queer_icecream

Same here :P

A suggestion, in glorious Microsoft Paint (sorry), follows: - Drums are round noteheads; metals (in this case cymbals) often have "x"-shaped noteheads to make them easier to distinguish at a glance (sometimes triangles have triangle-shaped noteheads as well). With bass and hi-hat in the same space, it would be necessary (but you don't need to have them in the same space) -I put the the b.d. and hi-hat pedals at the bottom, since they are played by the feet. -Put a "+" over closed hi-hat notes and an "o" over open ones -This all depends on your set-up. Bottom to top of the staff should correspond to left-to-right on your setup. P.S. The differently-sized notes are the result of my poor Microsoft Paint skills, not anything important... Sorry again for the lack of classiness.

Oh, and erm... Corbin dear, I'm not a mister...

There's a piece by Kevin Volans, called White Man Sleeps, which is based on African folk music, and was originally for (i think) 2 harpsichords, percussion and viola da gamba. Gamba has movable gut frets (which is a total pain when you're a poor beginner trying to learn, btw), so Volans has the viol player move the frets to an African tuning. In the later arrangement for the Kronos 4tet, the piece is played in "normal" tuning. I don't know how practical frets are for instruments that don't usually have them (not saying that they aren't practical, i just have no idea...). Thoughts, string players? I wonder about those colored tape things that beginners put on their fingerboards. It might be confusing for 16-tone scales, but for scales with fewer pitches per octave, it might be helpful. I dunno, i've never really played a string instrument enough to know.

If you want to experiment with various scales/tuning, there's a pretty nifty program called Scala: Huygens-Fokker Foundation, centre for microtonal music | Stichting Huygens-Fokker, centrum voor microtonale muziek 1/3 of the notes (the diminished seventh based on the "tonic") will be the same between 16 and 12 tone equidistant (sp?) scales, and the rest will have to be somehow divided by the performer. That will be tricky... but possible, if the composer thinks it through carefully. String players are trained to play in 12-tone equal temperment; but are certainly capable of playing in others. They will just need to know where to put their fingers, and that's the tricky part, since they will probably not be able to hear the intervals. Wind playing can bend pitches down, and use alternate fingerings, but it will be really tricky. Harry Partch and Lou Harrison used tunings other than the 12-tone equal temperment; take a look at what they did to get their music playable. Harrison, in a lot of the music of his that i've seen, he's like "Please please please play this in just intonation, but if you really have to, you can play it in equal temperment, i guess.". Partch had to invent a gazillion instruments for his 43-tone scale. There's a documentary about him on youtube: YouTube - Harry Partch - BBC Documentary - Part 1 of 6

Hey! I like your piece; i think it would be fun to play (esp. the bass part, and that's saying a lot, since i usually hate playing bass clarinet). The mood and language of the piece are really cool. I just had three gripes: 1. I agree that it could stand some variety, but i'm not sure that you need a contrasting middle section. What i do think you should do, however, is think about range a lot more. Your writing keeps all three of your performers hugging the throat tones (i know it's not all throat tones, but a large percentage of it is). For folks not familiar with what i mean, the throat tones are from written middle-of-staff Bb, which is the worst note, to the D or so below that. They completely SUCK on clarinet; the tone is thin, intonation goes away when you try to play loud. Speaking as a clarinetist, they just sound stupid. Anywho, rant over. MonteCristo, why not have a phrase or two where you just have eighth notes seething in a low register. If you want things to be fortissimo, use the shrill higher register. The first entrance of the 2nd clarinet enters on throat Bb at fortissimo. This is either going to be really flat or weak-sounding, or perhaps both. I'm guessing that this is not what you want. Why not put it up an octave? And more (and more purposeful) development of range might make it sound less "incidental". You have a fairly constant texture, and fairly uniform melodic/harmonic content, and stay at a pretty loud dynamic throughout. To make it sound less like background music, you have to develop something, and range (maybe in conjunction with dynamics) would be a good thing to develop. Or you could add a middle section, but it would have to contrast somehow, or it wouldn't help any. And i'm not sure what this piece needs is big contrast; just more contour. But that's just my opinion. 2. THERE'S NOWHERE TO BREATHE. Ummmm... yeah. Maybe you should think about thinning out the texture in places (at the same time giving a chance to breathe) 3. Please put in some basic articulations. If you gave this to 3 trios, you would get three completely different styles of articulation. One group might play it completely stacatto, one might play all slurred, you get the idea... Good piece! It just needs a bit of work. Sorry, i tend to type a lot; i hope i didn't come across as too critical. I really like the piece and think it would be a lot of fun to play.

JB: Thanks for your interest and comments. That was not harsh at all! Balancing playability and "reward" (i like how you phrased that!) is something i've thought about a lot, but i always seem to wind up writing for one extreme or another anyway. I really do need to work on that. What would you organists say are the hardest aspects/passages of this piece are? And Corbin, this is just happening so quickly! :blush: It seems like only yesterday when we were bonding over Susan McClary... Ummm... anyway, thanks so much for the kind words!

Oingo, thanks so much for your comments. I'm a little confused about the ranges of manuals. Someone told me that "I don't have any notes below middle C", and i wasn't sure if that meant i should or shouldn't write below middle C (and was too embarassed to ask :-P) You're completely right about the ending; i will definitely rethink that. Thanks again for your wisdom!

To answer your questions, composerorganist: 1) In some cases, yes. In the top staff's phrase that starts in measure 9, and in the fugue (starting m. 49), i really heard reeds. It could just be that i love the sound of reeds though. I suppose that some of the other markings are motivated by trying to even things out (as in, 6 minutes of just reeds would probably be overdose) 2) It's been more of an ongoing process, with me hanging out in practice rooms with her, and her showing me various things. She also occasionally complains about various aspects of new organ music she comes across, and has recommended several pieces and composers to listen to/study (Durufle, Messiaen and Hindemith for good 20th century organ writing, Bach and Mendelssohn for pedals since she loathes how a lot of contemporary composers use pedals). 3) No. 4) It's complicated; i've been composing for quite a while, and have also been taking lessons for a long time. At school, i'm uber-involved with my comp department, but at the moment i'm an almost-but-not-quite-a-major. And lately, i've been going through a radical change in my musical outlook, which had the result of making me not terribly sure of myself composing in any particular style anymore. And (almost done, i promise), this piece is especially complicated since most of the material is taken from a piece i wrote a looong time ago. Thanks for your interest! Hope this answers your questions.

Heya, So this is a movement of an organ piece that i'm writing for an organist friend. I've never written for organ before; i've discussed writing for the instrument with another organist friend, who gave me some tips, and i looked at a lot of info on the internets. But i still don't really know what i'm doing. Any and all comments would be very much appreciated. I especially don't know what to do about stops. In this piece, i've marked where (i think) i want reeds or flutes or full organ. I also put foot lengths when i wanted it in a different octave. I don't really understand what qualities the different manuals have, so i didn't mark them. I imagine that stop-writing would be something that can only really be gained through experience and hearing/playing a lot of organs. So...is what i have now a good amount of information to provide? Will what i have written work? Have i marked it correctly? Are there other issues with this piece that i should be aware of? Thanks so much for reading/listening! organ1.MID organ1.pdf

The practice canti firmi that Schoenberg provides for pratice are at the very end of the chapter on first species (in my edition, it's on page 21, and listed as Ex. 9) It took me forever to find them! I think that you are supposed to use the same C.F.s to practice all of the species, since i there don't seem to be any listed in Chapter two as specifically for 2nd species practice, and so on.

Oooh! If you can get your hands on it, try to look through How to Write for Percussion by Samuel Z. Solomon. It contains everything about the logistics of writing for percussion (from what each instrument can and cannot do, a craaazy chapter on notation options, what instruments you can expect and which you can't, which percussion set-ups will work and which won't, etc.) It also mentions a lot of examples so you can listen to exactly what Solomon is talking about, and has a few scores in the back with comments telling what the percussionist will do/think when they see such-and-such in fron of them. It goes into a lot more detail, and really gets you into the performer's mind than any orchestration book (that i've come across) does. Then again, it is just for percussion of course, so a general orchestration book would be helpful for you, too. Cheers and happy percussion-ing!

Yeah, i was kinda wondering about the range... Thanks for the heads-up, everyone. That's what comes from me taking a non-representational sample size to determine reasonable ranges (in this case, two people :P) And, yes, i do need to rewrite it quite substantially. I just wanted to post to see if people thought it would be a worthwhile idea to develop... Back to work on the piece! Thanks again for taking the time to look at this!

Heya, so this is a quick sketch i wrote for a string quartet that also whistles. I'm not really sure about this piece, but that's what's summer's for, right? It came about from me fooling around and recording myself whistling over myself whistling. It's an exact retrograde of itself and has got a fair amount of canonic stuff, so hence the name (i'm awful with names, btw :P) Ummm...yeah, what do you folks think? I'd love any comments you might have. whistle-4tet.pdf whistle-4tet.MID

Thanks to both of you! I will check out all the works you mentioned; i'm much more familiar with the instrumental works of Ligeti and Penderecki, and never got around to listening to much Whitacre. Thanks again!