maianess

I suppose that title is vaguely cryptic. I'll explain. So obviously a lot of composers have felt "the spirit moving through them," so to speak--that is, inspiration, an idea from nowhere, an insatiable creative drive that can't be ignored, a sudden clarity, etc. etc. Basically, when you know where a piece is going, or know what a piece wants to do, from an artistic standpoint. But I also suffer from what I'd call compositional commitment-phobia, and I wonder if anyone else does. What I'm articulating very badly here is that, say I want to write a choral piece, and I find a text that I really like. I sit down to start to write, but I can't get started, because every time I find a motif that I like, I start being afraid that it's not the "right" one, that if I start to write down a certain path I'll lose that text forever to the music I just wrote, when really there was a much better setting I could have done. It's the same when I start any other piece, or even when I decide on instrumentation. So I'm asking people if they also suffer from compositional commitment-phobia, because I'm curious, but I also want to hear people's take on this specific situation: so I was browsing online and came across this contest for which you had to set a piece of Longfellow text for SATB choir, a cappella or with piano accompaniment. I sat down with a text I rather liked, and realized that what I was writing could go very well with instrumental accompaniment, either string quartet or possibly handbells (but maybe the latter is a bit overambitious... oh well). But that's not very well within the regulations of the competition. So I'm basically just trying to figure out whether I take this text that I actually like, and the setting I've started that I actually like, and write the rest of it a cappella to comply with the contest, or write it with a string (or possibly bells) accompaniment--which isn't the only way the piece could go, in my head, just a creative whim that I think would work rather well. 'Course I'm not asking anyone to make up my mind for me, I'm just curious if anyone else has similar problems, and what people would do in this case.

YES. I left out so much crap from my first score that got performed live, I think the performers would have beaten me if they were professionals and not out camp ensemble...

I concur. Adding to this: he devotes entire blogposts to chocolate and to iPod shufflequizzes and is generally a teenage girl. (I'm sorry, I'm awful, I just had to say that. Feedback on piece coming soon.)

Like I said, I've got no clue what I'm doing--so if you could cite specific passages, that'd be muchly helpful. Okay, so I'm a bit slow, and awful at editing my own work, so for clarity's sake: what exactly are you suggesting that I do? Trim the unnecessary material? Tighten the form? Be more consistent at developing ideas, rather than having thematic ADD, and jumping around in four-bar thematic chunks? Or finding the good bits, pulling them out, and making them into entirely new pieces? This is me going off the top of my head, but a lot of it is stuff I feel I should probably do to this piece--like I said, I've hardly ever done intense, non-superficial editing, so anywhere you can give me to start, I'd appreciate immensely. Thanks!!

Hmm... I mean, I suppose this is a personal thing. I can be a bit obsessive about these things, so I like to do an entire score one way of the other; that is, if I split layers anywhere, I do it for the whole score, even in places where the rhythm is the same. But you could get away with it, I suppose... the most important thing would be to not make it too glaring that you're going back and forth (so not having your divisi written as separate layers and then as chords in two consecutive measures). I doubt I'm the best person to answer this... good luck, in any case!

Yes, my titles are absurdly uninspired. Yes, I completely made up that tempo text and will accept any suggestions. Yes, this is my first time writing for winds (how could you tell?). I started this piece at the beginning of the year for comp class, and after a while it just started dragging, and after I'd banged out as much as I could and could go no further, I abandoned it, before revisiting it about a month ago and writing the last couple pages and cleaning it up some. So this piece and I have quite a colorful history. So this is the transposed score; I don't know quite what the etiquette for these things is, if anyone would like the C score I can post that as well. Any feedback is extremely appreciated, especially anything regarding playability, wind etiquette, articulations, and the general form/flow of the piece. Thank you muchly! wind quintet.pdf wind quintet.sib wind quintet.mid

I do believe a lot of the confusion here was that you've been saying "choral" when you mean "chorale," which is the style you're composing in (as opposed to, an adjective describing music written for a choir). That said, if this isn't written for voice (that is, for singers), then it probably shouldn't be in this particular subforum. In any case, it should be written for clearly defined voices, and the staves should be arranged from highest voice to lowest voice, to make the score easier to read. That's part of the idea of chorales, is that they're written for distinct voices and don't just go all over the place. (That's why voice crossing is "against the rules"; because it takes away the individuality of the voices.) And you said that "no one is singing this horror"; if you're trying to write a traditional chorale, then this is not a good approach. A huuuuge part of the style is the idea that chorales are melodic and singable, therefore any exercise in the style should be singable as well. This is where the emphasis on consonance, small leaps, and stepwise motion comes in. There are so many ledger lines in the top part that you should probably change the clef, and some of the rhythmic notation is just unnecessary and confusing (I feel like the dotted eighth + sixteen rest should just be a quarter, possibly stacatto). What you've posted now is generally really hard to read; I'd be happy to give you feedback from a cleaner score. (I'm not very good about checking back to threads, so if you write an easier-to-read score, send me a PM and I'll take a look at it.)

Read through it many many times, score and parts, and MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS LEGIBLE. That is, that there's nowhere text crashes into notes and slurs hit articulations. Make sure there's enough space between staves. And then make sure this spacing is pretty much consistent on every page (this is where you'd go into "engraving rules"). Be consistent in fonts (i.e., tempo text is always in x font, expressions are always in y font--this shouldn't be a problem unless you modified something, in which case you should make sure everything matches), in score conventions (say, if you're writing a piece with divisi; do you always write multiple voices as chords, or as two separate stem directions? This ought to be consistent throughout the score.) Tempo text should be in line with the time signature. Lyrics should be on the same horizontal plane, as should all the dynamics/hairpins on a staff. Things like that. Basically, just look at the score a bunch of times--hell, give it to friends to look at, second and third opinions are invaluable in cleaning up scores--and find whatever looks confusing/aesthetically unpleasing, and... fix it. Let us know if you've got more specific questions. (I'll suggest right now that properties window, ctrl+alt+P, that lets you make small changes to the position [x and y values] of an object you select...) Oh, and PROOFREAD. Which is slightly different from the above, but has the same basic goal; to make your piece as playable as possible. Doublecheck anything that needs doublechecking; run any of those useful 'proofreading' plugins Sibby offers; spellcheck your accidentals/be sure you put in cautionary accidentals if you modulate.

Hoo-boy. I wrote this... three years ago, I do believe? I'd have even less training at that point than I do now, and I had just been playing with my crappy notation software, Noteworthy Composer, in that sort of plug-in-notes-and-see-what-sounds-okay way. The result was... this. I fancied it a madrigal. Written for SSA. It's... ridiculous. It amuses me greatly ^^ madrigal1.mid

Chordschordschords. Fun arpeggios. Get your chord theory (and those awesome color tones and everything) down-pat, and then just go to town. Lots of arpeggios and fun stuff, and you can do a surprising amount of melodic stuff within chordal improvisations. It doesn't even need to be strictly chordal, of course, you can find a nice little ostinato and mess around unobtrusively over top of it. Really, it's whatever you want it to be. But I would highly recommend getting really really comfortable with your chords and all variations thereof. Other than that, my advice is to PRACTICE--because the more comfortable you get with your own improv, and the more little bits you come up with, the more material you'll have to fall back on that you know how to play well.

Just to clarify--the reason this trend of my ear (or whatever you want to call it) is so irritating is that I listen to virtually no pop music. I suppose the closest thing I listen to is musical theater stuff, which is probably where this whole urge to tie over comes from, but the point is, it's not for lack of trying: I listen to Classical music (er, that being "classical" music--so Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist, the whole shebang).

Okay, I'll say it upfront: I'm not classically trained, and a lot of my music comes out sounding... well, pop-y. Not bubble-gum variety pop, mind you, it just tends to be syncopated, ballad-y stuff. I've noticed this a lot lately--if I'm attempting to write a melody in 4/4, say, there will almost ALWAYS be something tied over the middle of the bar and over the barline. I can't seem to escape it. Does anyone else have this issue? And, more importantly, is it a "problem," in your opinion? By which I mean, does it somehow make a composition less valid to be pervasively pop-inspired?

Written (and recorded) Summer 2008 at The Walden School. Sprang from an assignment to write a short piano prelude, but turned out being not-quite-that. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. (Though, if you're going to come and tell me how I oughtn't to use parallel 5ths/octaves, don't bother :happy: ) One specific question -- in a piece like this, should modulations be accompanied by a key signature change (as in score) or just be written out with accidentals in the original key signature? Sib file and PDF attached, mp3 is HERE (sorry, this site doesn't let me do direct links to mp3 files. It's the one called "Prelude to Nothing.") Prelude to Nothing.pdf Prelude to Nothing.sib

No, I didn't check CPDL, nor any of my normal sources, because I need, essentially, pop music, whereas CPDL is almost entirely old classical. Anyway, the point is now moot, we've decided on... well, on an SSAA arrangement of Stop!, by the Spice Girls. :iffy: But thanks!

So our women's chamber group need a piece for our upcoming concert. The original plan was to have the men's group sing a Spice Girls song, and for us to sing a Backstreet Boys song. The men were unwilling. I say this to give you an idea of what Women's Ensemble usually sings; much as it upsets me, WE isn't really a place for beautiful choral music, more for music that sounds really good but is primarily fun to sing, preferably with pop culture/humor appeal. So, with that in mind, I humbly ask for your recommendations (we've got 10 voices among us, I do believe, so I suppose I'm open to anything for 10 voices or less... but I doubt anyone will be finding 10-voice women's choral music, so...)