PhantomOftheOpera

I'd go with an arranger keyboard instead. Drum machines are good, but you aren't likely to find any that has a good modern sound, I can't even recall if there are any made after 1990. I'd go with something along the lines of Korg Pa800, it's a bit on the expensive side, but if you're into performing music, you wont regret buying it. Actually after a bit of googling, I found this: http://www.bossus.com/gear/productdetails.php?ProductId=473 I've read about it, it's pretty good, it has pedal connectors, effect inserts etc, but you can't import wave or mp3 in that. It's cheaper than the Korg arranger, but still a bit on the expensive side imo.

I like to think I'm fairly good at it, why?

Well, best advice is to listen to some music that is similar to what you want to write. You're hardly find scores for trailer music, but listening to a lot of the similar stuff will help. There is no one thing that second violins must be doing if the first are playing the melody, there is thousands of techniques you can apply. Listen and learn!

Well, I just don't see many composers who write classical. Even on this site. Thats gotta be telling you something. There is so much music styles out there. Pop, rock, jazz, cinematic, media... all those people are composers, maybe not in a traditional sense, but they are creating music, and to me that is composing. I'd say that there is like 65-35% ratio in favor of non-classical composers. But thats just my opinion and something that I have noticed.

That is true for classical composers. But as you can see, I didn't say classical composers, I said majority of composers, and majority of composers today aren't writing classical.

I'm afraid your computer cpu is whats giving you trouble. Buffer of 1024 is really, really high, I get buffers under 256 when using direct sound (that means no asio drivers). What cpu do you have?

I'm actually writing a choral for a church choir right now, and I do keep to the classical harmony rules. There's no avoiding that if you're trying to make it sound like standard church chorales.

Well, I think that the majority of composers today use sequencers as opposed to notation software. Sure, they use notation software when they need a score that looks neat, but most of the time it's playing it in via midi keyboard. So I don't know if you could classify that as "writing". After that if a need arises for a score, most will use notation software. I think that mostly old school composers still use pen and paper simply because they are more proficient with those tools than with a computer, so it definitely is faster for them. And I see no harm in this, since most of us will hardly get a chance to work with a whole orchestra and with the development of sequencer and sampling software you can get pretty close to that sound without leaving your computer. That being said, I really do not know how beneficial it is to still write by hand if you can play something and record it, writing cannot ever be faster than playing. I only write by hand when I'm writing something something like choral music because it is easier to follow the vertical and horizontal parts, see what all of your voices are doing, avoid parallels, wrong doublings etc. But most of the time it's keyboard and computer for me.

It's all about what do you do with those chords. Take modern music for example. There is thousands of songs that go amin-G. Or take Ravel, he's famous for milking one chord for ages and you barely even notice it.

So I'm writing a piece for a church choir which I may end up conducting in my local church. I have the help of my professor considering conducting itself, I don't have any experience in doing it, I have the basics down and all, but I really want to know is the little things. How do you treat the singers? Should I be friendly, or try to be authoritative? How do you deal with problems? What happens if you get in an argument? What to do if some of the singers complain about passages etc?

Well, as a person who's a working musician in pop-rock genre, I can say that about 90% of people are only concerned with the vocals, the text, and the occasional solo. The rest of the music can be totally crap, if the singer does his part well, the crowd really doesn't care.

Well, If you want to get professional sounding mixes, you should be getting a proper DAW, notation programs cannot make your music sound human and realistic. You do need a decent pair of speakers, but if you keep making tunes on your notation program, you won't see much improvement. You should get it all or don't get anything in my opinion.

Most probably pro-tools has gone dumb, this sometimes happens with software, I had similar issues in Sonar X1 where only a certain patch wouldn't work in a particular project, etc... I would suggest to export all the midi from the project, start a new one and import.

Well, considering the usual rules of four part writing, I don't think that the harmonization of the alto voice is any different than any other voice. The usual problems are wrong positions, sometimes one voice melody requires a certain type of position, usually when voices are in higher registers it calls for an open position. Of course, parallel fifths and octaves, hidden fifths and octaves, doubling of the thirds, are all forbidden in classical four part harmony as I'm sure you know. Crossing of the voices can usually happen if you're a beginner especially with the tenor and alto. The easiest way to get good at it is to just do as many exercises as you can, there is really no way around that. Practice really does make perfect.