MiggTorr

This.

Ok, so here's what it is... as for you're first question, i had a similar question when I applied to college for comp, so I e-mailed the faculty and this is what they said back: This will probably be the story for most schools you apply to. Don't worry about the "audition" for now (if you are worried about it, here's a link to a post i made about my audition at Ithaca Collage, the school I attend). Also, I emailed the faculty telling them that I focus a lot on CHORAL music. that's why they said to write one choral piece and one instrumental. That part of the email isn't important. What IS important is that you should submit "scores that show your compositional ability while exhibiting as wide range of experience as possible." In other words, contrasting pieces. They're also trying to "get to know you as a composer." Therefore, it's very important that you be yourself with your writing. If you're applying to schools with faculty that truly understand what it means to be an artist, they'll expect to hear unconventional pieces. Not only that, but they might be used to that type of music. That said, don't try too hard to be unconventional. Just be yourself. Write for yourself, not for them. Still, you want to show the extent of your range for them. So for example, I submitted a slower contemporary classical choral piece and a faster jazzy instrumental movie score theme. Two pieces of very varying styles. As far as length goes, it doesn't matter so much. Both my pieces were relatively short—about two or three minutes each. My interviewer did comment on how short the pieces were, but I don't think anything bad came from it. The first one needed to be short, because it just did. And the second was basically a movie cue which don't tend to go on for that long. Still, if theme development and length are things which you think you could definitely improve on, then I'd try to work on those starting right now. Try to think about the pieces you write from a more structural or architectural point of view at the beginning. Begin by sketching out the overall structure of the piece. Maybe write down prose about how you want each part of the song to make people feel, or where the climax is, or just what the song is about. Clarifying these things for yourself at the beginning can help you to flesh out the main structure of a piece before even having the pressure of writing a note, and a lack of overall sense of structure may be one of the problems underlying the symptom you describe (It was for me! :) ). As far as i know, more prestigious schools wont be looking for longer compositions. They'll just be looking for more promising artists. People who show that they have a lot of potential, and who have the drive to reach that potential and then keep growing even more. That said, different schools have different focuses when it comes to music. A school like Ithaca College or USC, for example, focuses a lot more on classical composition, where as a school like Berklee or Belmont focuses a lot more on songwriting. They're all great schools, of course. Just depends what kind of program you like better. You can still do classical stuff at Berklee, and you can still do songwriting at Ithaca. As with any college application process, you're gonna have your reach schools, your're gonna have your safety schools, and you're gonna have your middle-ground schools. Like i said before though, compose for you, and the right thing will happen. Nothing wrong with composing for a portfolio, I did. just remember not to write trying to "live up to" your adjudicator's "expectations." THAT'S how you get writer's block ;). As far as your ideas go, the bossa nova thing sounds pretty cool. I have no idea what pelogic temperament is. I didn't even know that was a thing. Sounds a bit pretentious to me, but hey, if you think it's cool, and if the final product rocks, go ahead. The concerto's also a cool idea. don't worry about how "disciplined" you are right now. Give it a try. You have one year left after all, and there are probably four thousand books out there on the study, appreciation, and composition of the concerto. Keep working hard, and you'll be surprised how much you will have grown over the next year. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more q's. Good luck. --Miggy Torres Oh—and one more thing. If you wanna do what Composerorganist said, and post up like five pieces here, etc. that's fine... But I wouldn't waste the energy on two superfluous pieces you are not gonna use for your portfolio and that will just get you more stressed out in the end. If you wanna post what you're thinking of submitting up here, that's fine, too... but dont take what we say too, too seriously. A lot of the composers who review songs on YC are about our age, which is great, but god knows a college faculty member who has interviewed and taught hundreds of kids over the years is gonna be able to look at your piece more objectively than someone who just listens to Beethoven, Mahler, and Whitacre all day, and who may not be used to your personal sound (Nothing against Beethoven, Mahler, or Whitacre. I pre-ordered "Light and Gold" days before it came out).

Dig your game boy out of the closet and listen to all the pokemon tracks. I recommend you analyze those. They mostly have catchy melodies that can be looped without people getting tired of them. If your game only plays that one song over and over, and doesnt switch songs at all, then i recommend what thatboy said: five minutes of music or so that can be looped. Might be cool to just do variations on a main theme. So like maybe the theme plays, then there's sort of a bridge, and then it plays again but in a different octave, or by different instruments. Still, go on youtube and listen to a lot of final fantasy music or pokemon. Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing should be pretty useful stylistically. Hope this helps! :D --Miggy Torres

Go for it. Seriously. Go for it! :D :D :D :D :D

I agree. If you're putting it into Sibelius, then you should have the option to select an atonal key sig. If it were me, I'd do that, and then just add the sharps and flats in each chord/measure. If your singers are good enough to be singing a piece with limited tonality, then you shouldn't need to focus on being 100% perfect, you can take some liberties if things get really too complex. Still, looking at your progressions below, I see no real problem. If you're giving each voice part its own staff, that'll make things even easier. Looking at yur progressions again, you should be in pretty good shape. Don't put stuff in A# or G#. Prefer Bb and Ab. Singers would much rather sing an aug4 than a DoubleAug3. The facts are that if your singers aren't performing the piece as a cold sight read, then they can bring a pencil with them to rehearsals and just write it the music if it's too confusing. For me, for example, I usually write in "(m3)" on augmented seconds, because, it's easier to think about the interval as an minor third. But I dont expect the composer to "just write a minor 3rd instead" because the interval's harmonic function is that of a second. Your base line SHOULD go E-D-C#. Most of the time, there's no reason to start using double sharps and flats unless you're altering an note that is already raised due to what key it's in. In other words, if I wrote a piece in B-Major and i had a progression of V–>V+ –>I, Then my notes would be F#, A#, C#; F#, A#, C##; F#, B, D#. For something like what you're writing, I recommend doing what I said above: Start the piece with an atonal key signature (no sharps/flats, like C-major), and then write in the sharps and flats for each chord (unless they double any sharps/flats written before them in the same measure). Then, when it stays in Eb, change key sig to Eb. Sorry if all that sounded confusing, lol. If you post a copy of the first few measures of yur score, i can help more. even if you just wanna post a .Sib file. --Miggy Torres

The other day, ParanoidFreak needed to know a good place to find settable text. I've copied my reply to his topic below. Hope it helps!!! :D --Miggy Torres

I go to Ithaca College for Composition in Ithaca, NY. For my "audition" I had an interview with the composition staff. It had a few different parts to it. Here's what it was: They want to see what kind of person you are. How passionate you are. Your reasons for wanting to become a composer. Your musical influences. Your personality. (Tip here: Humility is a wonderful thing for composers to have. There are some composers here on YC–won't say who, but if you hang out here enough, it's obvious–who are–I'm just gonna say it–very pretentious. Don't let them give you the idea that that's normal. You should be proud of your work, and you shouldn't be so self-deprecating that you lose all self-confidence. But being pretentious or arrogant about your work or your knowledge or anything is NOT GOOD! Especially in a business that is so built on connections and being kind. When people see you being humble and kind, they will often think to themselves, "Wow, he's so humble and kind!" :D ) What do you like to compose? What got you started in composing? Other things like this. [*]They will want to see what work you've done thus far. For my interview, they asked for two contrasting pieces that I had composed of any length and for any instrumentation. They asked for the scores of each and recordings if available. (Tip here: Recordings go a long way, especially in vocal music. They're sometimes difficult to arrange logistically, but recording your pieces will make them sound a LOT better. I, however, just had MIDIs of mine, which were ok. But it would've been a lot better if I'd had legit recordings. At least bring some decent MIDIs. At the very least, some crappy ones.) They will listen to recordings of the pieces then ask you questions about them, usually listening to one and then talking about it before proceeding to the next. Examples of things they might ask include:[*]They will want to know what your musical background is as far as knowledge is. E.g.: How's your theory? (Tip Here: They may ask you to take a theory exam when you audition. This is not part of the interview, but may be administered the same day. For me, I only took a theory placement exam at my orientation once I had been accepted. You shouldn't have to worry though. Those are usually pretty easy. By "pretty easy" I mean "Identify if the passage written is a major or minor scale," or "Identify the tonic of this melodic passage." These are things you can learn on the wonderful musictheory.net if your theory ain't great. Can you play any instruments? Do you sing? How's your sight reading? (Tip here: There may also be a sight singing exam, but these are often optional. Still, if it is required, dont worry about it too much. They don't expect you to do amazing. This will also most likely not be administered during the interview. [*]How do you normally do academically? Can you handle the non-music portion of your education?[*]Piano improv. Sit at the piano and make up a melody. (Tip here: You don't have to be a Kyle Landry here. They basically ask you to sit at the piano and play around. I'd prepare for this portion of the "audition" by doing just that: sit at the piano for a good hour and just play around. Often times our fingers can fall into certain patterns that make everything we do sound the same. That's okay. It's normal. Just be aware of it and try to spin things in different directions as you practice. Maybe try a deceptive cadence this time–if you don't know what that is, check out musictheory.net. Maybe add a seventh or a ninth to your chord and see how it sounds. Try to figure out how to play the melody of your favorite song, or maybe the theme to your favorite movie or video game. Then try to figure out the chords. One tip my comp interviewer gave me after I was done was to sit at the piano, and just put my hands down anywhere, and then try to build something out of that. These are all great ways to practice piano improv. Oh! And play in different keys, too. You dont have to be fluent in B-major or anything, but if your interviewer says, "Ok, now play something in F-minor,"–as he did to me–then you should be able to know that F-minor has four flats and that it's dominant chord is C-Major/Minor–again, check out musictheory.net if you didn't get that. You don't need to be a wonderful pianist though. At Ithaca, you DO need to pass a rigorous piano exam in order to get your Comp degree. But that's at the end of your junior year, after three years of piano lessons. Usually, THEY are expected to teach YOU piano. Still, as I said, it's really good to know the basics.) That's pretty much it. That was my "audition" for Ithaca, so yours will probably be a bit different. I mean who knows, you may not even talk about any of those things. You and your interviewer may go off on a tangent talking about soccer or geology or ceiling fans. For me, we talked for a good ten minutes on the power of harmony and how great IV chords and v chords sound. (I think we actually went a little over our allotted time because of that, lol) But that's good if that happens, because it shows you really click with the people and the professors there, which is really really important if you intend on studying something as personal as writing your music with them. So anyway, hopefully this has helped you out. Good luck! Let me know if you have any more questions. :D --Miggy Torres What would you have done differently? (Tip here: This is a GREAT one to think about as a composer. It really caught me off guard when I was asked, and I really had to think. As I said before, humility is really important, especially in a question like this. Maybe you would've liked to improve a transition in a certain area to connect some ideas better. Maybe you'd liked to have orchestrated a section better if only you knew how. Maybe you would've reworked an entire section! Who knows? The point is "if you can already compose a perfect song, then why do you need our school for?") What is your favorite part? Line? Melody? Harmony? They may offer constructive criticism about the piece. (Tip here: If they criticize your piece and ask you what you think of the criticism, really think about it. Don't take offense to the criticism, but more importantly, really think about it. They're just composition teachers who are looking at your piece for the first time. They don't know everything about the piece. If they suggest something and there's a good reason for you to disagree with them, don't just roll over and say, "Sure," because you wanna score points with them. Being humble doesn't mean agreeing with everyone and not being confident. Confidently and respectfully disagreeing–if it's about something you're sure about, or even pretty sure about—can show them that you've put real thought into the piece you've written.) What inspired the piece? Which part was the most difficult to write? Which part was the easiest? Other more specific questions about the choices you made in the piece.

You should Czech on WikiSource. It's basically a big public domain library. It's got tons of stuff, not just literature. It's got court documents and government pamphlets, etc. Anything in the public domain. Still, the stuff is organized pretty well, so you should be able to find a ton of poetry on there. A lot of the poetry is organized as part of the books they were originally published in. So for example, if I'm an old poet, I probably published a book of poetry. So on WikiSource, my poetry would be organized under my name>my book>my poem. Sometimes tho it's just poet>poetry. Either way, it's pretty easy to navigate, and you shouldn't have much trouble. At the bottom of each page, there's usually a gray box with a stricken-through copyright symbol on it telling you that it's in the public domain for such-and-such a reason, so you can be sure it's in the public domain. There are some txts that are only in the PD in certain countries, and others that have creative commons licenses, but that grey box at the bottom should tell you everything. This library is immense, so I'll try to start you off with a few authors, but I encourage you to explore until you find something that truly resonates with you and your beliefs. Lets see here... well there's Emily Dickinson. I've never been a huge fan of her poetry, but you might be! There's a Canadian poet, who is little known in the US, named Emily Pauline Johnson. She was part Native American, so a lot of her poetry has that theme to it. A lot of people set poetry be Sara Teasdale. Songs like "I Am Not Yours" by Z. Randall Stroope and "There Will Be Rest" by Frank Ticheli are all settings of her poetry. Remember, though, just because it worked for them, doesn't necessarily mean it'll work for you. Choose a poem that really speaks to you, not just one that's popular. (Cuz also someone might be like, "Oh, that was cool, but I like Z.R.Stroope's better....") Still, Teasdale has a ton of poetry on WikiSource, so definitely check out her stuff. It's gorgeous. It might get a bit depressing at times, but she does a real good job conveying intensity of love. I'm not sure if ALL her poetry is in the PD. Idk if "There Will Be Rest" is, cuz I couldn't find it on WikiSource. Still, everything of hers on WikiSource should be in PD (just Czech the grey bar at the bottom.) Let's try a man now... hmm William Wordsworth has a good amount of poems concerning the beauty of nature. Give him a look. I also like Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe, but I've never set any of their stuff. Wilde's stuff can be really heavy at times, and Poe writes most of his stuff in an annoying bacchic trimeter (one-TWO-THREE one-TWO-THREE one-TWO-THREE). It sounds great at first cuz you think it'll make a great tune in 6/8. But then after a while, you're like, "This is really starting to get boring." But still, Czech those guys out. I hope this helps you and anyone else out there looking for some decent poetry that they know is in the PD. :D (lol, Czech.) --Miggy Torres

I've added an Other category. :D But I'm interested in knowing more details about your situation and about you as a composer! Feel free to post that, too! :toothygrin:

I agree with that. As far as counterpoint and music theory go, those are very absolute fields. They have specific rules and definitions which you either know or don't know. But as for composition classes, a good teacher counts for a lot more. For example, you want a teacher who's actually a composer and knows people in the business. You want a teacher who can help you write your own music better, and who doesn't just teach you to compose like himself/herself. Also, as for getting your stuff performed in college, as you said, you're more likely to get your stuff performed if you go to a school that has a lot of performers. But not only that, going to a good music school will allow you to have your pieces performed well. And if all of the schools groups (orchestras/bands/choirs) are very good, (as opposed to a school with only a few "good" groups, e.g. a great choir but a sucky wind band) then it will help you to learn to write for everything. Cuz if your school has a great orchestra but a sucky choir, then you're more likely to prefer writing for orchestras because it sounds good when its performed. Then you risk not being able to write for other sorts of groups. If someone wants you to write a piece for didgeridoo, marimba, and solo soprano sax, you should be able to. (that sounds fun actually, lol) You also might want to go to a good school because they often have non-faculty visiting composers. Schools which have better music departments often-times will have actual working-composers visit to give lectures, master-classes, etc. They sometimes even have composers like John Adams or John Corigliano visit. Composers like that are more likely to visit more prestigious schools. So this might be a scenario where going to a more prestigious school could come in handy.

...Then again... it could just be that you don't know what you're missing. I mean... common sense tells you that more prestigious school will be more selective in the talent it accepts. So you get your stuff performed by better groups, so it ends up sounding better if you wanna show someone. Also, you're more likely to get good connections in the music industry if you go to a more prestigious school. This is for a few reasons. First is the rich alumni network the school might have. The next is connections you make with other students who go on to do stuff after they graduate. And finally you have better teachers with more connections. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are many passionate music teachers working at universities all over the world, but wouldn't common sense tell you that a more prestigious school is gonna want the most knowledgeable and passionate teachers for their school? And wouldn't common sense also tell you that since those more prestigious institutions pay more, more teachers will be competing for jobs at those places? In the end you get the best of the best. Now, this only works in theory, of course. As I said before, just because I work at a less prestigious school, doesn't mean I can't teach. All I'm saying is that in theory, it makes sense for "better" schools to have better students, better teachers, better groups, better facilities, better connection opportunities, and better funding for better programs. That said, I'm just saying this for the sake of argument. I don't mean anything against you personally, lol. :toothygrin:

Hi, I'm Miggy Torres. Most of you YCers know me as the guy with the frightening profile pic or the guy who always literally shouts in the "Shoutbox." I'm straight out high school where I was in a choir and I did musical theatre a bit. I've taught myself theory and composition using books, the internet, and my high school teachers/voice coaches. Unfortunately, my school didn't have a theory program, so, as I said earlier, taught myself theory. Still, last year, I took the AP Music Theory Test and got a 5 on both the aural and non-aural sections, so i think I'm in a pretty good place for where I am. In the fall (2011) I plan to attend the Ithaca College School of Music where I will be majoring in Music Composition (Can't wait!!! :D). I'll also be studying voice there. After that, I plan on getting a Master's in composition as well. I enjoy writing for choir most of the time. This is mostly due to the fact that I sing and, as I said earlier, I was in my school's chamber choir. A lot of my influences have been choral composers like Eric Whitacre and Z. Randall Stroope, but I also love composers like John Mackey, Steven Bryant, and Jim Dooley who write works mostly for Winds or Soundtracks. I also occasionally listen to the really old classics like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, Vaughn Williams, etc., but not really as much as the guys I listed above. As far as learning the art of composition goes (as opposed to just music theory), I have yet to have a lot of formal training. Still, I read all the books I can get my hands on, and I try to learn as much as I can from my heroes, whether that means reading John Mackey's Blog posts, or furiously analyzing the scores of Eric Whitacre's choral music. Anyway, I hope this helps everyone here at the YC fora get to know a little more about me as a person and as a composer. I wonder... are there any other Ithaca College students out there? Alumni? Prospective students? --Miggy Torres