Gavin Gorrick

Sorry, I should also mention that trumpet players generally use different horns for transposition and slotting purposes. So like, say I'm in a band, and this piece is centered around some intervals that hit bad notes on a B-flat, I would most likely choose to play it on C. No one plays on a smaller horn for range, cause if you can't play a high-C on a big B-flat, you're not going to be able to play one on a piccolo.

What's the context? I can help you out if you give me an idea of what's going on in the music. Also, when you say your friends can only get a G or A at most, is that concert pitch? Concert B-flat is not very high, in fact that's really standard range any relatively okay trumpet player should be able to hit. But if they can't hit it then they can't hit it, I just thought you should know that a written C above the staff on anymore is NOT super high. I've played with people that have an octave above that :( As far as switching horns, I don't know what the players you know do, but it's fairly standard practice to play on a C horn in an orchestra. If you want something like the ending of Shosty 11, you don't want the guy on a piccolo since it most likely won't cut through. I would suggest maybe writing for a D trumpet (Stravinsky does this in The Rite, I think Prokofiev did it in Alexander Nevsky too) but I don't even know if your friends have access to a D horn and it just doesn't seem necessary if they're just going to be playing B-flats and As or whatever. Now if you wanted them to wail out concert Ds and Es like you have in The Rite and be able to still cut through the orchestra with ease, then you write for the principal to be on D. I guess my only solution for you right now is to tell your friends to do more flexibility exercises, because the end of Shostakovich 11 definitely isn't hard.....well it is after playing the entire symphony, but I dunno if you would do anything that taxing on players. Just to make it clear, if you're ever writing something for trumpet and it looks "high" too you, don't just think, "Oh hay they can play it on piccolo". The piccolo sound is so bright and compact, I can't recall any piece that uses a piccolo in a sort of "power" situation. When I say a "power situation", I mean something like a brassy Shostakovich passage where the horns have to really punch out some sound.

How do I compose? I think of ideas and then I turn them into music

Heckle my main man, good job on this piece. Floridians know about these things all too well... I'm not going to comment on the score cause, c'mon, you know it's sloppy, and I know it's sloppy, but the fact is I've seen WAY worse. With someone your age notation will come, making good clean scores and having fine-tuned orchestration skills can be learned. IDEAS and and CREATIVITY can not be learned, as is a sense of time, space and shape. Composers who post on this board (and composers I've known personally) twice your age, in college, who think they're hot shots, they can't even handle the things you're exhibiting pretty well in this piece. I'm just gonna talk about what you did well, again, no sense in whining about how the score is messy or other pedantic crap. Let's talk about the sound and whether or not you achieved what you set out to do...you know, composing stuff :) I thought the overall shape of the form was very effective, don't listen to what anyone in this thread says about length. I think this sort of Post-minimalist aesthetic is very effective in what you wanted to portray, in this case a hurricane. For you guys who have no knowledge of Earth Science for whatever reason, or have never lived in the Florida peninsula, you might want to just read a wikipedia article or something before looking at Heckle's piece and judging it. You know some people might say, "Oh man this doesn't sound like a hurricane at all, where were the wind noises and loud music for no reason and other stuff I would hear in a movie!!" These are the people who are truly devoid of ideas and creative or abstract thought. There is no universal rule for how a composer should aurally depict a hurricane. You know, instead of brainlessly bashing Heckle's piece while licking the chicken grease and Hostess snack cake icing from your fingers maybe you should actually think about what a hurricane IS. Heckle's "Hurricane AbiGale" is essentially a 1-movement tone poem in three sections....pretty similar to how a hurricane will make land fall and then traverse whatever land it's going over. The first section is chaotic and there's a lot of building anxiety. The middle section reaches a point of stasis and calm, you know, the eye of the storm. Then the back half of the storm shows up in the last 3rd of the movement, but slowly dissipates away leaving us with a bright new dawn or whatever poetic crap you want to think of it as. It doesn't give you the typical "beefy" orchestral textures to represent the "might/beauty" of the Planet Earth or whatever, the story of the hurricane and its survivors is told completely through the shape of the form and orchestral textures. Hey Heckle, if anything, I think the movement needs to be LONGER. I think the way you get into the 3rd section is good, but you need to sustain it more: think of the form as being more symmetrical, so the 3rd "stormy" section should be commensurate in length to the first one. As far as pacing with in the form overall I thought it was really good, the "Eye" was especially effective. You stayed there just long enough that, like a real hurricane, the beginning of the 2nd half of the storm sort of takes you by surprise. If you go back to edit anything that's another thing you might want to keep in mind. I hope all that helps, you're definitely one of the better composers on this board. You've got ideas and ambition, and those are the things that help you and make you a good, no, GREAT composer, not reading a god damn a book or copy/pasting a mediocre Tchaikovskian band symphony or whatever. College composers who think they're good because no one ever told them otherwise are intimidated, even threatened, by people who have ideas, whether they're 10, 22, 57, or 100, some people just don't like *ideas*.

Performers are expected to know what all the words on their music mean so that they can perform to the best of their ability and closest to the vision of the composer. So in a sense, they don't have to be fluent in multiple languages, but if you're playing music long enough and you're attentive, most people pick up on all the basic German, French, English and Italian words/phrases. You can write in whatever languages you want, as long as what you're writing is clear and doesn't hinder the rehearsal of the piece.

There are a lot of good players in Kentucky, certainly better than you. Hell, there are a lot of good players all over in places you'd never expect - at least you'd never expect it if you spend your whole life posturing to 15 year olds on the internet. The majority of my performance major friends/colleagues are at top tier schools (Eastman, Juilliard, Northwestern, etc) now, or playing in professional orchestras (one is actually playing with Chicago Civic as we speak). AND HEY, speaking of Kentucky, a guy I went to school with did his undergrad in Kentucky and he's been sitting principal at Aspen for the last 2 years and he just came in 2nd or 3rd place at a national performance competition. But hey, I'm sure you're the only one here who's really privy to anything right? Please, Tokkemon, please please spare us the grandstanding. Stop mentioning New York more than the hours Sting has sex with hot hot women, please just stop it. You aren't impressing me or anyone else here. And I know what you're gonna say, "WELL I'M NOT TRYING TO IMPRESS ANYONE." Cut the crap. I just can't stand the hubris of every god damn comment you post here, and I swear to god if you try to deflect this or deny that I will your kick your donkey up and down the [metaphorical] sidewalk. Listen to Weca guys, he has a long and decorated history of being an internet know-it-all.

Here's a little story from my recently finished days in undergrad... I never did All State. I did everything else except that, for whatever reason. Then I got to college and there were a couple of these hot shot freshmen in my studio who were like, "YEAH BRO, I did All State", and they wore their gay little All State 2002 shirts. I beat all of them in chair placements for the whole of my undergraduate career...actually that's not true, because both of them dropped out by our sophomore year. The moral of the story: All State means Sh** So you're lazy AND you disrespect your teachers, well that's just peachy :-\. If you don't see the purpose and relevance of physics, algebra and computer classes then you're a lost cause :'(. Besides, if you're as smart as your purport yourself to be, why would you even need to try hard? Algebra is pretty easy, anyone with a decent amount of intelligence could coast their way through it. In fact, any smart kid can coast through high school and still get As and Bs... Chances are you're gonna wind up working some sort of office job (if you get lucky) after you finish college at whatever point, and they kind of like it when you know how to use Microsoft Office, just sayin'. That's a good thing by the way, if you went to school in, say, New York, and you got some sort of sweet internship with Schirmer or somebody, those are good connections to have. Don't deny yourself of the opportunity to develop PROFITABLE SKILLS because you want to play Weber *decently* and have your heads in the clouds. Kid, I honestly doubt you're on the level of Hilary Hahn or Charlie Parker...I mean......seriously? "Well Bird did it, why can't I!?!?" [rant] Before I go on, I'd just like to thank the baby boomers for making their kids think more of themselves than they really are. We are not all snowflakes, we are not all precious f-ing jewels who can become *anything we want*. Gee golly, if I think hard enough, I can become President of Russia, nevermind I have a 2.1 GPA and I'd rather be ignorant than try to enlighten myself, I'm a snowflake GIMME GIMME GIMME I'm entitled to a Curtis edumacation dag nabbit! BTW, chances are the guy who's going to become President or principal of the New York Phil is already 10 years ahead of you in everything remotely relevant. Better start practicing, or you can get your head out of the clouds and start being realistic maybe? [rant over] Gardener hit on some REALLY good points, as did most everyone else in this thread. The last thing anyone wants or needs is another dumb musician, especially a classical musician (nothing twists the grapes of serious collegiate music students more than the dumb performance majors who WHIIIINE in every class. Yes, you're going to do things besides practice your 5,000 year old Schubert concerto that no one cares about. You're gonna work in libraries and do math and actually use your brain, welcome to real life). It really would behoove you to learn as much as possible. I don't know what those things might be, but find your own way and make yourself into something.

15 I've seen worse, as far as this site is concerned. But honestly if you have to ask, it's a 10 by default.

Your post: plain, repetitive, boring, ignorant, straight: a waste of my time

Depends on your definition of popular. If you're talking the raw sum amount of people that would be false since there are more educated and culturally aware people now than there were in the tiny little place called Europe back in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have to ask if you have absolute any idea what you're talking about. Do you? I'm not going to debate the sheer ignorance of this post, other people who are like me have already seen it and commenced with yelling at you...but are you seriously that ignorant of modern and relevant society? Come on man, watch some news and get your head out of the Mahler-Bernstein stuff for a couple minutes wontcha :)

Did you know that the Mozart Effect is rubbish that was disproven? These studies are simply talking about playing music in general, and OF COOOOUUURSE having a child learning to play an instrument when he/she/it is young will be good for brain development. This isn't friggin' groundbreaking. I know that I'll be doing my kids a favor by having them solve puzzles and read books when they're a kid, having some sort of small child music education thing is obviously beneficial. That has nothing to do with what music it is though. Why would it have to be classical music? I'm not saying don't teach it, I mean we teach Shakespeare, who is just as important as Beethoven or whoever, but let's cut the crap: Someone who reads Hamlet isn't going to automatically be a certified genius and somehow more learned than the person who read Watchmen. If anything, the best person would be familiar with both. China is also pretty communist, last time I checked. Stalin was all about THE ART OF THE PEOPLE, so was Hitler. Hey we all know the old cliche, "The Nazis loved classical music." You're essentially making an argument that free and prosperous Western nations should adapt principles which mirror that of totalitarian dictatorships. I don't think that's too big of a logical jump. The governments of China and SoKo have obvious agenda when pushing for that sort of indoctrination. No thank you, I have no desire for my country to be more like China, thank you very much. We already have enough problems. I think this country should focus more on teaching kids about GRAMMAR, science, math and the other things we actually lag behind (do a Google search, some very eye opening statistics just came out a couple days ago). I don't recall you listing off any facts. I read your post a few times and I just saw a bunch of emotional ramblings (I will drink 10 shots of gasoline if someone pops in here and says HURR AD HOMINEM). I have no problem with the term "art music", but "serious music" needs to go. Music doesn't automatically become more important just because you say it does...just sayin'

I refuse to take this seriously if you don't back it up with an example. Stop being butt hurt and actually present an argument against something real. What about music that was written for or grew out of a religious context, that music isn't supposed to be listened to for "entertainment". If anything it's much more of a cerebral experience in that sort of situation. What's to stop composers from writing music which can be experienced in other ways as well, leaning towards the cerebral or "Apollonian" if you will.... Also...again...examples Please don't group Tchaikovsky with Mozart, Bach and Brahms ever again. Your post would be really relevant in....maybe the 1940s? Everything you're "challenging" and BH'ed about have already been dealt with and spawned reactionaries. Why do we even need a 5 year old kid with rich parents who bought him a violin when he was 2 and somehow managed to vomit out an 18th century style opera in this day and age? Is that your idea of progress? I think it was Schirmer that just signed some 16 year old kid...or maybe it was Boosey and Hawkes? Anyway, the music is questionable, but it's perfect for someone that doesn't want to be challenged in anyway. There is music that you play for someone who is dead, dying or comatose, and there's the music you play for someone who gives a crap. I agree with your last point, but it's so general that I don't know anyone that wouldn't agree with it. Anyway, what music is it...where there is a "very prevalent bias toward a specific kind of music that overshadows the reaction of the audience)"? In America alone we have John Corigliano, Chris Theofanidis, Joan Tower, Chris Rouse, Stephen Bryant, Jennifer Higdon, John Williams, John Mackey, Johnathon Newman, Anthony Iannaccone, John Adams, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich etc etc etc all getting played on a god damn regular basis. I made a point to just stupidly list all of those composers because those are all composers whose music orchestras and directors like to program (maybe not Glass, but classical musicians can be whiney primadonnas). These composers write music that "audiences like" and usually make it a point to write that sort of music. You know, music that sounds "fresh" but doesn't stray too far away from 19th CENTURY EUROPEAN CLASSICAL TRADITION (wouldn't want to stray too far away from that, we might start getting influenced by Brazilians or something, perish the thought). Composers aren't required to "write for the audience", that's a really stupid notion; composers can have whatever motive or intent that they want. A lot of composers write for performers and want their performers to enjoy their work, because good performers do actually like challenges. I know Carter and Tower are both in this camp. But seriously though, for performers who whine about the music they play, if you want an easy job and don't want to be challenged then go join a Pops Orchestra for chrissake. Are you talking just about modernists, or are you throwing the postmodernists in there too? "Contemporary" is such a nebulous loving word, it doesn't MEAN ANYTHING! Nothing inherent anyway, it needs context. Your profile says your a pastry chef or something. Are you musician? Do you regularly attend concerts? To be honest I'm really confused as to what you're so butt hurt about. Preperation H does wonders AMIRITE GUYS!? I have a brass player friend who uses Prep-H on his lips, no joke. Apparently it works wonders. I digress... Anyway, this argument would be more interesting if it were 1952 and now 2009 going on 2010 in a few months. Unless you're seriously throwing the past 110 years under the bus for apparently sounding like Schoenberg, I'd have to say all the questions you're asking have already been answered and dealt with. I love all the "GRR I'M ANGRY AND BITTER, I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO PROVE!!" people who post in threads like this. Do a little more learnin' and a lot less gabbin' and complainin' for chrissake.

WOOOAAAAH WOAH WOAH Hold on there Ginsberg! I guess here comes another wall of text...don't worry, it will be entertaining and not tl;dr I just want to preface all this with...you're setting a really offensive and dangerous precedent by saying that only the WONDERFUL, AMAZING, ILLUSTRIOUS EUROPEAN CLASSICAL MUSIC is "complex enough" so that it requires a sacrificing of self as a whole. You know? "Oh that other music doesn't require you to listen, but THIS music NEEDS you to really really listen!!" When you said that, that proved to me that you are truly culturally ignorant. Now for a quote breakdown, lawl. Says who? The composers? Critics? Historians? Philosophers? Bernstein (LOL!)? I think any music can be appreciated in any way by anyone however they want. That means we get people who want to intellectualize it and put it on a pedestal, and others will just use it as background music. This is true to every genre of music. No, actually Gustav Mahler was asked for that when he was an opera director. Since Mahler was a big player in the scene it immediately became canon, like Greedo shooting first AMIRITE!? Oh uh, here comes the "Grr I hate capitalism and globalization because it's washing out European culture!!" argument MOLOCH! MOLOCH! Quick sidebar: What about playing Beethoven 6 in a cello section makes you an individual? The funniest thing about this is, classical musicians are the most hive minded people I've ever known. Some of them who actually have musical intuition break out of that mold and are doing quite well for themselves right now, but the people who are just automatons and play the music you put in front of them and that's it....well...that just makes me LOL in quite a way when these same people deride "popular music" as if everyone is being duped out of individualism. Sounds like sour grapes to me. Examples? This argument is way too abstracted, thin, and emotionally based. I really find your fundamental argument offensive in this entire post. That "the other" music is simplistic and easy to comprehend, that it only serves as a commodity, that classical music is somehow autonomous while the "other" is calculated and functional. You can't have it both, either all of it is functional or it isn't. Creativity and culture won't just shrivel up and die if people as a whole move away from Bach (which never happened anyway). Are you seriously ignorant of ALL the creativity that's going on in other genres?? That is seriously what astounds me the most with people like you...ASTOUNDING cultural ignorance, and it's right under your nose! It's either ignorance or straight up xenophobia, either way I LOLed. Your post is reminding me of a segment from a Noam Chomsky lecture I came across a few days ago. I love Chomsky, but he comes off as the bitter dweeb who finally got a soap box, sometimes. VERY rarely though, otherwise I agree with most of what he says. Anyway he was saying that sports franchises are designed to distract people away from political processes and whatnot, and he basically implied that that people who are sports buffs are ignorant of things going on politically and whatnot, which is obviously 100% not true. I mean, not only is that a crap argument anyway (propter hoc for the lawl...I need to stop saying that) but to just assume that a) the amount of people that watch the Superbowl don't vote and b) those same people also choose to not be socially aware, well that's just ridic. I'm not even going to bother with this, I'll end up repeating myself. "or worse, add some kind of synthesised drum loop to a masterpiece." made me laugh out loud though. I love when musician nerds get angry when a rapper or someone samples or quotes Dvorak or Beethoven. Oooh they get maaaad. By the way, there's nothing offensive about graffiti tagging Rembrandt, in fact I think Cage or Duchamp would love that. Nothing is inherently universal or autonomous about "classical music", NEXT Man, no wonder your government pours so much money into "the arts", enjoy your social engineering and high taxes ;-) Wait, did I say social engineering!? Uh oh, the secret's out. Umm, yeah wow. I don't think I've ever been more offended by a post on this board than this post you've made, siwi. I don't even know what to think. What's up with Europeans and American-Europhiles? They're all so bitter and blame their dying art and inability to cope on everyone except themselves. European colonists of yore didn't have the foresight to realize that their empire would end and that the victims of their exploits would bounce back and take over culturally (see: every diaspora in Amurica and Europe). Sooo uuh, yeah siwi, keep being bitter. You just stay the same, okay? All of you, just stay the same. Whatever you do, don't change! Never change! Real men don't adapt or change or progress. Ayn Rand out!

Sure, I can go with that... Of course... I'm sorry WHAT!? Free concerts? Yeah? Boy that sounds swell, wanna give us some examples of these free concerts :)? Boy I love free stuff don't you :) NO ONE has to pay for any of it, IT'S FREE!! Anyway, this crap that the U.S. doesn't "fund the arts" isn't true, the National Endowment of the Arts got a big raise when Bush 43 was in office (but omg he was that dumb republican guy who hates stuff that isn't football, right?) and they got another raise when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act went through. In fact, it's been going up every year since Bush was elected...and it's at 155 million for 2009. I think the U.K. and countries like Germany spend more than double that amount, but the way our countries partition departments and allocate funds are different and I'm too tired right now to sift through the internets to find out how much of Germany's federal budget was spent on subsidized symphony tickets last year. I just kind of have to ask why you think it's so necessary that the government blindly dump money into something just so you can go to a cheap concert and feel good about yourself. I fail to see what a government bolstering of these things would do, I mean at least if you're talking about "omg the gov't needs to SAVE these orchestras". I personally have no problem with subsidizing artists and whatnot, to an extent...and of course fund students/education. What are you getting at exactly? Local symphony orchestras already get SOME municipal funds, not to mention sponsorships by rich private businesses in town (always good to support "culture"), so what's the problem. If an orchestra dies, it dies, as Dolph Lundren said in Rocky IV (lawl). But seriously, what's the big woop? If the community wants it, they need to do SOMETHING, get more private donors or something, make it work...but to say, "Man this orchestra isn't getting enough money, we should have the gov't fully fund them" is ridiculous. I don't want to sound like...........a libertarian *shudder*, but come on...really? If you asked me for my real opinion I would say that the gov't shouldn't subsidize "culture" because there's always going to be some kind of FUNCTION behind it (see: every European country). Musicians are artists, and if they can't evolve with the times and remain relevant then they deserve to fail. Anyway, I should ask that you and everyone else here read this... Arts bailout? - Sandow For the record, I think the human condition will be able to stay intact if people in already well-to-do countries went without the opportunity of hearing Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. I'm sorry I just get angry people just say, "Well can't the government just feed it more money AHURRR HURRR DURRR" and act like that's the end of it...as if the money doesn't come from anywhere and as if that money will go directly to the purported "interest". By the way, if I use your logic then it's all circular. People in the upper income bracket are the ones most likely to pay for and attend these sorts of concerts right? These people will also pay the most in taxes. With your want for gov't spending increases, taxes will go up, and this demo will wind up paying taxes for things they are statistically most likely to attend anyway, and most likely spending MORE money than they would if the taxes hadn't gone up. It's a vicious cycle for them, and the people in the income brackets lower than them won't care because they less likely, statistically, to attend these concerts... what happens is you end up with wasted money when those upper income people would have just went to the concerts anyway and probably would have made sizable donations. P.S. Please don't insult the country of my birth, and yours as well. "and as you know "elitism" doesn't jive well with many Americans." It's annoying *Bill Maher* and there are a lot more constructive and correct ways to critique things that the government does. K I'm done