PeterthePapercomPoser

Thanks for the reminder. Everyone who hasn't already submitted music has been messaged about the encroaching deadline. We're still expecting at least 2 more submissions for a potential total of 9.

@Matthew M has submitted his piece as well!

And you can also highlight text in a reply and usually, a "Quote Selection" button will pop up (sometimes you have to highlight the text a second time if the first time it doesn't work).

That badge was created by me as a joke for Christmas of 2023 so that @Thatguy v2.0 could bestow the badge to me for winning our "Christmas Duel" LoL. That's a good idea too! The only comparable existing award is the "Musical Explorer" badge, but a "Creative Composer" badge would also be good! Thanks.

I honestly had to take some time away from reading this post to fully absorb what it was that you were trying to say LoL. So the first thing is (and what I also told Fruit hunter) is that these kinds of awards cannot be created because every member of the website would want an award created for their name "The Fruit hunter Award of Excellence", "The TristantheTristan Award", "The PeterthePapercomPoser Award", "The Chopin Award", "The Henry Ng Tsz Kiu Award" etc. etc. etc. These kinds of awards would be meaningless and wouldn't bestow any kind of honor or significance to those they would be given to. The other problem is that awards are still bestowed by the staff so there would be a logistical challenge since you'd always have to ask a staff member to bestow the award to someone for you. Finally - you do have a good idea hidden in your post - the idea of having an award for a good Theme and Variations. Now you'd just need a good concept for such an award and what kind of graphic might fit such a concept. Thanks for the idea!

@Kvothe Please don't spread misinformation like this about the contest entries. The piece is 6 and a half minutes long and therefore meets the duration requirements of being between 3 - 7 minutes long. The piece is also written for a quartet of saxophones which is an acceptable instrumentation as the competition is for 3 - 5 individual instruments.

Here's another musical quote from "The Occult" by Colin Wilson: Here's hoping that you have glimpses of other times and places that may help you in your life! Thanks for reading!

Hi @Fruit hunter First off, I think this belongs in the List of Manually-Awardable Badges thread as that is where new kinds of awards would get proposed. But I don't think you should bother about requesting it because creating such an award is: Lacking in meaning. Can easily be replaced by a simple "Like" reaction from you showing your approval. Would be too overwhelming - what if every member of the forum requested their own unique award to be able to give out to members? In any case - only staff are able to give out awards so you wouldn't be able to award the badge at your leisure but would have to continually request the staff to award each individual badge which would be logistically challenging. But of course - feel free to suggest other kinds of awards about specific characteristics of submitted pieces or their composers! Thanks for your interest.

Hi @SergeOfArniVillage ! I really liked these pieces too! But what really drew my attention is what you said here: I re-listened to the 5th Prelude with this "Who will sum-mon Ba-gag-wa?!" lyric in mind and it brought so much more meaning to the music! LoL .. I think this qualifies under a special technique of melody generation called "melodic mining". It can be used to produce lyrics for music as well, especially with the natural rhythms of the words. But in this case "melodic mining" can be used to turn common everyday phrases into melodies by "mining" their pitch and rhythmic content and transcribing them into melodies. So from that perspective, I especially found this prelude interesting! The 8th Prelude certainly sounded furious! Also quite a notable use of the Locrian mode if I am not mistaken! It's hard to write in that mode without implying a different tonality/modality but you managed to pull it off! Possibly due to the strong featuring of the bass riff that strongly emphasizes the repeating E's. Now, looking at the score I realize that you have a G# mixed into the riff which means it's not exactly Locrian, but close! Prelude 9 certainly sounds "spacey". I could totally see this as an accompaniment to an astronaut in their space suit serenely floating through the emptiness of space. Thanks for sharing these and for giving us some backstory about how they were created!

I posted a TAB on Ultimate-Guitar.com of this song! Check it out: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/christopher-cross/natures-way-chords-6596852

What I also didn't notice at first is the parallel 4ths between Violin 2 and Viola! I played around with that idea once again in this following version. Let me know if you want me to stop! I don't mean to take too many creative liberties with your music. AncientRuinMB2.mp3

Hey @Markus Boyd ! I thought I would just add my 2¢ with regards to the question of how to end your piece. There are lots of options! I don't recommend a fadeout since it would be the cheapest and easiest. I personally also don't hear your current ending as a mistake. The only thing that's a bit out of character for the rest of the piece is the picardy third itself. It you simply changed that E natural to an Eb at the end, it would go a long way towards remedying the problem. I have taken the liberty of making my own version of your ending based on @Luis Hernández 's suggestion of using a kind of Phrygian cadence: AncientRuinMB.mp3

Hi @Mikayla ! Thanks for posting your music! I couldn't finish listening to your piece however because of the amount of clipping in the rendering that was hurting my speakers. You can get rid of that by bringing down the levels in the mixer of all the instruments to 50% or slightly lower.

Uneven beat lengths are just fine to be conducted the way 7/8 is conducted - it's not a pain at all but the norm for irregular meters!

Hi @GMoneywroteasong ! I think you should just keep the meter displayed as 13/8 but change how the 8th notes are beamed/grouped in your piece accordingly in each bar. I think this also allows you to have different instruments group the 8ths notes differently specific to what they are doing. I once wrote a piece that was in 5/4 but with many instruments playing in two groups of 5/8, each half of the bar being grouped again differently depending on the specific situation as 2+3/8 or as 3+2/8. The only problem I see is that of such a piece being conducted. In my case, the conductor would still conduct the piece in 5/4 as that was the displayed time signature. But the individual instruments would be encouraged to count the piece in 5/8 if their part was displayed that particular way. In your case you could display your rhythms like so: The notes are clearly grouped, and even if not using 8th notes can still be grouped according to the beat lengths you described, regardless of what kind of particular rhythm they might be playing. Hope this helps!