat). As a side note, you can get a pretty cool koto effect on the piano if you glissando down the scale really quickly. If you're looking to be traditional, their music usually stays away from large interval jumps, and tries to maintain an ethereal placidity to it. Anyway, good luck and I this helped a bit.