Kublai

It's exactly what I said. The point is that in incidental music cannot be otherwise. Sincerely I believe in the cleaverness of the people. If they are ear-trained they just can distinguish between good and bad music...if they feel insulted by a bad use of some of their cultural musical things there's something wrong with them. Or they are very young. Come on! It's just bad musical thought. It will die with it's owner :). Then I am sorry, but I completely disagree with the view of the "express yourself". Please, we are in the 21th century. Romanticism is over...Since more than 1 hundred years. :D

The sad thing is that all the people I know who play "cultural specific music" the only thought they have is to do it as similar to the original as they can. They consider themself arrived when their music is indistinguishable from the true one. They call that "their own style". Funny. Just think (if you are outside america) to all the Hip-hop bands around you or reggae or soul or irish-folk and so on...Obvioulsy the same concept applies to the ones who are happy when someone says to them that their music is like William's or Elfman's one. That means: Your music is good beacuse it sounds like another composer music. Paradoxal. I'm not against the usage of cultural-musical clich

The most important living composer (non considering Kurtag and Penderecki of course), Salvatore Sciarrino, is a selftaught composer, another great 21th century composer, Giacinto Scelsi, was a selftaught composers. Both are well, well, well known all around the world. To say something on "fake" usage of music: contemporary instrumental and composing tecniques in Film-music are a clear example of that. Just because they sound so "strange" (for a musical-untrained, let's say "musical-uneducated" ear) they are used in thrillers and horror movies forgetting the structural, aestethic and so on thought taking only the surface: "that strange sound you can do whistling in the flute without making a sound", for example. I think this is more serious than using a gamelan orchestra just because it's exotic...In this way the gap between contemporary music and audience (started after the II WW) will never be filled: it will always be connected with something bad, thrilling, horrorific. And it's really not the case. Coming back yo the main argument, I will give you some names besides Sciarrino and Scelsi (listen to his quartets LIVE! They are astounding beautiful...): I. Xenakis G. Ligeti (of course) G. Kurtag F. Donatoni S. Gubaidulina K. Penderecki W. Rihm L. Berio to say just the ones I love...

That's clear, the problem is not to play a MIDi file (also Media Player does that), but how the MIDI information (=the performance) is created. Sequencers let you manipulate in depth the midi information, manipulate the sound, add reverb etc. And then it's a matter of sound. To pre-listen a piece of music you don't need an incredible orchestral library, but to have a semi-professional sound (=to give the "sensation" of an orchestral sound) you really need it. A virtual "sound" (like every sound) has to played....and to play it fine you definetly need a sequencer. Of course if you can record with a real orchestra you just need a notator. I agree. But - again - to play it (and mix!) decently with a virtual orchestra you need a sequencer. Another solution is to write the music by hand :D and then record every single voice with the seq...

Sequencers and Notators do a quite different Job. Notation programs are mainly conceived to transcribe or compose music in a traditional way (eg. write notes directly on staffs); They have a rough "prelisten" function: with it you can listen to the results of your writing, but this "performance" generally sounds inevitably mechanical, lets say "computerish". Sequencers are mainly to record performance or to compose music in a "pop" or in an improvisatory way (and if you are going to study Jazz this can be your solution). Someone noted that scores composed only with a sequencer have some problems. That's true because it's very difficult to see voices relations: melodic lines are represented by sequences of rectangles. By the way if your final product will be a score played by a virtual orchestra (such Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, East west Quantum Leaps, Garritan Personal Orchestra, etc etc etc) you will need a sequencer to play your score in a convincing way (after hours and hours of MIDI editing). The most famous sampler-player for virtual orchestras are Tascam Gigasampler and Native Instruments Kontakt. I personally have been an Emagic Logic user for several years, now I'm turning into Cockos Reaper (but WARNING! Midi implementation is really poor compared to logic one). Orchestral libraries and sample-player could be really pricy. The most economic is the Garritan Orchestra, but its sounds are not exactly marvellous for my taste. For the score I use Finale, but I never liked it. Thanks to your post I discovered Personal Composer; I downloaded the demo and it seems quite pretty. So to summarize: you need both types of software 1) Notation -> to see what happens in your music, to write convincing and "correct" music, etc etc etc. 2) Sequencer -> to perform (and mix) the music. It really depends on your workflow. If you write orchestral music directly on the score a possible solution is: 1) Write the music (!) with the notator and listen with the preview function if you like what you are writing. 2) Export it as midi file 3) Import it in your sequencer and transform the poor MIDI performance in something that seems to be human (with tempo changes, Crescendos, Diminuendos and - why not? - performace imprecisions -> human breath) 4) Mix it (adding eq, reverb and so on) If you write the music with a piano and then you orchestrate it with little changes you can: 1) Record via MIDI the piano performance directly with the sequencer 2) Assign voices and doublings etc etc to the orch. instruments following exactly the "breath" of your piano performance. The plus of this solution is that the performance can be really more convincing than the first solution these are obviously only common workflow examples...you have only to begin to work and find your way. Good work!

Hello robertn, first of all thank you for your comment. Of course you are right about the hybrid real(raw)//synthetic thing. I have to say that I didn't choose that, the budget choosed for me :blush:... I hope that with the video this gap isn't too manifest... Thank you again!

Hello rolifer, I like very much the tempo changes , the mood changes and really love the tempo-game between the ostinato and the other instruments at 0:50 (I feel more irony in the sense of lightness than familiarity). I have to say that there are too many progression scales for my taste. A very nice work!!

Hehe...exactly..actually the soprano chant is superimposed to the scary and heart-breaking scream of the pig, which slowly fades in. The scream is - believe it - Bb and my tonality is Gminor....weird! :w00t:

Hi, Thank you both for your comments and thank you "young Ron" for your welcome. :) It's hard yo explain exactly the idea of the documentary; let's say that it was about a traditional and in-extinction-danger pig slaughtering practice. The main character was an ultranice 80 years old peasant. Ah! the doc was in B/W. The idea of the video was like (very roughly) 1) Death of the pig 2) Flesh-processing 3) Rebirth of the pig (!) in another form (...) There is no action with the music. The musicated scenes were thought as pauses, intros, or endings. Furthermore It had to be simple and yes..gentle, just because besides the main action the athmosphere is really gentle, characters are playful and everything is really relaxed. And there are not dramatic moments. For the intro I was asked to express the idea of an ancient and sacral rite. That's why I thought to a drone (non processed violin harmonics) a soprano voice and a "non measured" (don't know how to express this otherwise in english) modal melody. The "intermezzo" is a dialogue between the slaughterer and the slaughtered; the idea of the editor was to express this vital and ancient relationship. Harmonic fixedness (t-d-t-d-etc), dance-movement (3/4 of course) and a simple counterpoint have been my choises. The finale (before the crescendo) should express the rebirth of the pig., the screen shows a lot of salami, hams, sausages and so on (:D). Harmonic fixity is a little destabilized. During the main titles I came back on the main tonality/theme/athmosphere-idea. I hope you got the idea of it...and also that i musically expressed what I described... This was quiet a long post. Sorry for that but synthesis it's hard in other languages than yours :blush:. Again,thank you. K

Hi pliorius, I liked your piece, especially the way you manipulated the timbres, despite sometimes they forget "to much" their provenience, especially if you call the work for "brass" and electronics. The only thing I can say is that the autopan effect is to much reiterated; it tires the listening and the given "sound-from-every/nowhere" should be very balanced to give dramaturgic movement to the sound spatialization. Oh! ...and the coda is really, really nice. Go on with your work! Do you plan to do something else like this piece?

Hi all! I'm new here and I think the best way to present myself is to let you listen to some music of mine. So...that was the soundtrack of a documentary. I used three soloists (violin, cello and a soprano, students of the local music school) and a virtual orchestra. It's not well produced because I recorded everything at home and I had really little time to do everything. :angry: The intro is quite different from the rest... I hope you enjoy them! I'm really curious to know what do you think about them. See you! Intro Intermezzo Finale - End titles