johannhowitzer

siwi, can I add one tool to your listed motif-transformation "toolbox" without stepping on your toes? One of my favorite ways to transform something is to expand or contract an interval or two between two notes. The shape remains recognizable while the context (and perhaps mode) may change. (Example: if the original is C4-G4-A4-G4, you might use G4-C5-Db5-C5.)

I don't suppose you've ever heard Vangelis' Oceanic album, have you?

You've got a great thing going here! The melody is very catchy, especially after hearing it a few times, and the color is somewhat refined. The only thing that seems lacking is at m12 - seems like there should be something more crescendo-ing in the background there. I know your piece is very light, but my ears are wanting something like timpani for that measure, or maybe snare? You have me wanting to hear more. Great work! This reminds me more of Danny Elfman than any of the composers you mentioned, actually.

A good concept and well-developed layering of sounds, but there's also a lot in here that suffers from weak part-writing... or at least that's what my ears are telling me. Most people have trouble emulating established styles accurately (or coming up with their own), including myself, but you have no problem with that. If you go on to study proper voice-leading technique in depth, you can strengthen this good foundation even more. Keep putting tools in your toolbox!

This would go great with a video. I wouldn't listen to this if I wanted to stay awake, though! My dad would get a kick out of this piece probably, he's really into ambient music. There isn't really a recognizable melody, but I doubt you were trying for that. It is what it is, which is good. That's about all I can say for this piece.

You have an interesting sound here, and unlike many works, it's not hurt terribly by the use of MIDI. Some of the latter half reminds me of the style of many pieces from the video game "Sims 2." The harmonic style is very sparse, some of the leaps are Copland-esque, is he one of your main influences? Lots of very open leaps. If I'm going to critique your work any more, I think I probably need to know what you're going for stylistically and technically. Normally a work falls within more conventional bounds - even tone poems can be critiqued based on their success or failure to use color to evoke moods - but your work seems to defy most of the conventions I am familiar with. I will say that I like it... more than I expected, in fact. And the ending may be too abrupt, though this could be just a result of our silly ol' friend, MIDI.

I also can't find out about any serious bugs people have run into through a trial version. ;) I'm going to try to enlist the help of someone on here (maybe Marius, dunno if he'll have the time) in reinstalling Finale and getting the GPO re-setup. Really don't want to tackle it myself, I always forget some element of the setup or get something wrong. This time I'll write down the steps so I can do it myself if it needs to be done again. This will at least be a quick temporary fix and I can get back to orchestrating, and think some more about whether to switch or not. Mainly I just need something that WORKS right now. We have a deadline.

They didn't roll their eyes when I relayed the bug information, they rolled their eyes when I asked for a walk-through on setting up the GPO through Finale, which is pretty hairy but very reproducible. I've reformatted several times. I don't know where my Windows XP disc is, my brother might. Video card is NVidia GeForce 4, recently updated driver (which made Neverwinter Nights stop working, part of why I started playing WoW). It is a slightly old card but has never caused trouble with any advanced graphics from games etc., so it weirds me out that it would have a problem with moving a simple line across the screen. Any idea what makes it start happening? I understand it wouldn't be perfect, but I've heard Sibelius is a bit more user-friendly. How is its interface for the GPO, compared to Finale? Finale makes plugging in the GPO a terrible chore. Edit: Yeah, "more user friendly" is exactly what Mark said. Knew I heard that somewhere. *slap*

Reformatting? That seems drastic itself. I've had no issues at all with my computer apart from Finale, and it would force me to re-setup everything from scratch. I'm thinking of trying one last reinstall for Finale, but I can never remember all the little things you have to do to get everything set up correctly, especially with the GPO in the equation. Is there someone who could walk me through it? MakeMusic has always been less than helpful for that, I've even talked to support people who clearly did not want to talk with me.

What? No, I said there isn't any slowdown. Just volume decrease. *isconfused* Per my original request, is there anyone on here who's worked in Sibelius for a while who can give me a realistic idea of its reliability and capability?

Virus scanner is AVG Free Edition, which is up to date. It does a full scan every morning, and I've never EVER had the sort of systemic problems one associates with a virus. I doubt a virus would target a single program and make only that one program have the same bug periodically over the course of several years. I do run large scores sometimes, but not exclusively, and often these bugs have cropped up when running a simple piano grand staff. Anyway, memory should not affect volume without creating other serious artifacts such as massive slowdown. I'm running XP, and with a full set of orchestra samples loaded I have plenty of "headroom."

Finale 2006 1.43 GB RAM 1.83 GHz processor (AMD Athlon XP 2500+) Defragmented probably at least a year ago, will run the operation tonight Noticed issues since a reinstallation of Finale a month ago, but that reinstallation was instigated by the scrolling-playback issue Used 34.5 GB out of 153 GB hard drive space - 118 GB is free space Don't know about new programs. The only thing I can think of is a recent installation of World of Warcraft, but that certainly didn't have anything to do with it - the problems predate WoW by a long, long time. I don't often add new software, I tend to work with bare bones, my desktop usually has under ten icons on it and the Start menu is similarly tidy. Finale is one of the only programs I have EVER had any issues with, my system has treated me very well.

I used to be an advocate of Finale. It's what all my music has been scored with, and back in the day it seemed problem-free. These days, however, Finale has treated me very poorly. Several times in the past, the green playback-tracking line had vanished, and nothing short of reinstallation would bring it back. Playback no longer scrolled at all. Recently I discovered a major issue with playback; while older files would play at normal volume, all new files (created from scratch, not template) would be nearly inaudible. MIDI data was fine, system volume, mixer settings... everything. Emailing MakeMusic yielded no reply. Now I am beginning a large-scale project, the orchestration of a musical theater production scheduled for performance this coming Christmas, and Finale's scrolling playback has again vanished, just today. Needless to say, I've had it up to here with Finale's quirks. It seems to fail me at the most critical times and has been a damper on my creativity for years. I'm considering buying the Sibelius competitive upgrade, and would like candid, honest critique on Sibelius from those on this forum who use it. What sort of problems have you experienced with it, how easy is it to plug in the GPO soundset, etc. Anything you can tell me will be a great help, save for the "Sibelius rocks, buy it now" sort of posts that don't actually provide any information. Thanks in advance, I know I can count on my friends here at YC in my hour of need!

If this place ever becomes a stuffy room full of old people, I'm leaving. ;) Meaning old in mind, not in body.

I actually haven't noticed much of this. I think it's just one of those things that you have to avoid doing yourself, and tune out when others do it. Also trust that if it gets your submission topic bumped down a slot or two, people will still notice it. I, for one, check the "number of replies" field when browsing the submissions forums, and pay special attention to ones with little or no replies. This also means that if someone's double posting on their own thread, I may pay less attention to it! I also pay attention to titles and composers, of course, when deciding what to listen to. So I doubt it's as much of a problem as it seems. Annoying, yes, but the majority of people understand it's annoying and don't do it. There are two ways to lessen annoyance: the first is to adjust the situation, the second is to adjust yourself so you no longer notice it. People are pretty quick to complain in an attempt to effect the first solution, but they could expend a good deal less effort and have a lot more peace of mind if they considered the second. I try to adjust my own attitude toward things whenever possible, it keeps things from being blown out of proportion. That was a lot to say a little, wasn't it?