hornplaya

There are Various Was of designating pedal in pedal. Ped. followed by a * for the release, or the line, etc.

It is not unplayable, the fast 7th skips would be a problem. We all now horn players will eventually crack something. But with practice it wouldn't be too hard, just getting everyone to play it with the same percision as the midi but with human input.

Famous Composers make mistakes too. Don't always rely on a score for instrument names because sometimes they could completely wrong, or just experimenting with new instruments of the time, i.e. Bach.

Thats pretty cool. Hard as hell to play though. I like the call and response stuff along with the echos of the 7's and 6's and what not.

Yeah, unless you want to be extremely specific with the sounds you are making, i.e. prepared piano, you just need to write what type of sound you want, hard or soft. bright or warm. Most percussion studios have different brands of instruments of which produce different qualities, thus, they would have to determine the best mallet or stick to use when that are playing the piece. "fancy sticking" is something that is mainly used in marching percussion but you could always consult a percussionist and ask him his opinion of the matter.

What you are seeing are old parts that were written for natural horns or horns that still required crooks. There are obviously tone differences when you start playing with different lengths of tubing as well as the different wrappings of the tubes. There is no need to write for a horn in a different key other than F, it is just frivolous because it will end up being transposed back into F by the player. Tenor horns in Eb are completely different and are relics of old marching bands. There are Wagner Tubas that can be in Eb which are basicly french horns in the shape of a euphonium.

I agree with Qc, no notation program is going to make you a lesser or a better composer. You bring to composition with what is in your head, sure there are "compositional" plug-ins in both sibelius and finale that will orchestrate or trim down, etc. but if you find yourself using those than you should question the validity of your composition. I think that most students who want to write music that is their head are unable to write an exact copy of what they hear but can come close. I believe this is where pencil and paper come in handy. It is almost impossible to write "chicken scratch" ideas so you know what direction you are headed. After this you can start inputting into a notation program and start to listen to a sampled playback, however, when listening you can never forget what the piece sounded like in head and you must rely on training.

I know that in the Sibelius Reference Manual there are engraving rules which is a pretty good basis but not complete. There are books with the complete engraving rules of hand written music that should be the ideal and easily transferred to digital editing (finale, sibelius). Here is a good website: npc Imaging's bookstore I would look at the The Norton Manual of Music Notation but there are other great books there about the history of notation and even some very comprehensive books on the use of Finale and Sibelius. Until then, Finale does most of the work for you. Just make sure there are no collisions or typos and all the dynamics are under the score (instrumental) or above (choral). The best thing to do is look at what everybody elses score looks like and try to mimic it, if you think something doesn't look right than it probably isn't. Hope this helps.

Does anybody have any non text comments. This is the first Choir piece I have written and I want some opinions on stuff that you would change or something that you like. Thank you

The only time I would see it being pheasable for puting more than one instrument of different families, i.e. Flutes and Oboes, in the same staff is if you wrote a condensed score of which would be a non-transposing score. This would usually be a grand staff or two depending on the size of the ensemble. To Gardener: Horn players were changing crooks around the early 19th C. By the 20th C., horns had valves and could easily play chromatic passages, however, composers still wrote for horns in the old style, 1 and 3 were a similar range and 2 and 4 the same. Still in the non-transposed key of the piece. Therefore, hornists must transpose because the instrument was and still is in F.

You should not write something in a different language just to make it more interesting. It will not mean anything more and sound any more interesting than before. I would suggest that you do not write in Russian, it is an extremely difficult language to set. You can always look on the web for some free domain poems and set the one you like the best.

I fixed the stuff you mentioned. I was wondering if the "to" in m. 45 was ok. I was wanting an oo to ahh effect but I don't want to have an effect that takes away from the text. Here is the new score: Midnight Hour Contest.pdf

I love Sondheim, I will study up on him.

Ok, this helps emmensly. I was unsure of where to split some of the words, I am still tyring to find a good article or book on text setting (any suggestions?). I will follow these rules now that I know them. You can only look at a score for so long until everything looks right even if it isn't.

Thanks, that is what I thought. As this is the first time for writing for choir, these are the things I am learning. I talk the text and attempt to sing to make sure if it is singable and not completely awful sounding. The russian languange, it did take until the early Romantic era to finaly come up with a way of setting the languange to sound reasonable.