Eirik

When you write an orchestral piece, or want to play a piece which calls for "strings" (an unspecified number of), how do you decide how many players of each string instrument you should use? Any thumb rules etc.?

I finally made a recording of this piece! :-) It's not really very suitable for a recording, since it's a performance piece, but I've recorded it anyways. the best version is sith 5.1-surround (due to the nature of the piece), but I've made a stereo version too: http://www.eiriksletteberg.com/The%20Circle%20stereo.mp3

I wrote this piece for my application to enter the undergraduate courses in composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. We were required to write a piece for clarinet, harp and cello, duration 2-5 minutes. So I wrote this piece. The Snark is a fantasy creature. The Norwegian contemporary composer Arne Nordheim has written two pieces about it, and I wanted to do the same. http://eiriksletteberg.com/Escaping%20From%20the%20Snark.mp3 http://eiriksletteberg.com/Escaping%20From%20the%20Snark.pdf

Nice piece! BUT, the harp part. I'm not a harpist, but I can tell you it's unplayable. It's a beautiful instrument, but you need to know how to write harp parts. You may know some of it already, like the harp pedal system, and the playing technique. This part is unplayable because of the rapid restriking of the same strings. You cannot repeated notes on the same strings that fast! You can on a piano. You can't on a harp. The usual workaround for this problem (say you want to play repeated C-s) is to tune two strings to the same sounding note. Tune the B string to a B sharp (sounding C). Then you can alternate between B# and C, which will sound like C-C-C-C-C...

Thank you for all your help! My thought was to compose a work in the style of "Songs without words", but using Latin instead. By using "rubbish" latin (As it's mostly used as rubbish text, even though it has a meaning) the composition can be centered around the music and harmony (and so on) and experiments on the word pronounciation, instead of trying to express anthing meaningfull with the text. That was my thought. Again, thank you everybody!

I don't really care about what it means or anything (lipsum is supposed to be just rubbish), I'm just curious, how it should be pronounced if it were real Latin (like "lorem ipsum dol_o_r" or "lorem ipsum d_o_lor") How long would it take to outline the places where the pressure on each word should be? If it takes 5 hours, I won't ask you to do it. ;-)

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum." This is a famous quasi-latin phrase used as a dummy text for typesetting purposes. I might want to write a choir work with this text as a basis, but are there any experts in latin here? Graham? How would you pronounce it? Where would the accentuation be in each word?

Yes, it was a parody on the brass band piece with the same title. ;-) And you

A minimalist piece. "Vitae Aeternum" is latin, means "Eternal Life" (and is also the title of a brass band piece.) I have tried to capture my thoughts about living an eternal life on Earth. This was the best way I could do it. The piece starts interesting and with the fine sound of the vibraphone. After a while, the listener has understood the piece. After a few minutes, he/she is tired of hearing the piece. After a few minutes more, insanely bored. The best way to perform the piece is to repeat until every single listener has left the room in protest.

Lydian.

I want to base the lyrics on this poem.

I would like to test out this kind of ensemble, so I decided to write a piece for it. I found this simple poem on the net: I'll post the piece when it's finished, but I just wanted to know if the english language in the poem is correct. The author is not very old. (*Was, at the time, it was written about 6 years ago)

Something happening here?

I love the energy buildup in this piece! When can we attend the premiere? :P You've done one small glitch. The measures 237 - 240 take the oboes down to an F3. That's impossible, the lowest note you can get on an oboe is a Bb3.

Very good! Beautiful music! Is this your own composition, or an arrangement of another piece? Just be aware of the F# in your harp part, it's in the middle of a two of F's (One F in beginning of measure 1 and one in the beginning of measure 4). I hope you know how to write harp parts and taking pedaling into consideration? Since the tempo is quite slow, it might be possible to pull off that pedal change (especially the last one, which must be executed in the middle of measure 3, in time for the F's in measure 4, but after the sound of the F# is dampened). Ask a harpist if it is playable, and if it will sound good (The F# may need to be dampened artificially before the pedal change). Or you could just take out the F# and replace it with a diatonic tone. Remember, concert harps are diatonic! ;-) Those fast runs are also quite virtuose, if that's not what you want them to be, you could have replaced them with pure harp glissandos? I would say you should give the flutes a rest in measure 23. The low flute register would be heard very well, and it just makes the jump to the high F more difficult. I would have put it in the clarinet parts. Exciting from measure 58! I would like to hear more of that. :-) Good job!

And, BTW, you might want to put all the music on one page. In Finale, do like this: Tools -> Page Layout You now get a new meny to the right of the "Tools" menu, this menu should be called "Page Layout". Page Layout -> Resize Staff Systems (System Reduction) Put "80 %" (or something similar) in the box where it first says "100 %", and press OK. The page is now resized. I would also recommend you delete the last empty bars!

What's for sure is that the computer playback doesn't make this piece more interesting to listen to! Your score only consists of notes in it indicating tone and duration. (Except for the few trills and the accel/a-tempo markings). That means the musician has the freedom to do whatever he/she wants with the tempo, dynamics, articulation, phrases, interpretation etc. No accompanying instrument means total tempo control. There's no melody in it, but it shouldn't have any. The excitement and development of the piece must be made by the performer. Try giving the music to a violinist and tell him/her to prepare it and play it! Don't answer any questions on how it should be played, whatsoever. Let it be played on a concert and listen to how it is interpreted. That's the excitement I find in this piece.

Ja, det er bra vi er flere skandinaviske komponister her! ;-) Unfortunately, your tenor sax part is unplayable, because it's written too low for the instrument. The lowest tone a sax can play is a written Bb3. Your tenor sax part can very well be played on a baritone saxophone instead! (Or alternatively on a bass clarinet.) Or you can rewrite the tenor sax part. And the title isn't odd at all. We like "cryptical" titles that can be interpreted by the audience - let them wonder what the composer got his/her inspiration from.

That's exactly what I did. Maybe it's Windows Vista?

Just one comment about the score first - your staves are far too big, and when you have tried to squeeze the orchestra into one page, the staves overlap eachother! You should make each individual staff smaller (like in a word processor where you would have reduced the font size). What program are you using? I don't have time to look at it properly now, but I have one suggestion; the horn part is a bit low, maybe not for a real horn player, but it is below the "nice" register, as far as I know. Try putting it in the trombones instead! I have myself "discovered" the trombone as the instrument which can be used as an extension to the french horn range, I like the french horn sound, but in the low register, it can sound just as good on a trombone.

Now I've got SuperCollider installed and up-and-going! :-) But the problem is the latency.. I've tried to connect a microphone into my computer, and told SuperCollider simply to return the input signal so I can hear the input, but it has a latency of about 0.5 secs! And that is without any processing whatsoever...

Do you have any experiences with using pickup microphones on the string instruments?

Beautiful music! Can you please post the score, if you have one? The one thing you are missing is the percussion.

A general idea on composing/orchestrating, when you want to achieve something, like melancholy, you really know how you want do write it, e.g. by using woodwinds. Then, I want you (and all composers) to ask yourself: "Can I do the same thing in a different, perhaps untraditional, and interesting way?" I don't think The Rite of Spring would have been just as exciting if Stravinskij opened it with a clarinet solo :P

Added risks to the performance - more excitement! :P What I've planned is to have a separate person play the electronics part and write down some of the electronics instructions as an actual "part" in the score, just a part without a 5-line staff, instead having text and maybe some illustrations. And on the acoustics thing... I may want to use reverb to give some instruments a lot of reverb while others have a dry sound, to have a difference so the reverb should sound "unnatural". But if the piece is performed in, say an art gallery, which is where the string quartets here usually play, the natural reverb in the room might ruin this.. maybe it helps to direct the speakers very directly towards the audience? That's why I asked if one could somehow dampen the natural acoustics a little (It's probably not a solution to cover up the walls (which also means the paintings) with cloth :P) And about the chords.. I want the natural played pitch also to be played through the loudspeakers along with the transposed notes, I hope that will let the balance be correct.