SimonTerlecki

chopin never named a piece himself, he wanted people to make their own minds about what a piece was supposed to represent. The publishers who printed his music however gave names to his pieces, most of these names being still used today. so, you can always let it pretty much untitled and leave the audience decide what it represents to them :) or just name it "bob: the musical"

one of the biggest mistakes young people do when trying to learn Chopin is to play it with too much rubato. start learning it straight, get everything right and then work on the subtleties of the performance. and remember that Chopin was an early romantic composer heavily influenced by the classical period which can easily be heard in his music (or seen in his scores). and if I remember right(might be confusing with someone else though.. ), there is some anecdotal evidence from one of his students that Chopin himself played using a rigid tempo compared to how most play his music.

its mostly for the final parts and less so for the composing stage. to make it easier to read for the player than a mess of rests on a page thanks for info, appreciate it.

I'm currently using version 2007 of finale to do most of my work, I was reading some of the various scores I have and noticed is there a method in finale to write directly like this, or would I still have to insert the rests and just make them invisible to printing later on? thanks in advance, Simon

I'm personally of the opinion that music is music, its either good or bad, be it rock, jazz, classical or nose-flute. There are crappy pop artists, and wonderful pop artists, there are crappy classical artists and wonderful classical artists. for every Beethoven the classical world has seen it has had dozens of "paris hiltons" and other wannabes that have been forgotten since because they sucked. likewise, there are some horrible acts in pop music out there at the moment, mostly created to make a quick buck by large corporations, but we also have great songwriters like Carol King. and that's true of every art form, look at painting, we see allot of old artists, but how many at any one time period and even less in a single region during a small time period, yet we look today and there are seemingly more painters than ever before, most of them are bad. Time forgets people who are not good in their field, so much so that after a while, it seems like there was a time that no bad could be done when in fact it was as bad as today, but history forgot the fluff and kept the important stuff. unless I really try, I can't generally think of what crappy bands were "it" a few years ago, but I seem to never have trouble remembering those masterpieces, be it classical music jazz, pop or klingon drinking song. it's okay for you to not like a certain style of music, every one of us does the same, what's not correct is to say that everything in that genre "minus a few exceptions" is bad, because thats true of EVERYTHING in art. most classical music written is plain bad, but it doesn't survive the decades and centuries like the great stuff does so we don't see it as much. but walk into any conservatory, musical academy etc, find where the composers nest, listen to the "great music" they are doing, most of it is garbage. the only reason they aren't being played on MTV is because they don't have enough money for breast implants or can't dance ... or both. anyways... its 4am, im working in 3 hours, was trying to sleep and couldn't, although after writing this boring repetitive post, I'm thinking I'll be able to sleep :)

the series of improvisations by Ryo Noda, while looking like nothing on paper, can be hard to play properly. but the great thing about them is that for certain aspects of them, you can listen to two different sax players and get two different interpretations while both being correct in their own way. they are for unaccompanied sax, and when well performed, can be gorgeous pieces. I heard the Denisov Sonata live once when I was 14, the one thing I would say or rather warn about is... make sure your pianist has the skill and experience to play such a piece before even thinking about it. The Creston Sonata can be a pain for some pianists, but its like playing a xmas tune compared to the Denisov. as for whats on your list, lets see.. most seem to be arrangements but if its the one I think it is, the Rapsodie by Debussy is a beautiful piece. and also remember that difficult does not mean very fast or allot of notes, some of the hardest pieces I've played are hard because of their musicality and not because of their technical passages the heiden sonata is alright, albeit performed a little too often I find The Creston sonata sounds nice, isn't all that hard, but will provide a good workout and training while you play it. however, I suggest you stay away from his Rapsodie, its ugly as ... Concertino Da Camera is a beautiful piece, but easy to butcher if you try it before you have the necessary technique to play it, I'll try to think of more if I can but I have to leave in a few minutes Hope this helped a bit

My formal training is in classical sax performance. been playing for about 15 years. My favorite performance piece is probably the Glazunov concerto. Played that in concert and for my final exam when I was studying in a conservatory in Canada when I was 18, and to this day, it remains the piece I am most fond of performing live. I've never had an opportunity to play the Iber concertino with an orchestra, but it's a nice piece that I wish I'll someday have the chance to play. Accompanied by a piano just isn't the same... Anything by Pierre Max Dubois is usually great. I'm kind of tired and and have bad memory when it comes to names of pieces I've played.... if I think of something else, I'll come back

I had a teacher that used to say that music is one of those rare fields that you remain a student for the rest of your life, no matter how much you think you have mastered, you still have allot to learn

you could also try changing instrumentation, tempo and other factors. having a "dark feel" is more than just which chords you choose.

isn't that the "definition" of snob? "a person who likes more things than you but happens to not like the one thing you like" I'm the same way, I don't enjoy rap or hip hop or whatever that banging noise with the people talking about dogs and farming tools in background in them is called these days... I often find myself laughing when I hear people say "I hate classical music, it's just for old people and snobs" and then hear them praise the score to lord of the rings, or star wars or a video game. even if it isn't "classical" in the technobabble sense of the word they teach us in theory classes. like I used to tell my students when I taught high school music, labels we give to different music is just that, labels created to artificially separate genres to sell the music to a certain demographic. I had a teacher in college that would say something like "you had blues, it was great, but the record industry didn't feel the "black man's music" sold enough to the white population, so they found white kids able to pull of something close enough and called it rock and roll. eventually, they wanted to gain back more of the black population, so they popularized some artists that did again very similar music and called it R&B. three labels that when you look at the actual music being produced, the differences are minimal, often only found in the lyrics" to get back to me finding humor in people saying the hate some type of music (usually classical) and then saying they like something that is basically the same thing (I said basically), I usually try to fool them a bit by making them believe I'm having them listen to the soundtrack to one of their movies or games, but actually playing them some of the great works of the past and present to prove my point to them that it's not that they don't like classical music, they're just 'afraid of the label' or something like that. and like I said before, I don't like rap, but just like like I don't like the works of certain composers, sometimes, I'll hear something that'll make me think 'hey, that isn't all too bad". (and sometimes I'll hear stuff from artists I love and hate it) As long as the music is entertaining, and or is doing the job it is supposed to in the context it is in, it gets positive points from me. okay.. I seem to be randomly ranting about nonsense now... should lay off the caffeine and chocolates, lol.....

probably, mental disorders seem to go hand in hand with artistry sometimes...lol just look for composers that seem to change their musical focus often or have a tendency to be unreliable and you have good candidates. don't know why, but the first image in my mind was the characterization of Mozart in the movie Amadeus, lol.