July Competition

Why, thank you.

Ad hoc, I rather like your piece! And I am wont to hate unaccompanied instrumental solo music.

Morgri - Very good piece - midi doesn't give it its proper due. I can imagin ein performance the lines sounding far more sinuous!

Thatguy - That was an excellent piece - very dramatic and cohesive without using a ton of material. Tough work too. It would be great to see it performed with the quick alterations between stops and runs.

That was fun.

My Piece! Enjoy!

Impromptu for Bassoon

COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. JUDGING SHOULD BE FINISHED BY 11:59 PM ON AUGUST 10TH!

Thank you for all the entries and thank you to judges for making, in my opinion, a very succesful July Competition! =D

I HAVE ONLY RECEIVED ONE JUDGES ENTRY DARNIT!!!!! I WANT MORE!!!

Morivou -

PM the judges. I know Tokke is MIA. Maybe he is busy I dunno. But try pm'ing or paging everyone.

I have... I did it when the competition closed. if I don't have at least one more review by tonight, I will send out another PM. Tomorrow though, I will recruit another judge. haha.

That's always been the problem with the competitions here. Getting judges and getting them to judge.

I know. I used to run them all the time, it's my curse. That's why I like to have 3 judges max. So, since I have three judges entries, I will tally up now. ;)

Congrats, Jose.

Maybe I should abandon more tonal music and just throw a mess of strange combinations together with hints of a stable idea. Seems to be the in thing. Although, I wouldn't be able to listen to my own music, as it would be too annoying.

Again, Congrats. But I just don't get your piano piece, that sounded nothing like a piano. lol...

Bachian, I think you have the wrong idea here. Your piece came in a close second. Hell, it was only 5 points behind Jose. Personally, I gave BOTH you and he a perfect score. So don't com complaining to me or anyone else. Music is subjective when it comes to judging.

Nobody is saying tonality is out the window! I don't think your piece is any better or worse than Jose's. It's just different. Like I said, I scored them the same.

Bachian, I think you have the wrong idea here. Your piece came in a close second. Hell, it was only 5 points behind Jose. Personally, I gave BOTH you and he a perfect score. So don't com complaining to me or anyone else. Music is subjective when it comes to judging.

Nobody is saying tonality is out the window! I don't think your piece is any better or worse than Jose's. It's just different. Like I said, I scored them the same.

I wasn't complaining to you. Jose said he didn't like my piece a few pages back, and I was giving him congrats but saying I didn't really care for his piece, as it seems quite purposeless to me - though it had a hint of stability.

But, as you say, music is subjective when it comes to judging. I must have misunderstood what the judges were after. Maybe I'll join the August competition and get experimental and see what people think of it.

Maybe I'll join the August competition and get experimental and see what people think of it.

Actually... what would happen if you do? I mean.. if you take experimentation SERIOUSLY and try new things, who knows? You might come up with something you NEVER thought you could do.

Expanding your musical boundaries is never a bad idea.

In this thread.. haha

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/july-competition-results-21408.html

Morivou -

This competition is seriously flawed. I DO NOT HAVE AT MY DISPOSAL A PIANO I CAN PREPARE.

Also, the preparation of the piano produces tones outside the octatonic scale.

As for a prepared piano piece I say Jose's piece is excellent, and in a competition where we all had a chance to try it (or able) he would have won or placed in the top 3. My only critique - a little short and the notation could be much cleaner. For example, how do you place the metallic wheel? Or the coaxial cable?

Sorry but next time a competition is set up please specify that prepared instruments are allowed.

Oh, I disagree with your judges scoring of my piece that it didn't even break above 60. I worked with the scale and experimented with the form - even if the experiment wasn't entirely successful - and I kept my material succinct and to the point - I worked hard to work with less.

Overall, nice try at setting up a fair competition but some serious flaws in the way it was set-up and your judgment. The latter I cannot control and realize this is my own problem but the former is something you ought to have considered more carefully.

I didn't set up the competition... I just received the judging sheets... :) You'll have to take that up with Morgri.

As a judge you may have had the foresight to determine this problem - judging a prepared piano piece against non-prepared. Yes Morgri is at fault but I am not sure he expected this. When judging you have to see when you are comparing apples with oranges and revisit the parameters of the contest before choosing a winner. Evidently you were unable to.

Bachian and composerorganist

Re-read the rules:

Rules

-- The composition must be at least 2 minutes in length

-- The composition must make use of the octotonic scale

in SOME fashion, but it does not have to use the scale the whole composition

. It does not have to be the diminished octotonic scale, but can be

ANY eight note scale

, you can use your imagination.

-- The composition be for a

solo instrument of the composers choice

There is no rule that says "no prepared piano" and the last time I checked it was a solo instrument. It also states that "any octotonic scale" (i.e. any eight note scale) may be used in "some fashion". It does not state that one of "the" octatonic scales must be used for the entire piece. So even if you want to argue about how there may be microtonal variants in the pitches or that he dropped a few in the middle of the piece or added some, it doesn't matter, because it is well within the rules of the competition. The rules are pretty loose, it says any "eight note scale", so even if you want to argue that there are no pitches, its all percussive (which it isn't anyway, but whatever), 8 different timbres is fine as well, since it never specifies pitches. Based on those rules, if, for example, someone used 8 different rhythmic values as their octatonic scale but without any octatonic pitch collection, I would say that it follows the rules.

The judges determined that josepablofm followed the rules.

He won because the judges felt that his work was the best. And I can assure you that my decision was based entirely on the music (everyone followed the rules). It has nothing to do with the use of prepared piano. Trust me, I've heard more than enough prepared piano works that I'm no longer "wowed" by it.

I agree that the score could have been clearer, but then again, the judgement was based on the music, not it's presentation. Either way, I wasn't impressed with the look of anyone's score.

Stop complaining. The competition rules were clear -- they weren't strict, but they were clear -- they were followed, and the scoring was fair.

I'm not sure if you guys have included James H. results. If you haven't, please update the scores and finalize the judging to the competition.

I'm not sure if you guys have included James H. results. If you haven't, please update the scores and finalize the judging to the competition.

I do believe they are in there, Morivou PM'd me back after I sent my scores to him. I sent out my PM to all the competitors after the results were announced.

I'll stick to my main suggestion then - a global one for that matter for many of the competitions I see here fail to do this sufficiently:

Tighten and clarify the parameters and you will have a more even and fair playing field. It will be far more educational than the run-of-the-mill competitions which are posted by ASCAP and performing societies and leave one never quite understanding what they could have done better.

Oh, I would love to read your judging comments too.

Congrats on placing finalist in the Morton Gould Young Composer Competition.

I'm not sure if you guys have included James H. results. If you haven't, please update the scores and finalize the judging to the competition.

They are included.

composerorganist,

I don't disagree with you on the parameters. Every competition that I've seen on here has been too loose. If you're going to have these themed competitions there should be tighter restrictions. I completely agree with you on that 100%. In fact, I would have rather judged a competition with stricter guidelines. However, it was all clear. Because the rules were so loose the judging of this competition came down to two things -- creativity and personal judgement -- and wasn't really based as much as it could have been on the competition's guidelines ('cause again, they were more or less non-existent). There really wasn't any criteria as to what "octatonic" collections were allowed, how it should be used, or really if it has to be used. So as long as it was a solo instrumental work (again, prepared piano is a solo instrument) that used an octatonic collection at least once in the work and was 2 minutes or longer, it followed all of the rules. From there the judgments were based on overall creativity of the work, and "personal choice" (this was the way I was told to score). Creativity for me included the use of your octatonic collection, the melodic and harmonic language derived from your collection, the expansion or contraction of your collection, etc. as well as your musical creativity within the medium (neo-Romanticism, etc.) you choose to work with. If I felt your work was derivative of many other things and didn't have anything "unique", it didn't receive high creativity marks. Also, my scorings were based on a comparison of the pieces submitted. No, Josepablofm didn't write an exceptionally creative piece -- I've heard that sound over and over before -- however in comparison to the other works it stood out as being more creative than the others. It also used its octatonic collection in a way that was more creative than the others. Because of all that, I gave him a higher score.

I'm not saying the guidelines should be super tight and say something like "only a piece for solo viola that uses 'the' octatonic scale in a Hungarian folk music style", but something like a set octatonic scale and perhaps guidelines as to its use, for example, something like "while pitches may be added or subtracted, the piece must focus primarily on those 8 pitches", would be beneficial. But that was not present in this competition.

Yes, a lot of the judgement was objective, as it would be in any competition, but I agree that it probably would have been a better competition had more guidelines been put in place.

Thanks for the congrats.

Congrats Jose, along with everyone that entered ;)