James H.

Oh my gosh, thank for sharing this, I love it! I just performed Suicide in an Airplane in a recital this past semester - I was hoping to make an impression upon a slightly conservative audience. It's a very good piece to break the comtempory-piano-music ice with. :laugh:

WHOA, I never noticed this... *applauds*

I thought of a book called "Bach for Beginners" published by B&H in 2 or 3 small volumes. That's how I started. There's always the John Thompson books... they have a smorgasbord of stuff at each level. Really great sets of works for beginners I found to be Kabalevsky's books, Burgmuller's etudes, and Heller's exercises. Also, work on Hanon always to build up some dexterity (and try them in different keys, like C# and Cb). Hanon works best I find if you do it while insanely curving your fingers - more than you have to to make it harder than it needs to be.

Here is another very short atonal work. Just mindless musings on mindlessly conjured themes/motifs. Basically treated in 2nd Viennese manners - I have inversed, retrograded, and etc to the material to play with textures. I have used the extreme registers of the instruments (and yes, I used alto clarinet - shoot me.)This is basically composition improvisation - no revisions have been made since I wrote it, and the compositional process took only one hour. Any kind of feedback is of course appreciated. Stream of Consciousness for Clarinet Quartet

You're actually absolutely right and I agree, which is why I appreciate your comment. However, it's not supposed to sound like Webern - it's supposed to sound like me employing a very limited variety of Webern's techniques and style. I agree, there is a hint of Bartok and possibly some Xenakis snuck in. My chosen sets don't reflect Webern's choices, however I aimed for my treatment of them to be closer to how Webern might have treated them. You're welcome to explain if you disagree. This is a very superficial impression on the style and I did not put much effort into it at all. Thank you! =] P.S., how do you get even poorly done Scriabin and Griffes out of it?

I played a couple good sopranos for a good few minutes a couple times in my life, and I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had with a woodwind instrument. I thought it was great. Very nimble and easy to control. I came to it as a clarinet/flute player. I've never played a curved soprano. Funny story about horns... I think it was the Cleveland at some point. I was told that it was in the principal horn's contract that if he ever had to play this excerpt he was not required to play the last two notes in the bass clef bars and that they would be played by an assistant or the assistant lost his job. :laugh:

I think this concept as a musical composition = complete fail. It just... doesn't fit the bill as a "piece of music." As a set of games however, BRILLIANT! I loved all these ideas and I want to play them all now. Every single one of them! :w00t: I have a fellowship at my music building that announces "John Cage" at any and all sudden/awkward silences. Highly effective. *will probably walk around all day tomorrow going "bum... bum... bum.... bummm... " *

Two options. I don't know how you "hid" the staff, did you use Optimise Staves? If not, this will do the trick for you. It is found under the Page Layout tool drop down menu. This auto-hides all the staves that don't contain notes on a per system basis. If that's not what does it for you, here's what you do. Align the staves manually so that the proper amount of space is present between your string section and your choir. This will crunch that solo violin line together. So you go to where the solo violin part is, go to Page Layout tool, right-click the upper-left handle, select "Allow Individual Staff Spacing". Now for just this one system, if you change the spacing of the staves so the violin isn't crushed, it does not affect other systems. Finale is extraordinarily powerful if you know how to use it. Also, I'm confused. It's a solo violin part and you have it between the strings and choir? :huh: It should be above the first violin part and paired with it in a group.

This was written in three hours. A simple assignment for a class that required a minute-long piece that used a hexachord. I went over the top and fashioned it after Webern. Not strictly or carefully, but I'm rather happy with the result.If you know atonal set theory, you'll see that almost everything in the piece is significant. The base sets are [3-3], [4-17], [6-20], and [9-3]. Each of them are extensions of a [3-3], so the work is very simple and rather shallow theoretically. String Quartet in the Webern Style

"The Annoying Weather." It's a tentative title for the movement. I have not decided yet whether or not it is in its final complete form. I might make another movement to go with it, I might not.I began writing it over a year ago, and I pulled it out the other day to use it for my orchestration class, so the latter half of the piece is new as of... last night. I had since forgotten what I intended to do with this piece, it started as a sketch and progressed, well... sketchily from there. Two primary ideas permeate - the motive in the beginning, and the concept of the ever-changing triplets. Most of the relations are chromatic hexachordal-quartal-garbage mish-mashed lightly together. I really had no intent on a mood or image to convey or anything this time... I just wanted to write some stuff that sounded interesting to my ear and treading over the edge of my normal "voice."Yeah, it's MIDI. Deal with it. Die Lästige Wetter

Yeah, but if every bar of sixteenths is different pitches... then that ... OH you can FILTER? That's not what I'm looking for, I'd still like to see some point and click work, but this filtery thing might be useful.

I'm wondering if there's a shortcut for slurring a fixed number of notes in one click. It would be really useful for say... long string parts where I want every group of four sixteenth notes in one bow... but it's awfully painful to go through 30 bars of clicking and dragging the slur marking for all four or five staves. And what if I'm writing something where it is more sophisticated than just that? So I'm looking for a macro where I can for instance hold '4' and double click and it slurs 4 notes automatically. Is there such thing or a way to program it? I haven't been able to figure it out, but it would be a godsend.

ARGHH! I wanted a perfect authentic cadence at the end! :wacko: Anyways, why B-flat minor? It's not a terribly friendly key, especially when you're NOT specifying instruments. Flute can read in the key, but it's annoying. But then you go entirely too low for a flute to play. It can usually only go to 'middle C'. Recorder is the same. It might work for clarinet, but that's a lot of notes. Also too low for violin, though viola could work (but wrong clef for easy reading, and again, terribly nasty key of B-flat minor). And this is just the top stave. While you have an interesting sounding composition here, I think you could benefit from learning a bit about orchestration. This way you can write for specific instruments and have hopes that one day you piece can be played by live people rather than just a computer. That is... unless of course your long term goal is to write computer music.

Nice stuff. I couldn't decide whether it sounded like a good soundfont or a live recording, but I'm guessing it's a soundfont? Awfully mechanical was my hint. Anyways, the only criticism I have is that in bars 13 and 14 you could have written straight 16th notes like you did in bar 15. I think it makes it easier to read and it wouldn't imply that it's to be played any differently on a marimba. There are a few other places in the etude that this little rhythm goof occurs. Dynamics and stresses/accents are well placed - the mixed meter patterns work very well for this piece, it has a nice groove without being too hard to sight read/learn somewhat quickly. Not a bad use of the lowest octave, either. Keeps mostly in that range so that you can use the same mallet for the whole piece (there's no time to change anyways! xD) Good work! =]

Thank you for pointing out this error - I actually meant bar 50. I have changed that and altered the instruction. Check and see if you find it more clear. Also, thank you for both of your kind words! I didn't know you grew up in Japan, Peter. :happy: